Horror Movie – Paul Tremblay

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?

Review

I honestly felt a little bit unsettled after finishing it. I started this book with the audiobook as well, but I didn’t like some extra foleys that were added in the audio, so at about 69% of the book, I ditched the audiobook and continued reading only on the e-book. I felt this way was much better; I felt that the impact of the scenes was much more powerful. At the end of the day, I think that listening to the book was just too much of a distraction, and I just didn’t like some aspects of the production.

I saw a review that said there was no gore, no horror in this book, and I have to absolutely disagree. There is gore; I mean, there’s not like slash movie gore, but it is there.

I feel like this is a common thing to run into with horror reviews, but it just depends how you look at it. There was horror in this book; there were unsettling vibes; you just have to look into it.

The main plot about the recounts of the original horror movie production has this suspenseful vibe on their writing that I don’t know how to describe, and I don’t know how, but it works. Near the end, if you take a look back at everything you’ve read, you start to realise so much and get that sense of “Jesus…”, you know?

I’m giving this a 3.5. The horror vibes that were promised were there.

This is my first book by Paul Tremblay, and he is an author with very mixed reviews, but I understand that. I feel like books that deal with horror symbolism tend to be poorly reviewed only because people generally are expecting something else from the book, but if you know to go into these kinds of books with an open mind and are willing to look more into the story, then yeah, these books are enjoyable.

The only thing that I have complaints about is the audiobook production. They added foleys that felt kind of random and because they weren’t part of the book itself, then I got confused lots of times since I was reading along the narration. I would honestly recommend just reading the book.