Horror Movie, by Paul Tremblay

Paul Tremblay has really gained traction as a contemporary horror writer. For some reason, I didn’t actively seek out more of his works after I enjoyed A Head Full of Ghosts a couple of years ago, but his most recent release, Horror Movie, kept popping up in my digital library feed, so I decided to see if Tremblay could work his magic again. 

In 1993, four college friends set out to make a horror movie. But the film never got a wide release…at least, until three disturbing film clips get released online. Suddenly, the film, called Horror Movie, gains traction in online forums and becomes a cult classic, thanks especially to its growing lore as a cursed film. There is only one remaining cast member left who can tell about the making of this so-called cursed movie, and he’s about to produce a reboot of the lost film. But there are some things about the making of this movie that not even the most devoted Horror Movie fans can imagine…

The plot of Horror Movie reminded me of found footage films like Cannibal Holocaust or The Blair Witch Project, where a group of amateur filmmakers stumble into danger as they attempt to sort out a myth or legend, and the found film footage is deemed cursed. Horror Movie’s lore is nowhere as frightening as either of the movies mentioned above, which is disappointing. 

The pacing is hit or miss. The unnamed narrator, the last remaining Horror Movie cast member, describes his first ever experience at a horror fan convention, but he doesn’t begin in the middle, when he’s sitting autographs or taking pictures. Rather, we get an exhaustive, mundane description of the convention hall, the other celebrity guests, and what it’s like to set up a guest booth. It really slows the story down to go through every single step of being a convention guest, and we could have spent more time on how awkward and surreal the whole experience is for the narrator, especially when dealing with obsessed or entitled fans. 

The story feels like the beginning of an idea that was never fully fleshed out. We get to read the entire screenplay of the movie, of course, but the rest of the story is extremely thin, giving the lead-up to the so-called twist ending zero weight.

It was probably the first time in a horror book where I felt like a bored teenager during the finale. The monster tried to go ooga booga louder and louder, but I just stood watching the whole thing like “Yeah, whatever.”

The whole point of the novel is to show how an obsession with an idea can blur the lines between reality and fiction, but there is hardly any weight to the idea. It’s hinted at, especially when we watch the director, Valentina, go a little too hard into bringing her vision to life. But it’s not talked about enough to give any weight to the finale. We should be fearfully watching the progression of this idea, waiting for the final culmination, but it just gets pushed aside for the screenplay and more fruitless conversations. 

A couple of scenes, like the convention and a bizarre, drugged-up conversation between Valentina and the narrator, go on for too long and they don’t have much of a point. The convention scene didn’t take full advantage of the crazed horror fan concept, and the latter scene was too bizarre to make much sense of. 

Another aspect not explored enough is how a movie can spark discourse and mystery among avid fans. Look at The Blair Witch Project, for example. More than twenty-five years after it came out, there is still online discourse about it. If Horror Movie has achieved that level of interest and intrigue in horror fans, maybe we could see video transcripts, forum messages, and other examples of how, despite not ever being released, the movie has taken a whole other form online. All we get is the screenplay, which is not enough to show the breadth of this movie’s presence in contemporary pop culture. 

In all, Horror Movie is perhaps the weakest horror book I’ve read. It has some shocking moments, but the buildup was pretty lame and could have gone a little further with its execution. Despite this disappointment, I will continue to explore Paul Tremblay’s works, and hopefully it will be uphill from here.