Book Review

 I wound up checking out Paul Tremblay's Horror Movie since it was on a lit of suggested books based on stuff I've been reviewing. Saw that he write a book I heard good things about but already knew the ending to, and figured I'd give this one a try.

Let me see if I can explain this book. Our narrator is never named, so I, like probably everyone else, thinks of him as The Thin Kid, the name of his character in the movie that forms the central point of the book. We spend the book bouncing back and forth through time, with a reboot/remake of a movie that never really got released, titled Horror Movie. Seems at some point, Valentina, the director, edited and released 3 scenes from the movie on YouTube and dumped a PDF of the script in a few horror forums, and it got interest in the movie going. In the past, TTK narrates the filming of the movie, and we get excerpts of the shooting script. The script is art house horror, with everyone playing roles named after the actor, one murder scene involving a 5 minute shot of an empty doorway, lots of notes from Cleo (the screenwriter) about what is actually supposed to be implied from each shot, and how she thinks the audience will react. Shortened down, 3 kids lead a 4th to an abandoned school, make him wear a mask, and torture him. He eventually becomes a masked killer who turns on his creators, eventually vanishing into the shadows under the survivor's bed. 

Problem being there were problems on the shoot, including TTK actually getting his pinky chopped off in real life, and ya know, an accidental chainsaw death during filming the final scene. 

 Or was there?

A few passages suggest TTK is a very unreliable narrator. (Add to the conceit here, he's supposedly dictating the narrative as an audiobook.) He discusses having his finger chopped off during filming, but then discusses someone else chopping it off much later in the timeline. Music listed in the script wasn't written when the script was released, suggesting the person who leaked it had done some revisions. Stuff like that. Frankly, about the only narration that feels honest in here by the time we get to the end is his description of signing autographs at a Horror Convention. (One gets the distinct sense the author was relaying his own experiences through the narrator here, minus the whole getting confronted about the missing finger thing.) And the ending... Well, I guess it fits in with the original movie script about finding the meaning for yourself, as much as figuring out how much of the final chapter you're willing to take as honest has meaning. 

I enjoyed this one, even if it did leave me with more questions than answers, but I think that was the point of this narrative. Worth checking out if you're inclined.