Horror Movie

A Novel

By: Paul Tremblay

Narrated by: Ari Fliakos, Dani Martineck, Micky Shiloah, Michael Crouch, Frankie Corzo, Stacy Gonzalez, Tyla Collier, Ariel Blake, Johnathan McClain, Dan Bittner, Eva Kaminsky, Gisela Chipe

Instant New York Times bestseller!

A chilling twist on the “cursed film” genre from the bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club and The Cabin at the End of the World.

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

Stephen King couldn’t write this.

This is another gemstone in the crown of horror. This does not have the big scary monsters of other horror books on audible. It has a monster, but it’s a slow build to a true horror. I’m blind, I went blind slowly, and that’s horrible. That is this book. The slow and beautiful drawing of the curtain into exactly what you’d expect but. Different. It is well written. Well acted. And perfectly paced. It trucks your mind while protesting the honesty of both film making and modern cinema. I loved. Every. Minute. My only regret is that it ended. Fantastic. Thank you for this book.

Great - I will explain the narration

So many reviews remark on how the narration sounds unedited with rustling paper and starts and stops and a few complaints about the back and forth with past and present…let me assure you it all makes sense and adds to the overall effect of the movie…I mean book ;)
Without revealing too much there are almost 3 timelines: the present, the past and the story in the screenplay. Although we think of the past as being the “story” in the script - it is not and those noises and “edits” help anchor us to which is the real past every time we start to get sucked in too deep.
It’s a fantastic and yet horrifying story in which I can see the screenplay alone as a movie already but the blurring of the lines between the ‘movie’ and the ‘filming’ have a mesmerizing effect and the tying in with the present…well listen for yourself and be prepared to be entertained while being horrified

Perplexing decisions with this audiobook.

Spoiler alert I guess, but nothing major:

So, there’s a movie in this book, that fictional movie has a script, and portions of that script are included in the book. Maybe in the physical book it’s formatted to look like a photocopy of a real script, xeroxed and degraded to seem extra immersive, I don’t know. But for some reason, for the audiobook, they represent the script by staging a table read with actors. Like, a real table read, where you can hear pages being turned, people sniffing and coughing, lines being flubbed and redone, obviously impromptu lines referencing mistakes in the reading, and a very distinct change in audio quality compared to the rest of the book. And on top of all of the distracting candidness in this ostensibly professional production, there are a few instances of foley-style sound effects during the table read, like they couldn’t decide if they truly wanted an “in the room with the actors” quality, or more of a full-cast audio play vibe.

I get wanting to inject some verisimilitude into the production, but this was all so jarring and frankly made it seem low quality and kind of embarrassing. And the way that the “script” was written was so weirdly detailed, such that it felt painfully obvious that it was only ever intended to be part of a novel rather than a bare-bones shooting script used by a ragtag film crew to make a low-budget horror flick. This is somewhat lazily hand-waved away at one point in the book by saying that it was a unique script, but “somewhat lazily” is beyond charitable given how ridiculous it gets.

The main narrator was good, and I prefer audiobooks with a single narrator, but if they were going to do the table read schtick (they shouldn’t have), it would have made much more sense to have the actors from the table read also do the voices of the corresponding characters in the main narrative. Otherwise, what you end up with here is one guy doing all of the voices except when we’re hearing the script, at which point actors we have no connection to, through their genuine portrayal of actual characters, taking over roles that feel all the more disconnected from the narrative as a result.

As for the story itself. Eh. It had its moments. It kind of felt pointless and meandering, I don’t think it was worth the listen to be honest. It felt like it was trying very very hard to impress upon the listener that the titular movie was LEGENDARY just by saying over and over that it was legendary. There’s an obvious reason that it would have found a place on horror movie lore, sure, but we spend the majority of the book in the dark about the specifics, sort of being mislead into believing that it’s some The Ring style situation with a legitimately cursed movie, but no. But then, also, yes, I guess? In the last 5 minutes? Out of nowhere? What?

I feel like a curmudgeon, yelling at clouds in a horror novel. But it honestly just felt like a decent story about friends making a movie, tragedy striking, and then the author intentionally knocking the wheels off the whole thing at the end just to give it the M. Night twist treatment. Or like it was a movie and the studio executives said “I thought this was supposed to be a horror movie…” and demanding a reshoot of the ending, even if it didn’t make any sense with the rest of the story. Eh.

Eerie and intriguing

If you like linear storytelling, straightforward plots, and things ended in a tidy way, then this novel is not for you. That being said, I enjoyed the ride. I didn’t know where this book was going most of the time and I loved living with the anticipation.
Once again, Tremblay has asked us to consider the unimaginable. You will be scared with the characters, for the characters, and by the characters.
The format of this book is very strange and I found it confusing at first, but lean into it. It will all make sense in the end — or not.

Pretentious with no pretense

Paul is an incredible writer and I believe he knows that. The big problem with this book is he expects a lot from the listener, to trust him that he's going somewhere with every long drawn out scene. It doesnt. This book feels like it wants to challenge you but, again, it doesn't. It just kind of meanders and over explains while under explaining at the same time and then it just....ends.