Horror Movie
Paul Tremblay
William Morrow (June 11, 2024)
Reviewed by Carson Buckingham
The novel opens in 1993 with four friends…well, let me amend that. It’s more like three friends and a fourth that they keep around to bully and torture. And that fourth friend, known throughout the books as ‘The Thin Kid,’ tolerates it because he craves acceptance like we crave nourishment. He is odd-looking in that he is extremely tall and thin—cadaverous, really—which, as savage as children tend to be toward one another, only invites the treatment he receives. The treatment escalates because he does not stand up for himself—typical MO of bullies. And he continues to accept it meekly, at one point, even making suggestions and participating in his own torture.
The four of them want to make a horror movie and co-opt an abandoned school for this purpose. The Thin Kid is the star, the monster. But in seeing how the three treat him before, during, and after filming, you’ll start to wonder who really deserves the title of ‘monster.’
In the end, after a month, filming stopped and was never finished. Eventually, only three scenes were released to social media—and garnered an unexpected rabid cult following clamoring for the rest of the film. Years later, to satisfy a demanding fanbase, Hollywood decides to do a reboot, with The Thin Kid, who is the last survivor of the four, as a consultant and sometime actor.
There are two timelines (past and present), and the original movie script pages are interspersed throughout the book. Both timelines have slow burn, psychologically chilling tragedies in them at their ends…one unexpected and one the only way the book could end, but no less ghastly for that.
The narrator is The Thin Kid, and the story is told from his point of view. He is an unreliable narrator, and this sort of ambiguous misdirection seems to be Mr. Tremblay’s ‘signature,” if you will, as these sorts of characters occur frequently in his writing. The effect is to keep the reader off balance when the narrator’s memory fails, but then later recalls how he thinks the events played out. It tends to blur reality, and this author is a master at it.
The book is about transformation, and how easily it can occur under the correct circumstances.
After finishing Horror Movie, I found myself staring off into space while what I read parsed itself into my psyche and I came away in awe of Paul Tremblay. He is one genius of a writer.
Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. You’ll want to keep it forever and reread it many times. It’s that brilliant.
