I would like to thank Titan Books for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price – £19.99 hardback £7.97 Kindle ebook

The monster at the heart of a cult 90s cursed horror film tells his shocking and bloody secret history. Slow burn terror meets high-stakes showdowns, from the bestselling author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World.

Summer, 1993 – a group of young guerrilla filmmakers spend four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror film. Steeped in mystery and tragedy, the film has taken on a mythic, cult renown, despite only three of the original scenes ever being released to the public.

Decades later, a big budget reboot is in the works, and Hollywood turns to the only surviving cast member – the man who played ‘the Thin Kid’, the masked teen at the centre of it all. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the crossed lines on set.

Caught in a nightmare of masks and appearances, facile Hollywood personalities and the strangeness of fan conventions, the Thin Kid spins a tale of past and present, scripts and reality, and what the camera lets us see. But at what cost do we revisit our demons?

After all these years, the monster the world never saw will finally be heard.

Horror can be in some ways comfortable – the ghost train or a movie where we know there will jump scares, gore and people deciding to split up at the worst opportunities – we come away surviving, feeling good and teasing each other for being scared. Horror can also be very uncomfortable, pushing your boundaries, exploring the themes we tend not to talk about and get under your skin. The horror movie can get dismissed by some as shlock but when the people behind it know what they’re doing it is a powerful experience you won’t easily forget. In Paul Tremblay’s excellent horror novel Horror Movie we get a fascinating story of an infamous unreleased film being rediscovered and wonder if something dark and dangerous is being re-awakened. It crosses these worlds of horror and creates something truly absorbing.

In June 1993 three young friends agreed to write, direct and star in an independent movie named horror movie. It was a film aiming to really scare the audience and avoid the cliches of commercial films. It was never released and many of the production crew involved died over the coming years. Over the years people heard about it, saw the odd clip, the script and three scenes that took the horror world by storm especially with its eerie history. Hollywood could only respond in one way a reboot. The one surviving member of the crew is the man who played the infamous monster ‘The Thin Kid’. As he navigates the modern world of Hollywood, we get to see the original film’s creation and the moments leading to its legacy. A dark legend is about to be born.

This was an absolutely fascinating story with an excellent use of stories within stories as we move between the modern day world of horror fandom and grimy business deals, the lean days of being young in the 1990s and wanting to make a point on the world and between both we get to read the script of Horror Movie which while we can’t see the scenes we get to feel why this film has created such a buzz and why its viewed as scary. All three are in dialogue with each other and we are being slowly led to its most infamous moment without any warning what we will find.

In the modern-day Tremblay captures fandom in all its glory and occasional obsessiveness to prove a point. We get a glorious scene of a convention that feels rather true to life, but we also get to see our unnamed character being brough into the movie for the sake of legacy/marketing. He sees through the glamour fairly easily - everyone claims to know someone related to the film and very few seem more interested in the art rather than making post of money. Here our narrator is quite snarky; in many ways he is just another actor famous fr playing the monster (although in his case the film was never released). There is a sense of someone enjoying the attention, perhaps a little obsessed with the character being delivered right and we sense someone just a little too happy to scare people because he enjoys it; especially when he gets a chance to resume his biggest and so far only role. You’ll enjoy his scenes but wonder if we are in safe hands.

This contrasts really well with the other parts of the story where we see independent film making and also the actual film itself, we witness through the scenes from the script. Alongside our narrator we get two magnetic characters in the form of Valentina the director and Cleo the writer. They’ve been plotting and writing this movie together for a while and decided on our narrator who was not an actor would be perfect for the role, more for his height and we realise his character than latent ability to act. For these characters its not the cash it’s the art, the message and the desire to go for it 100% that comes across and that obsessiveness to push as far as it goes spreads across the crew. A key aspect is a strange rubber mask that Cleo tells them she found in an abandoned school that they use for many key scenes. Its very much method filmmaking on steroids, the script is shot in sequence, our character is hidden from the other cast and there is a sense of something dark driving the two. We start to see this influence our narrator’s actions; they take bigger risks and push themselves to their limits with startling consequences. Horror here is both the witnessing of these acts but also the filming that there is something else going on. Why are they taking risks, what is the secret agenda here and as we know this ends in tragedy what actually will come about. Our main character seems quite happy being the monster which starts to make us wonder why he was chosen in the first place. Tremblay captures this trio really well, we worry about them and slightly distrust them. It’s a trio that perhaps shouldn’t have come together despite how much they all fall into the process.

The glue of the story is Horror Movie’s script. Tremblay here does something really cool with the form of a script. Its incredibly tight writing – the dialogue in this film is sparse, the skills is in the stage notes that explain the scenes, adding in tensions and very much film talking to an audience’s thoughts. There is a stunning sequence where the film just watches a hallway and the way Tremblay talks to us for several minutes in the scene directions, makes us feel the wait, the anxiety and how it would play in a cinema is beautiful and talks to how we watch a movie on so many levels. It does the feat of both explaining why this film is so revered even unreleased – this is not your shlock horror and it also reminds us that art comes out of our thoughts and fears, and we wonder exactly what those thoughts can lead to. Eventually it comes together very powerfully with a scene that is both horrific and gut-wrenching that means no one will forget this film even if the movie is never shown. It ties the various plotlines together and reminds us of the power of art. There is a little final scene you can read as confirming something dark is at work or a joke being pushed uncomfortably too far, and it leaves you having to decide what you want to happen, as all horror movies tend to do.

Horror Movie is a powerful experience of a read, lean, zips between past and present and we find our understanding changes on each visit. Its unsettling as we can’t quite pin why things are being as pushed as far as they are, and we really start to invest and be wary of the characters we meet along the way. It is a story in dialogue with horror and movies itself and reminds us the really good great stuff will always make an impact. I strongly recommend this for the spooky season.