Friday, March 29, 2024

Review: Don’t Fear the Reaper

DON’T FEAR THE REAPER by Stephen Graham Jones
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Jade Daniels Lives!

The reluctant Final Girl from the horror novel My Heart Is A Chainsaw returns. 

In that novel, Native author Stephen Graham Jones introduces Jade, an Indigenous teenage rebel obsessed with slasher films who uses her horror movie wisdom to solve a series of murders in her small lake town. 

Now Jade is back to battle another psycho killer on a murder spree in the new novel DON’T FEAR THE REAPER (Simon & Schuster), the second entry in The Indian Lake Trilogy, this story takes place four years after the events of SGJ’s 2022 novel, My Heart Is A Chainsaw

Jade returns to her home of Proofrock, a community still in ruins after a murderous slasher slaughtered dozens in the incident now called “The Independence Day Massacre.” Jade teams up with survivors of the first novel when mutilated bodies begin to pile up during a snowstorm. They make it their mission to put a stop to the slayings.

We learn that a serial killer named Dark Mill South escaped from a prison convoy during a freak blizzard. This new slasher villain is a gigantic Indigenous butcher out for revenge for the Dakota 38, the Sioux warriors hanged in Mankato, Minnesota, in 1862. 

Abraham Lincoln approved this act of injustice in the aftermath of the Dakota/U.S. War. These 38 men were hung the day after Christmas in the largest mass execution in U.S. History. That historical atrocity fuels Dark Mill South’s rage as he lays claim to Proofrock for his new human hunting ground. It all makes for an intense and gory read.

Like My Heart Is A Chainsaw, SGJ fills this sequel with meta-horror references. Despite all the Slasher movie easter eggs sprinkled throughout Don’t Fear The Reaper, it’s more of a slow burn. 

The pacing tends to meander as the narrative focuses on the characters’ thoughts. Even the kill scenes are written in vague recounts and abstract descriptions. 

Like a Jean Luc Goddard film, the action is less about the details; instead, depicting the emotional impact of how the characters experience the violence. This is a minor critique as this whole story’s purpose is emotional, dramatic action.

Jones’s ability to get inside a wide array of characters’ heads is fitting. He writes their voices with tangible wit giving each one a distinctive identity. Some are trying to forget the past. Others are protective of their families. There are other older characters cynical after dealing with a lifetime of hardships. 

Jones emphasizes the emotional challenges of every character. Jade, suffering from PTSD, constantly questions herself. As a horror fan, Jade was obsessed with the idea of The Final Girl — the last woman left alive at the end of the slasher movie who inevitably takes out the crazed, masked killer.

Revered as a symbol of power and strength, The Final Girl embodies the will to survive against all odds. DON’T FEAR THE REAPER explores the emotional toll every Final Girl must endure. Ripley from Alien and Sydney Prescott from Scream persevere at the end of the movie, but that strength comes at a price. 

These women who survive horror movies endure a gauntlet of suffering — witnessing all their friends murdered before confronting the killer in the third act. Although victorious, the Final Girls’ power comes from pain. A pain Jade can barely handle, filling her with doubt that she lacks the strength to survive and become the Final Girl in her own story.

Trauma is the central theme running throughout the novel.

The whole town of Proofrock is still reeling from the events of the Independence Day Massacre. Everyone has been affected by the horrors of that day. For Jade, she tries to deny her past horror movie obsessions, attempting to rid her lonely outcast status — as if blaming herself and her slasher flick fantasies for the town’s fate.

This trauma is where Stephen Graham Jones amplifies the horror movie tropes. In most Slasher films, revenge is the primary motivation for the homicidal maniac, who snaps and goes on a killing spree seeking retribution for some past wrong that occurred decades before.

The psychotic breakdown is always glossed over and played for exploitation. The murder victims are usually annoying machete fodder to placate the audience’s desire for a gory body count. However, all the emotional baggage takes center stage in DON’T FEAR THE REAPER.

Jones fully leans into the characters’ psychology of trauma. After the chaos of the Independence Day Massacre, the town is on edge. Everyone has a reason to crack up, lose it and go psycho.

Yet they all keep trudging along, which is the whole point. The only way to get past trauma is to learn to live with it, finding comfort in the chaos. Jade has to embrace her past since that’s where all her strength lies.

Her obsession with slashers was the key to her survival. Jade accepting her faults by turning them into virtues is what made her victorious. It is that strength Jade uses against Dark Mill South.

Both hero and villain being Indigenous is very much intentional. Dark Mill South is the complete embodiment of the Trauma of Native American Genocide. It is the Indigenous rage that seeks revenge for centuries of colonial atrocities.

Dark Mill South is America’s violent past coming back to haunt them. Indigenous People were America’s first bogeyman. They are the monsters that needed to be vanquished by John Wayne for the safety of encroaching settlers. Dark Mill South reclaims the idea of the Indigenous villain. He is a storm of terror seeking bloody vengeance for the Holocaust of the First Nations.

Jade Daniels is the opposite of that colonial history. She represents the strength and resilience of Indigenous People who have survived that genocidal trauma. As difficult as it is to carry on, Jade learns to make peace with her trauma, using it as a reminder of how far she’s come and preventing it from happening to others.

Just as the Dakota People in Minnesota still honor the Dakota 38 with a memorial run and horse ride every year, the horrific events of 1862 serves as a reminder never to repeat them.

Acknowledging the traumatic past to ensure a better future is crucial to healing. Jade realizes this. After all that has happened to her, she stands as proof that she will remain. Like all Native Americans today, Jade is a survivor. As much as she tries to deny it, Jade Daniels has all the strength and will of The Final Girl.

Despite the slower pace, DON’T FEAR THE REAPER is a solid second act in this Slasher Trilogy. Stephen Graham Jones dives into the emotional trauma of the characters as they struggle to fight this new threat. 

Dark Mill South is a terrifying slasher and ushers in a new age for Indigenous representation as a Native American villain. Jade Daniels also shines as the Final Girl, overcoming her demons to face her fears. 

After denying her past horror movie obsession, she embraces it as her identity and perseverance. She serves to remind us that everybody has issues and deals with them in their own way. 

We all have ways of coping with the turbulence and anxieties of our chaotic world. Some people, like Jade Daniels, do it by watching horror movies.

Eli Funaro
Eli Funaro
Eli Funaro has written for various nerd culture websites such as Outright Geekery and is the co -host of the Comic Book Bullies Podcast. Graduated from Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. An aspiring comic book and screen writer, Eli is an avid horror fan and Star Wars Nerd and also plays drums in death metal bands. He is currently working on his first horror novel. Eli Funaro is Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota  living in the Twin Cities of Minnesota.

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