Synopsis:
Former scream queen Barbra Jacobs desperately wants to break out of the box Hollywood has neatly packaged her in. Cast as the star of the Mirror horror franchise films twenty years ago, the breakout role that shaped her career has also destroyed her dreams of being taken seriously as an actress. Now forty, and still seeking the approval of everyone around her, she makes ends meet by signing old photos of herself and doing meet and greets at horror conventions.
So when a producer calls asking her host The Monsters We Made, a hot new horror docuseries, she sees it as a step in the right direction. But when fans begin dying around her—and in ways that mimic the kills in her films—Barb is thrust back into a role she can’t seem to walk away from: The Final Girl.
Will she ever break out of the display-box-life she’s been imprisoned in, or will Mirror Man end it all in Barbie’s Scream House?
Review:
Tanya Pell is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors, and whether it’s a giant-bug-based B-movie or a lush gothic, I know whatever the hell it ends up being, is going to be something tremendous. “This B Just Won’t Die,” is her best. A glittery, campy meta slasher, Pell delivers gnarly kills, terrible puns, a reluctant final girl and a theatrically menacing masked killer (I am assured, not Katy Perry at the Met Gala, but something similar) but does so alongside meaningful commentary upon fame, fandom, perception, aging and women and women aging, and Hollywood’s cultural tendency to take offence to such a phenomenon. It’s the most fabulous bloodbath with room in the tub for satire, emotion and heart too. A funny, vicious read which leaves time to get us properly acquainted with our characters before killing them off, “This B Just Won’t Die,” is thoroughly impressive, really fun, clearly deeply affectionate toward its own genre, and above all Stephen Graham Jones-approved. It’s out October 13th from Gallery, who I would like to thank kindly for my ARC.
We follow Barbra Jacobs. The Mirror franchise may have made her a Scream Queen, but her time as a final girl has all but obliterated the possibility of her becoming a “serious,” actress. At the age of 40, the bulk of her career is spent in that awkward purgatory for genre icons, a lot of time spent scribbling on dubious merch and answering invasive questions at conventions and cons. She’s bloody fed up. It’s at one such event that a brutal murder takes place in the bathroom, and after yet another grisly Mirror-esque killing, Barbra is once again shoved into the spotlight. The renewed attention lands her a gig hosting a new horror docu-series, and this seems like a step in the right direction- it pays well and she could be the new Elvira. However, in a medically stupid decision, the producers plan to have The Mirror episodes filmed at the original “Barbie’s Scream House,” and with so much of the cast there, back in the same place it all started… considering this is a slasher… it seems probable that Barbra will have to be a final girl once more.
Without doubt the strongest single aspect of this novel is Barbra. It is through her that the novel’s meta sensibilities sharpen their knives, she has been chased enough times to be aware of what is and is not wise when running from a killer, and been to enough conventions to drop some much appreciated easter-eggs. It’s real fun, but bittersweet considering Barbra Jacobs is no Jade Daniels, such references do not come from a place of fandom or passion, but years trapped in a slasher echo chamber. When we meet her Barbra has been swallowed whole by “Debbie,” constantly referred to via her character name, forever enduring the indignity of convention culture- having insensitive and backhanded comments thrown at her by male fans, and most irritatingly of all, now given no work. Barbra has been tricked by Hollywood and its grotesque disposability of aging women in entertainment, into thinking that now she is no longer the epitome of the male gaze, she isn’t worth much, worth hiring, worth anything, personally or professionally. Luckily for us and Barbra both, “This B Just Won’t Die,” is a story of self-reclamation in addition to survival, because having spent decades defined by her on-screen victimhood, she is not ready to become one in real life. She’s exhausted, angry, traumatised, and fiercely unwilling to die for anyone’s entertainment ever again.
“This B Just Won’t Die,” has an important message at its heart, one that Pell clearly had no qualms about splitting it down the middle and cracking open its ribcage to get to. For fans of Brian McAuley’s “Curse of the Reaper,” and a bloody good time for those who thought “Scream,” lacked sequins.
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