The Final Girl Support Group

Horror monsters have fan clubs comprised of mostly men. But as the novel makes clear, their worship of the killers comes at the expense of the female survivors, whose traumas are glorified. One of the fictional ephemera the novel includes to give its story a veneer of reality is an essay titled “Women are Our Meat, and the Eating’s Good” from a fictional anthology about Final Girls. The essay describes “slavering male fans” (37) devouring slasher films to live out their violent sexual fantasies:

The women themselves remain largely silent, leaving their participation in their own exploitation unaddressed. If any of the fans become unruly they are anesthetized with more T-shirts, more albums, more posters, and action figures featuring their favorite murderers, now elevated to celebrity status (37).

Throughout the book, fans are not content with appreciating the stories second-hand—the most rabid of them want to become the killers they admire. One of Lynnette’s superfans is a cop who can’t resist the opportunity to kill her, excited that “Everyone is going to be so jealous” (173) that he got to do it. Similarly, Julia’s letter to the parole hearing board about her monster identifies his supporters as murderers in training: “Even today, Raymond Carleton continues to correspond with fans of his violent acts and I believe he encourages them to act out their darkest fantasies” (189).