Night of the Mannequins review

Night of the Mannequins is the second novel published by author Stephen Graham Jones in 2020. The novel serves as a succinct love letter to the teen horror genre. It’s a classic horror story following 5 teenagers in a prank that goes horrifically wrong. The novel harkens back to classic teen horror movies of the 1970s and 80s. Sawyer, the protagonist, Shanna, Danielle, JR, and Tim, are a group of 5 rambunctious 10th graders who use a mannequin, aptly named “Manny”, to pull a prank in a movie theatre.

What follows is a story that leaves the reader unsure if it’s an actual monster tale or a brief psychoanalysis of the burgeoning delusions of a schizophrenic. 4 of the friends, Sawyer, Dannielle, JR and Tim place Manny, a mannequin who they played with as younger kids but have since forsaken, in the front seat of the movie theatre where Shanna works. The 4 teens tell the theatre staff that someone snuck in- that “someone” being Manny – to prank them when they see that the someone is actually a mannequin. The plan is pretty dumb, but I may have thought it was cool at 15, too. The prank goes awry as no one actually notices Manny. Sawyer, however, believes that he sees Manny, the inanimate object, come to life and walk out during the commotion of the theatre attendants looking for the “intruder”.

Soon after, Shanna’s home is later destroyed by a truck that crashes into her home, killing her and every member of her family. Sawyer comes to believe that he saw a glimpse of a giant-sized Manny running away from the scene. This combined with missing Miracle-Gro from his family’s garage leads Sawyer to believe that not only has Manny come to life, but he has grown exponentially via Miracle-Gro, and that he’s returning to each of the 5 friends either as revenge for forgetting about him, or to relive the fun days of their youth. Sawyer is unsure of which, but what he is certain of, is that Manny will kill, whether intentionally, accidentally by not understanding his size in proportion to everyone else. Sawyer is clearly in psychosis and his state of mind rapidly deteriorates.

Sawyer then gets the delusional idea that if he kills all of his friends before Manny reaches them, then he would be saving their families by preventing them from becoming collateral damage to his giant-sized destruction. Sawyer gets in his mind that it’s better if he kills 4 people than leaving Manny to his own devices and he ends up killing 15. The plan is batshit crazy and so is Sawyer by this point.

The novel takes a unique approach to teen horror; instead of relying on classic kills and thrills, Stephen Graham Jones takes the readers on a psychological quest through the mind of a teenager who needs to be in a straight-jacket. What makes the story strong is that there is just enough evidence supporting Sawyer’s claims about Manny to make you question if there actually are supernatural elements at play. Taking a step back further and analyzing Sawyer’s frame of mind, it’s fair to question if Sawyer is even a reliable narrator. Mr. Graham Jones is in his bag like the kids say.

Stephen Graham Jones tells an eccentric teen story vastly different than the dystopian tales currently dominating modern teen and young adult fiction. The story is batshit crazy and is a ridiculous plan only a group of teenagers and Jones could craft. It’s off-the-wall like Jones’s other 2020 release, the slamming The Only Good Indians. Night of the Mannequins ends on a titillating note, leaving us yearning for 50 more pages. Maybe it’s good that it ended on a cliffhanger. Sometimes it’s better to end too soon than hold on too late. The story asks a bunch of questions that go unanswered by the last page. I ended the book fiending for a follow-up or some sort of closure. Jones left Ts uncrossed and Is undotted, making for a great end to an otherwise rock-solid teen novel.

------7.5/10