My Heart Is a Chainsaw

In the quickly gentrifying rural lake town of Proofrock, Jade Daniels, an angry, half-Indian outcast, finds her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films suddenly becoming terrifyingly relevant. With an abusive father, an absent mother, and a town that wants nothing to do with her, Jade lives in a world shaped by slasher movie tropes, where masked killers seek revenge on a world that wronged them. When actual blood begins to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, Jade uses her deep understanding of horror plots to predict the unfolding murders, narrating Proofrock's eerie history as if it were a horror film itself. Beneath the surface of a gripping slasher narrative, Stephen Graham Jones delivers a potent critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification. It's also a heartbreaking portrait of Jade, a traumatized young girl who weaponizes horror to cope with her own painful reality, fiercely loving yet perpetually on the edge, desperate for a home and understanding.