The Last Final Girl

This review is apt to be a bit bias, as this is what usually happens when readers becomes delusional enough to think a novel was written specifically for them. That’s the case here though, as Mr. Jones has crafted a book so far up inside the head of a horror movie fan that its likely to read like Morse Code to a civilian. Their confusion is their loss though because something very unique is happening with this narrative, something that will likely be misinterpreted as an attempt to half-novelize a screenplay. But it only resembles a screenplay at first glance, mostly because of the clever arrows and whiplash descriptions of the next “shot.” But the difference here is all the difference – what is usually lost in a screenplay format (and in a film), particularly the moves only a novel can make up, down, and all around the action (and up in everyone’s heads, of course), can now be relished instead of distilled, making this not quite screenplay, not quite novel, but a new hybrid machine hand-tooled for maximum enjoyment by a specific audience. The premise, a gathering of familiar names, “Jamie (Lee Curtis),” “Ripley,” “Crystal (B)lake,” etc., all of them “last final girls” who should have earned the right to finally relax after surviving their respective horror movies, now in danger of being picked off by a nut in a Whacko Jacko mask, is just as fun as Jones’ previous Zombie Bake-Off (also put out by Lazy Fascist), and just as smart and subversive as that book. Things get twistier, and in spite of the positively Aztec levels of bloody sacrifice, what Jones would never dream of sacrificing are the expectations of any good horror show. The author is so confident in his knowledge of horror tropes that he never subverts those expectations when it comes time to satisfy them. It’s also crammed with movie references until the quips are spilling out its mouth, and has a special prize at the bottom of the box for Michael Martin Murphey “Wildfire” fans (actually this tribute got shook to the top of the cereal box). This book is a love letter to slasher cinema, to doomed Last Final Girls everywhere, and to every boy or girl who loved them enough to eat their popcorn and enjoy watching them die.

For anyone who watched waaaaay too many slasher flicks in the 80s and 80s, this book is a cyclopedic homage to every movie Jamie Lee Curtis ever starred in, every Jason, Michael, and Freddy, every sorority house and boy scout camp and cabin in the woods. I watched a lot of those movies as a teen, but Stephen Graham Jones must have a DVD collection to raise Vincent Price from the grave. I probably only caught two-thirds of the references.

The story is, of course, a slasher flick. With a twist.

<blockquote>
“Lindsay’s right,” Izzy says, collecting the leftovers. “Billie Jean is coming back for her. With a little help from his friends.”
“So . . . so is this a horror movie now, or a teen comedy?” Brittney says.
“It’s an afterschool special,” Izzy says, Hoddering her head over to study Billie Jean. “Know what the take-home message is? Don’t **** with Izzy Stratford.”
</blockquote>

Lindsay, the “Final Girl” in the movie that ended in the opening chapter, survived an encounter with a slasher-killer in a Michael Jackson mask. Now as homecoming queen, she’s going to lead her high school in a celebration of life and survival, and she’s chosen a handful of other very special girls for her court.

They’re all Final Girls who survived their own teen bloodbaths.

Since this is a slasher film, and Stephen Graham Jones is not going to neglect a single trope, even Izzy, the confused odd girl out, knows that a homecoming game with a cast right out of every scary movie ever can only end in blood.

The Last Final Girl is fun, if you find movies like Halloween and My Bloody Valentine and Nightmare on Elm Street fun. And it tries – it tries so very, very hard – to be clever. But it’s not quite as clever as it tries to be. It’s been billed as a literary version of Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods, but it’s not a deconstruction so much as a tongue-in-cheek fan fiction collage. The characters, all of them, are genre-savvy and know they are in a horror flick, so they try to outsmart fate, even knowing that the rules aren’t going to let them all survive. The author tries to keep us in suspense about who’s really the villain, but like many slasher films, it kind of spins out of control during the bloody finale. But hey, who says they have to make sense?

The writing style will definitely not be to everyone’s taste. It’s written in present tense screenplay format, complete with camera directions:

<blockquote>
and now Billie Jean’s clambering easily over the rail after Izzy and Ben, Izzy falling backwards and up, her POV looking ahead, where they’re going: to the top rail.
A dead end. A fast drop. Just like the cliff.
“Stupid girls run upstairs, stupid girls run upstairs,” she’s saying to herself, turning to pull Ben with her up the aluminum steps, Billie Jean just feet behind them,

Crystal down on the track, Billie Jean in the crosshairs of Dante’s rifle, about to have his insides opened up.
“Now, you ****er,” Crystal says, and pulls the trigger.
On nothing.
She doesn’t understand this gun.
</blockquote>

It really does convey the sense of being in a movie, watching from seats sticky with artificial butter through the alternating POV of a stalking serial killer and spunky teenagers, but it also gets annoying after a while.

I almost wanted to rate this 4 stars, but the writing style wore on me and while there were some good jokes, they weren’t quite funny enough to elevate this to true satire, let alone genius. Definitely a fun read for any horror fan, but it’s mostly just a celebration of all those R-rated blood-and-guts-and-titty-fests of our (well, my) youth

Okay first things first. I am not a big fan of slasher movies. Sure every once in a while a good one will show up (Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc) but most of them arent really that interesting. But this book does justice to the good one and to the cheesy ones. I was hooked from page one. If you like slasher movies or not I truly recommend that you read this book.

The story starts with a final girl and her horse Wildfire facing off with a serial killer wearing a Michael Jackson mask. There’s also a longsword. Then speeding forward, we find out there are more girls in this high school looking to become the next final girl and there’s quite a bit of envy involved with that.

This book is quite meta, using the final girl trope to build a story on. It’s quite fun too. The dialogues are great.
The experimental style, which feels like a movie script meeting literature, made me visualize more of this story than I normally do. At times it slowed my reading down some, when the POV changed in an unexpected way and I had to reorient myself in the scene.

Reading this teen slasher felt like it had been written by the genre itself. There are a ton of references to horror movies and characters. This book is smart. It gives a clever insight in what the genre is about while maintaining a fun story throughout.

I think it’s written in an unusual style, but it’s riveting and moves along quickly. The characters are clearly defined, and they’re all suspect until the end. I gave it to my daughter who’s also a fan of the scary. Will have to wait to see how she likes it

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