Return of the Revenge of the Final Girl in Scare Package 2: Rad Chad's Revenge

Austin actress Zoe Graham comes back to the bloodbath in this sequel to the horror-comedy anthology smash


Zoe Graham is back as final girl Jessie in Scare Package II: Rad Chad's Revenge (Courtesy of Paper Street Pictures / Shudder)

Chad's dead, baby. Or, at least he was at the end of Scare Package, the Austin-made anthology horror-comedy set in the world of VHS chills and silliness. But most definitely still alive and kicking is Jessie, the final girl played by Austin actress Zoe Graham, who now returns in the equally gory and giggly Scare Package II: Rad Chad's Revenge (streaming now on Shudder). And if horror movies have taught us one thing, it's that there are immutable rules by which every final girl must abide – even in a horror comedy.

Rule 1: The Final Girl Doesn’t Know They Are the Final Girl Until the End of the Movie

In the first film, no one knows that Jessie is the final girl. In fact, horror know-it-all Rad Chad is convinced that she'll turn out to be the other great standard of slasher flicks, the highly disposable slut. But as the survivor of the first film, in Scare Package II not only does Jessie come back, she's now the undeniable hero of the movie. When franchise co-creator Aaron B. Koontz approached Graham about returning for the sequel, she said, "There are some directors who would present it as if they were doing you a big favor. They'd be like, 'Great news!' and that's so not his attitude. He was more, 'What are you comfortable with? I have this part, it has some stunt stuff, give it a read.' And of course I'd read and then go, 'This is amazing.'"

Rule 2: The Final Girl Has Friends … for a While

The sequel was also a reunion with Scare Package co-stars like Kirk C. Johnson, Chelsey Grant, and of course Jeremy King as the now very deceased Rad Chad – although, because this is an anthology, with multiple directors working on separate segments, in some cases actors were meeting for the first time. Graham explained, "I have friends in various other pieces of the film and we never worked together." For example, Austin-based director Emily Hagins (Sorry About the Demon) directed a segment in the first film: She would show film friends like Graham what she was working on, "and I'd be like, oh, that's what's in that spot. Because all we'd have in our script would be, 'Close up on screen, segment plays.'"

Rule 3: The Final Girl Rises to the Occasion

The best final girl is always the unlikely survivor, and Graham can empathize with Jessie's outsider status. "I come from the world of quiet, independent drama or romantic comedy-style acting." However, horror directors seem to like casting her against type, and she described the Scare Package films as positioning Jessie to be thinking, "'I'm not part of this, I'm someone removed from all this insanity.'"

“[Jessie] is the opposite of a horror fan, and that is her role in it: to view the ridiculousness of the situation.”  –Zoe Graham

Still, she definitely gets down and dirty in Scare Package II with a major fight sequence. Her biggest injury? Strained abs from lying in an awkward position, getting pulled slowly across the floor on a padded skateboard. "Legs here, bent this way, arms that way. … I was intensely sore the next day, but it was incredible."

However, Graham had one other physical struggle: She'd make a terrible corpse because she's so busy corpsing. "I'm pretty notorious on the Scare Package set for unfortunately ruining takes when people make me laugh. It's not my acting background to be surrounded by so many hilarious people who are improving lines and being unexpected. It catches me every time. If there's a third film I'll have to be removed from everybody. I'll be on a sound stage, alone."

Yet that would remove what is often the most important part of any comedy: the straight guy. It's Jessie, the island of sanity, who defines whether a scene is funny or horrifying. It's how she responds to a friend getting skinned, with a laugh or a scream or even deadpanning, that makes the movie work. After all, Graham said, Jessie "is the opposite of a horror fan, and that is her role in it: to view the ridiculousness of the situation."

Rule 4: The Final Girl Knows the Rules

Now here's the hardest part for Graham because (and she almost whispers this) she's not immersed in horror – simply because it does too good a job on her. "When I watch a horror movie, or even something suspenseful, it catches me for a long time. I wouldn't call Parasite a horror film, but the scene where the man is banging his head on the button, my mind grabbed on and wouldn't let go." Normally, when it comes to horror, she'd rather read the synopsis than watch the "intense, graphic imagery" of the finished film. But the Scare Package franchise is so loaded with references that she had to watch some – most especially the Saw films that Rad Chad's Revenge spoofs. "In terms of horrifying images, my god, but that explained so much."

But while there are plenty of in-jokes in Rad Chad's Revenge, there are also plenty of good old fashioned gags. "It's something Aaron talks about often," Graham said. "Somebody who's never seen a horror movie could watch this and think that it's silly and fun, and laugh, and people who will get every reference can play I Spy and love it that way."


Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge is available to stream now on Shudder.

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KEYWORDS FOR THIS STORY

Zoe Graham, Scare Package, Scare Package 2: Rad Chad's Revenge, Paper Street Pictures, Shudder

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