After ‘Sinners,’ This Grady Hendrix Vampire Story Should Be Fast-Tracked Immediately

After the success of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, it appears as if Hollywood finally learned its lesson about vampires.

Not every single movie needs to be about a bloodsucker falling in love with a human, with a forbidden love story at the meat of the matter. It’s possible to use vampires as an allegory for other themes, such as power dynamics.

After watching Sinners, another Southern vampire tale comes to mind: Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. While it isn’t set in the same era as Sinners, nor the exact same story, it uses a vampire to tackle the real societal issues of gaslighting and racism.

What is ‘The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires’ about?

Set in the ’90s, the main protagonist of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is Patricia Campbell. Patricia doesn’t have too much excitement in her life, except for her book club gatherings with the other ladies from the neighborhood. They meet up and start to develop an interest in true crime stories, but they also exchange personal thoughts and get to know each other. 

However, their community gets rattled after the arrival of James Harris. It doesn’t take too long for Patricia and others to consider the possibility he’s a vampire, while they link him to a series of deaths involving Black children. When Patricia and the others attempt to make their concerns about James heard, they’re met with skepticism or downright denial from authority figures and their own husbands.

Supernatural abilities aren’t this vampire’s greatest power

In The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix tackles how abusers maintain their power due to society’s inability to believe victims or people who report crimes. James doesn’t even need to cover up his methods all too much, because the patriarchy protects him. Since he’s seen as one of the boys, the men defend him and gaslight their wives when they raise concerns. “Oh, they must have dreamed that they saw something happen.” “Oh, it’s their imagination running wild from all the books they read.” “Oh, it couldn’t be James, because he’s a nice guy. Are you sure you saw him?”

What this also does is turn the book club against each other. Through the gaslighting, the men flip the accusations. All of a sudden, the women resent each other for daring to speak up about the truth. Some believe they should just keep quiet or ignore the issue, because it creates more trouble at home. This divides the book club’s unity and helps James’ reign of terror to continue. In this story, the vampire’s greatest strength isn’t his supernatural abilities – it’s his standing in society.

James demonstrates an acute understanding of this, too. He attacks primarily Black children, because he knows that this community isn’t treating the crimes with the seriousness they deserve. The systematic racism enables him to carry on, as everyone turns a blind eye to what’s happening because they see these kids as less important than their own. And as previously mentioned, if Patricia and any of her white friends raise the issue with their husbands, they’re laughed at, ridiculed, and made to feel worthless for even daring to talk about it.

‘The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires’ television show is in development

For those looking for a vampire story with more bite – like Sinners – the good news is The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is already in development. As per Deadline‘s July 2024 report, the book is set to be adapted into an HBO series, with Grady Hendrix joining The Righteous Gemstones‘ Danny McBride and Edi Patterson as writers on the show. 

The novel features a lot of humor and quirk (as does all of Hendrix’s work), but this doesn’t detract from the serious underlying messages. There should also be no concern about McBride and Patterson’s involvement either. As performers and writers, McBride and Patterson proved they knew how to navigate tricky genre landscapes in The Righteous Gemstones, which is often a deeper show than people give it credit for. Lest we forget, McBride possesses close ties to the horror genre. He was a part of the brains trust that brought the latest Halloween trilogy to life, and he played a big role in The Exorcist: Believer, but let’s not talk about that movie ever again.

Also, considering that Warner Bros. is the parent company of HBO and the theatrical distributor of Sinners, don’t be surprised to see The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires fast-tracked into development after the success of Ryan Coogler’s movie. When the suits smell money, they go full steam ahead. In this case, though, let them roll, because this is one book worth the adaptation.