Horror Movie by Paul Trembley Review

Review of Horror Movie

By: Paul Tremblay

            In 1993, a group of filmmakers made an independent horror film, but after a handful of weird accidents and the death of a cast member while they were filming a scene gave the film a reputation of being a cursed film.  Director/cast member Valentina uploaded only a handful of scenes onto youtube, and years later several people involved in the making of the film had died that encouraged the theory of a cursed film. It developed a cult following.  In present day, Hollywood producers approached the only surviving cast member, the actor who played “the thin kid”, now in his 50s, to help them remake the film and he was more than willing.

            I still don’t know how I felt about this novel.  This is my second Tremblay and even if I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not I’m glad I read of his works and would like to read more from him.  What got my attention when I saw this book was the cover and the fact it was partially set in the 90s, the era when I grew up.  My horror tastes were still kid stuff like “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” and “Goosebumps”, but I was familiar with the slasher and monster movies this book was paying homage to.  

The plot was intriguing with these kids making a low budget horror film and exploring how something like this can become an obsession for people when there is so much mystery surrounding. I loved the idea of seeing the process of making a movie unfold.  Tremblay’s adding of the screenplay into the story for you to read was fun and helped to immerse me into the story. Despite that, it was annoying how in the screenplay the writer kept telling the viewer how they expected them to respond to the film. It gave the vibe the script writer was saying “Haha.  I know how you’ll react. Aren’t I clever?” It was also confusing when characters in the film are named after the characters in the story.  I also felt Karson was unnecessary character, because he didn’t do anything in story just made comments was victim of the monster in the horror film. Having gone to a smaller scale comic con I enjoyed reading the comic con chapters and getting to see these conventions through the artists.  I hoped it would have been spookier but instead it was weird and confusing.  

The characters were pretentious and arrogant making it hard to like them. The thin kid actor acts like he’s cool I didn’t like how the thin kid actor took pleasure in humiliating the kid who questioned if he had really cut off his pinky. The character of Cleo came off as one of those people who pretend to be nice but are manipulative while Valentina was unapproachable.

The book wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for.  I was hoping it focused on the curse movie element and I was hoping the character were likable or at least less condescending towards the reader.