What Happens After You Survive the Massacre?

Ever wondered what happened to the final girl in films like Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street after it ends? That is what you get in the novel The Final Girl Support Group. The novel follows a group of girls who are victims of massacres and are dubbed final girls in public. They meet monthly to discuss their trauma. During one of the monthly meetings, the girls find out that one of their members, Andriene, was murdered. All the girls are affected by this, but one of the girls, Lynnette, thinks this is the beginning of something sinister. Can Lynnette get the girls to prepare for a potential threat, or will the girls think Lynnette’s paranoia is getting the best of her? 

Is Lynnette’s paranoia and fear in the book a good reason to doubt her sanity? That is a thing that the audience is left to figure out throughout the book. Lynnette has never moved on from her trauma. She doubles her tracks to make sure no one is following her. She makes sure to notice her surroundings so she knows where all the exit points are. She has turned her apartment into a cage where no one can get in. She has cameras to monitor her environment and a bulletproof door. Her best friend is a plant. She constantly keeps track of her attackers to make sure they don’t break out and come after her. She nearly killed one of the girls in her support group who came to check up on her. She kidnaps a girl, thinking that she is the only one who can protect her. Since Lynnette reacts purely based on emotions, it alienates her from the girls in the support group and the group’s therapists. It is hard to root for a character when you are constantly questioning their perception of reality.

Speaking of believability, the book raises the question about women who are victims of violent crimes. New evidence came up years later regarding Lynnette, and another support group girl’s (Dani) attacks. The evidence suggested that Lynnette’s actions led to the massacre against her family and herself, and Dani was accused of killing the wrong person in self-defense. Even though the new evidence came from questionable sources and was not heavily investigated, the girls’ victimhood was thrown out, and they are immediately treated as villains. It illustrates that women tend to be easily discredited when it comes to violence against them. Often they are thought to have brought the crime upon themselves, or there is a question of their sanity. 

Should a victim’s sanity be questioned? That is something that the book explored with the character of Chrissy.  She was part of the group meeting with Lynnette and the other girls, but left the group early on because she never saw herself as a victim. She not only worships the killers of various massacres, but she buys murder memorabilia and has created a museum in her house to display her trophies. Her boyfriend is even a killer, and she supports her endeavors wholeheartedly. 

Despite Chrissy’s behavior, she is representative of quite a few women in reality. Recently, there was a guy convicted of killing the CEO of United Healthcare. Despite his crime, he has a loyal fanbase of groupies that support him and hope he will beat the charges. It is not just him. Various serial killers throughout the ages have received this type of treatment as well, with people collecting memorabilia from the various murder scenes. 

There is a morbid curiosity about killers in our society. In the book, all the girls have slasher film franchises based on their trauma. In real life, the true crime genre is very popular. Slasher films and true crime shows give the audience the thrill of danger in exploring the mindset of a killer in the safety of their own environment. The interesting thing in both the book and in real life is that the killers tend to be remembered more than the victim, to the point where the killer is idolized, whether it is a real or fictional killer. It is hardly ever discussed what happens to the victim afterward. Does the victim find help to deal with the trauma, or does their life just fall apart? Does the victim live constantly in fear, or do they rise above the trauma and reclaim their life? Those would be more interesting to focus on than the exploration of the mind of a killer. 

I found this an intense read. It explores our fascination with horror, especially when it pertains to murder, whether it is real life or fictional. I like that it showed the women fighting against the monsters that caused their trauma. Society tends to remember the murders more than the victims. I like that the novel took the opposite approach and focused on what happened to the victims. Some can reclaim their lives while others spiral downward and live in constant fear. Our protagonist, Lynnette, learns that letting her fear and paranoia control her actions has gotten her into bad situations, and that if she wants to move forward, she has to let go of those feelings.