As fans and friends begin dying in gruesome ways that mimic the scary movie franchise she was a part of decades ago, actress Barbara “Barb” Jacobs is suddenly forced back into a role she knows well, one of the horror genre’s most famous tropes: The Final Girl.
Author Tanya Pell’s “This B Just Won’t Die!” is a heart-pounding page-turner with masterfully written scenes, a sprinkling of humor and, like the “Scream” franchise, nods to several horror films and novels.
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Writing the character, a now 40-year-old actress trying to break free from being typecast as a Scream Queen and working the horror convention circuit for income, Pell went deep to research this feminist thriller, which is in stores on Oct. 13.
The author tagged along to a horror convention with her pal, actress Amanda Wyss, who has been in films such as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Better Off Dead.” Wyss also played Tina Gray, the very first victim of Freddy Krueger in 1984’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
“Amanda was lovely enough to let me sit with her for two hours,” Pell said during a recent phone interview from her South Carolina home.
While no stranger to the horror genre and a frequent guest at literary horror cons herself, Pell found the traditional horror cons – like the annual Midsummer Scream – to be a bit of a sensory overload.
Pell said she was in awe of how poised Wyss was with fans. She was gracious as she signed photos of her younger self from her “Nightmare” days for the attendees who’d stood in line just to have this moment. Pell took note of all the sights, sounds and smells of the event.
Decades after her starring role in the “Mirror” franchise, where she was ruthlessly hunted down by a killer known as Mirror Man, the character finds herself at a convention, signing pictures of her 20-something-year-old self, self-consciously picking up on well-meaning fans saying things like, “You used to be so hot.”
Like her character, Pell struggles with body dysmorphic disorder. Mirror Man is a reflection of that as well since the mask is made of mirrors, which forces victims to see themselves.
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Pell recently wrote an article that referenced these things, tying it into Demi Moore’s award-winning horror movie, “The Substance,” and a scene where Moore’s character is painstakingly picking herself apart and criticizing every perceived imperfection.
“For people with body dysmorphic disorder, or even for people who don’t necessarily have the disorder, we’ve all been at a point where we were looking in the mirror and couldn’t see the things we’d done right; all we can see are flaws,” she said.
“So many people resonated with that moment, and especially aging women who look at pictures of themselves when they were 20, 30, 40 and they didn’t appreciate themselves then. They don’t appreciate themselves now, and all they want to do is go back. For me, that was the most horrific moment of that film.”
For the character, aging and the onset of perimenopause become the very least of her worries as people begin dying around here in real life and she and her co-stars are living in a real-life horror film, and she has to prove she can be an actual Final Girl.
Pell said her ultimate Final Girl is Laurie Strode, played by actress Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween franchise.
“She was the first Scream Queen I remember turning around and walking back in,” she said, noting that in “Halloween H20” Curtis’ character actually goes back and locks herself in with Michael Myers instead of trying to simply survive him.
Pell says Curtis was also an inspiration because of her award-winning role in 2024’s “The Last Showgirl.”
“Jamie Lee Curtis stole parts of that movie just by being exactly who she is,” Pell said. “I remember watching an interview with her, and she was like, ‘I’m walking in that locker room with no Spanx, nothing, I am just myself, and I’m showing this is how I am.’ There’s that Hollywood stereotype that once you hit 40, that’s it. Meryl Streep did that Graham Norton interview where she said she was offered three witch roles in a year after she turned 40, and she was like, ‘Hmm…I think Hollywood is trying to send me a message.’ Women like her and Jamie Lee Curtis, they went out and said, ‘No, I am owning this and went out and ran with it.’”
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Pell credits her father for her love of horror movies. He’d work late but make sure to spend time with his kids watching “The Twilight Zone” and “Pet Cemetery” when he got home. However, her first real introduction into horror was Mary Downing Hahn, author of dozens of young adult ghost and mystery novels, whom Pell called “The Queen of the Scholastic Fair.”
“Once I read those books, it was all over for me,” she said. “I was a spooky kid all the way.”
“Without spooky kids, we can’t have spooky adults,” she says, “and then I’d be obsolete!”
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