Spooky Season is finally here! It’s time to curl up with everything pumpkin spice, and consume all-things horror! As a professional horror nerd, I’ve been working my way through some old favorites and new classic films and novels this Spooky Season.
I am delighted that Scream Queens and Final Girls have recently established their due respect in popular media, and that we are in a veritable Horror Media Renaissance, if I may be so bold. Scream Queens are the female characters whose main purpose in horror films–especially slashers–is to be fodder for the killer and to scream impressively loudly, and as much as possible. The Final Girl is the last woman standing at the end of the film–she who survives all the other Scream Queens. In the Venn diagram of horror tropes, all Final Girls are Scream Queens, but not all Scream Queens are Final Girls.
Ready to dive into the pumpkin guts and get gory? Here are some literary Scream Queens and Final Girl read-alikes for fellow horror movie nerds and newbies to give you the heebie-jeebies this Halloween:
If you are a fan of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, read The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix. Is it his best novel? Not in my opinion, but Hendrix’s meta-slasher horror-game is on point. His best novel is My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which features an all-Scream-Queen cast of characters.
If you are a fan of Friday the 13th, read the first novel of the Indian Lake Trilogy, My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. This is perhaps the finest meta-slasher reference work of our times, and Stephen Graham Jones is perhaps the finest contemporary horror writer working these days. Don’t believe me? Read all his books and then try to change my mind. Bonus: My Heart Is a Chainsaw is the Strange and Unusual Book Discussion pick for November! Join us in the Indiana Room at the Central Library on Tuesday, Nov. 21. It’ll be a slashing good time!
Another trilogy! The Merciless by Danielle Vega. “Brooklyn Stevens sits in a pool of her own blood, tied up and gagged. No one outside of these dank basement walls knows she’s here. No one can hear her scream.” A group of bad-girl teens try to exorcise a demon from one of their friends, but is the evil really coming from the girls themselves? Not for the faint of heart! Don’t judge this book by its Barbie-ish cover–This is a real terror of a trilogy! A terrifying companion for fans of the new movie, Exorcist: The Believer.
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder is on my TBR shelf this month, and so far I have more questions than answers…Can a Final Girl also be a villain? Who gets to decide who is the villain and who is the victim? What if they’re the same person? This one creeps into the territory of my favorite monster: werewolves. Can a werewolf be a Final Girl? Fans of Ginger Snaps already know the answer to that question 😉
If these picks are too gruesome, try The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris. Part social commentary, part office drama, this one will keep you questioning but probably won’t give you nightmares. When Wagner Books finally hires a second Black woman, Hazel, Nella is excited for a possible new friendship, or at least, allyship, with her. But as we know, there can only be one Final Girl…who will it be? The Other Black Girl is also a Hulu series, so it’s doing double-duty for this post!
Can there by a Final Boy? Why not! Especially when a plague has wiped out all mammals with a Y chromosome and only women remain…except for poor Yorick, the last man on Earth…and his monkey friend. This is the wild imaginings of Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man. A graphic novel series that isn’t exactly horror, but will have you questioning everything, imagining a very different future for humanity…and pondering whether you have what it takes to be a Final Girl (or boy…or monkey?) A different kind of post-apocalyptic hell-scape than Walking Dead (also a fantastic graphic novel series), but we’re all tired of zombies, anyway.
Scream on, Queens! ‘Tis our season! Stay spooky!
