Guest post written by Most Likely To Murder author Lish McBride
Lish McBride is the author of funny and creepy young adult books such as Hold Me Closer, Necromancer; Necromancing the Stone; Firebug; Pyromantic; Curses; Red in Tooth and Claw; and Most Likely to Murder. She has published short stories on Tor.com, and in the anthologies Cornered, What to Read in the Rain, and Kisses & Curses. Her first book, Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults title, a Morris Award finalist, and the winner of the Scandiuzzi Children’s Book Award. Lish is a former indie bookseller, has a MFA from the University of New Orleans, and prefers pie to cake. While she has no long-term goals for world domination, she would like her own castle.
About Most Likely To Murder: Yearbook superlatives turn deadly in this darkly funny young adult thriller from the award-winning author of Hold Me Closer, Necromancer. Released March 24th 2026.
Two things got me through my teen years—horror and comedy. Comedy, of course, is a well-known coping mechanism, but you might be surprised that watching and reading horror can help people cope, too. And teens have a lot to cope with. I mean, what are the teen years if not horror? The body horror that is puberty, the nightmares of dating, the dread of social interaction, and don’t get me started on general high school life. Add in the fact that you’re at the whim of every adult in your life, for better or for worse? That’s a lot to cope with. To help process all of this, a lot of teens turn to horror. They can’t look at their own lives head on, because that would be overwhelming, so they must look at it from a remove. (In literary circles, this is called “cognitive estrangement” a term coined by Canadian writer and professor, Darko Suvin, and a concept I’m a bit enthralled with.)
In high school, my brain needed that remove to process what I was going through at the time, but what I really loved was combining that remove with my favorite coping mechanism: humor. Horror comedy has been—and always will be—my favorite. After all, what better way to take the power back from what scares you than to laugh at it? Part of the reason I wrote my new book, Most Likely to Murder, was because of those films, those books. I wanted to give a little back to the blood-soaked genre of my teen years, and I wanted it to be funny.
On that note, here are five of my favorite horror comedy films. I’m incapable of picking my favorite—even my top ten—films or books, so this list is hardly definitive. What I’ve done instead is choose five films I love a whole lot, in no particular order, as well as two honorable mentions, with characters in high school or in college, that I think give off similar vibes to my book. If you find yourself nodding along to this list, then Most Likely to Murder might be for you.
Happy Death Day
If you’ve never seen this film, it’s the teen slasher take on the movie Groundhog Day. Tree is a self-centered sorority girl, which could easily be played as a stereotype, but instead we’re given a layered character acting out because she’s dealt with trauma and hasn’t figured out how to get past it. It’s a hilariously fun take on the teen slasher trope and one we rewatch in my house. The sequel was also very fun, and we were bummed to find out there is currently no third film planned.
Final Girls
Because I’ve watched so much horror, I love a good meta take. Final Girls takes you inside the genre of teen horror and looks at it from a new angle, playing on the slasher tropes we all know and love. Max’s mom was an actress whose biggest hit was a B-movie slasher film. Max’s mom suddenly dies, leaving Max grief stricken and unsure how to go on. But when Max attends a screening of her mom’s film, she somehow gets sucked into it, giving her a chance to see her mom again. Only there’s still a killer, and Max has to try to keep her new friends, and her mom, alive to the end. While this film had a scene so funny I had to pause the movie because I was laughing too hard, it also has a lot to say about grief and loss.
Lost Boys
Lost Boys isn’t a slasher film—it’s a vampire film—but it’s one that I imprinted on hard as a kid. The cast is great (I adore Dianne Wiest as the mom) and the characters well developed and a little bit quirky. The family dynamic is one that I find echoes of in my own work—a parent doing their best, a family that screws up, but would do anything for each other. It’s also an extremely quotable film, still showing up in memes and even as band names—the hardcore punk band Death By Stereo gets its name from Lost Boys. My whole family watches this film every year, and it’s fun to explain some of the 80’s stuff to my kids. Like, “Why is there a shirtless man covered in oil playing a saxophone?” for example, which I honestly have no good explanation for. It just is and the film is better for it.
Tucker & Dale vs Evil
Okay, this is technically not a teen film as the cast is mostly college kids, but I wanted to include it. Mostly because, as I think this list has made clear, I love it when films take on tropes from a different angle. This film takes the “evil hillbilly” trope and flips it. The “hillbillies” are Tucker and Dale (played delightfully by Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine, respectively) who are in the woods to work on Tucker’s new vacation home—which is objectively a very creepy and dilapidated cabin. They’re just two best friends trying to fish, drink beer, and enjoy their new cabin. Unfortunately, they’re mistaken as murderers by some preppy college kids and the result is an incredibly bloody farce of a film. This film pairs nicely with my next choice, which is…
Cabin in the Woods
A group of college kids head to a cabin in the woods for a fun weekend that goes horribly, terribly wrong. This film takes on every horror trope at the same time with characters that encompass the kind of stock archetypes you’d expect in teen horror films. (I know, I know, they’re in college. I’m counting it.) While they may be stock types (the jock, the stoner, the virgin, etc.) the characters themselves are wonderfully portrayed by an excellent cast. Even the minor characters—especially Sitterson and Hadley (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford)—are a delight. On top of all of that, there’s an absolute smorgasbord of horror creatures throughout, including a vicious merman.
Honorable mentions:
These two aren’t quite horror, but they’re not not horror either, and I wanted to at least give them a mention. The first is Attack the Block, which is about a teen gang in South London defending their block from an alien invasion. It’s a solid film with a great cast and I love the way they portrayed the aliens. Recommend watching this one with subtitles if you’re not conversant in British accents and slang.
The second film is Heathers. Heathers is a dark comedy/satire about high school, popular kids, and revenge. It’s a funny film with a high body count. Stranger Things fans might enjoy seeing Winona Ryder in one of her earlier roles alongside Christian Slater.
