2/5 Knives
I want to be completely honest right off the bat and admit I did not like The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix, considering it was heavily hyped and I’ve heard heaps of praise about Hendrix’s other work.
As a huge fan of the final girl trope, I knew I had to pick this one up. I was even willing to look beyond the unoriginal premise: see Final Girls by Riley Sager, of which I also did not enjoy.
The Final Girl Support Group is comprised of six final girls (for those who do not know, a final girl is the sole survivor of a massacre), including our main character Lynette, who lives in a constant state of paranoia after the Christmas Eve murder of her family decades prior. Each of these women have not only been the sole survivor of their own respective tragedies, but they were also the ones to kill the killer – as well as any copycats that came later. But now someone is picking off the final girls one by one, and Lynette doesn’t know whom to trust.
I freely admit that my opinion concerning the details in this book might be divisive, as I am sure there are plenty of people out there who will love the homages to the classic slasher films. However, Hendrix essentially replicates the plots of these old slashers (such as Halloween, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre) as the origin stories of his final girls.
Finding inspiration and sprinkling minor details of the films you love into your work can be wonderful when done well, but to me this simply felt like a lazy cut and paste job with a few details changed. The characters also felt remarkably one-dimensional, as I was able reduce every final girl down to one personality trait. Also, after being paranoid and hyper-vigilant for so many years, one would think Lynette to be a better judge of character and not constantly flinging herself into dangerous situations.
I won’t write off Hendrix just yet, as I do want to read some of his other works. This one just didn’t do it for me.
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