The mechanics of the plot escalate into a Grand Guignol that leaps between genres and takes a supernatural turn that I found dispiriting, undercutting the realism of the story overall. Bits of Halloween and Friday the 13th mix in with some more obscure 1970s and 1980s slashers, larded over with a heavy layer of Scream, but very little from after the 49-year-old author’s own adolescence.
Nevertheless, Chainsaw has garnered enthusiastic reviews, most of which praise is Native protagonist, its postmodernism, its laundry list of liberal social issues-and almost never its actual plot.Ĭhainsaw tells the story of Jade Daniels, a Native teen in rural Idaho obsessed with slasher movies-to the point that she only accepts the purest version of 1980s slashers as legitimate, all others being imperfect bastardizations-and finds herself stuck in a slasher movie when her town’s Fourth of July celebration becomes the scene of mounting horror. Jones’s novel suffers a bit as the second major postmodern slasher movie fan-service pastiche of the year, after Grady Hendrix’s The Final Girl Support Group, a book that I wasn’t enthusiastic about but found much more engaging and exciting than Chainsaw.
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