Wait for the Movie

Paul Tremblay is a name that's been on my radar, but I've never heard enough excitement surrounding his work to move him toward the top of my list. That is, until Horror Movie. And it's not so much that I've heard a lot of positive reviews but that fact that some of my recent reads have centered around horror movie sets and actors, extras, and crew being the targets of crazed killers, so I figured I'd add another to the list.

Horror Movie is two stories in one, each taking place years apart. The first one take place in June of 1993, when "a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick," which feels more like a bunch of bored high school kids deciding they wanted to make a low-budget horror movie, a movie that ended in tragedy.

Jump to present day and the actor who played "The Thin Kid," who is the only survivor of the original group, is acting as a consultant for another group of film makers who are determined to finish what these kids started years ago. As a result, there are a lot of meetings taking place where not a lot happens. It's just a lot of talking, production talks, planning talks, actors reading through the script. During these talks, the book drags on and on and on. The only time the book gets remotely exciting is when the kids are filming and the "Big Reveal" at the end. The problem is, the reveal is lackluster and hardly worth the journey that we just trudged through.

I made the mistake of listening to this on audiobook, and there are some things that are probably intentionally added to the recording for "realism," but to me they came across as irritating glitches, the worst of which was the rattling of pages during the script readings that were annoying enough to break me out of the narration. Also, there was what I felt needless repetition during scene transitions which also sometimes came across as errors in the recording process. I wonder if my reception of the book would have been better if I had read the book as opposed to listening to it.

All in all, Horror Movie was a bore, and as this was my firstTremblay book, I wonder what his others will be like. Recommended? Nah, I'd wait for the movie. 2/5 stars.