Published: 2024
Genre: Fiction, Horror, Thriller, Mystery, Contemporary
Trigger/Content Warnings: Graphic violence
Audience: Adult
Summary: In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick. The weird part? Only three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot. The man who played “The Thin Kid” is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions—demons of the past be damned. But at what cost? Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful feat of storytelling genius that builds inexorably to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.Paul Tremblay, one of the new faces of horror – Los Angeles Times
Review: Paul Tremblay is one of the most exciting new voices in horror fiction, writing scary and suspenseful novels like the possession story, A Head Full of Ghosts (2016), or the apocalyptic Cabin at the End of the World (2019), which was adapted into a film by M. Night Shyamalan. Tremblay’s scares are complex and thrilling, relying on the reader’s intellect and innate fears, rather than cheap in-your-face jumps.
Horror Movie did not meet what I have come to love and expect from Tremblay. While I was intrigued by the story itself, which follows the star of a cult-horror film (think Blair Witch Project level of notoriety) that became the stuff of legend due to it never getting made. Most of the fun of the book’s story stems from discovering what it was that stopped the movie’s release, a mystery that Tremblay expertly dishes out over the course of the novel’s short 275 pages. However, the reveals just didn’t impress me in this book, feeling cheap and unimaginative.
I wouldn’t recommend Horror Movie as an introduction to Paul Tremblay (refer instead to the books cited above), but the novel might appeal to teachers or students interested in horror, movies, or both.
