Vengeance
The main theme of the novel concerns a murderer who is exacting vengeance against a party of people for a perceived crime against him in the suicide of his sister. He believes that it was the people at this party who pushed his sister into her hopelessness, but instead of realizing the trauma and tragedy of her death and choosing life instead, the murderer ironically chooses even more death, and he quickly finds himself playing God, deciding the fates of other people.
Relationships and Drama
Because the setting for the drama is a party, the novel shows teenagers in the height of their relationship drama. Who's going to hook up with whom? Why is this person angry with that person? These questions become issues of paramount importance, too, because they quickly discover that the murderer must have social motivations.
Adolescence and Horror
The novel combines elements of Young Adult fiction with various tropes from slasher horror movies. This means that the regular questions of YA fiction are being interpreted through the symbolism of another genre. There is a sense in which the book is about the horror of life first being discovered by the teens through their unraveling social system. Inevitably, as they grow, their situations in life become more and more potentially threatening—after all, they are alone in the story without parental support.
