Alfred Hitchcock once remarked, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” The upcoming novel Horror Movie is a terrifying exercise in suffocating anticipation. Paul Tremblay hardly needs introduction; he’s the man responsible for The Pallbearers Club, A Head Full of Ghosts, and The Cabin at the End of the World, to name just a very few. If you’ve read Tremblay before you expect atmospheric, you expect dark, you expect artistic ambiguity, and you expect him to find a way to crack open familiar tropes to deliver something new. His novel Horror Movie does all that and more by subtly manipulating its reader with deception, obfuscation, and, most interestingly, suggestion. Horror Movie is part love letter and part soul-searching exploration about what it means to be a horror creator and horror fan.
The novel follows an unnamed narrator in 1993 who is conscripted by some college buddies to portray the monster/killer in a low-budget film called Horror Movie. It’s clear that screenwriter Cleo and director Vera have some rather unorthodox ideas about how they want their vision to come to life. But this isn’t how we’re introduced to the story, no. We enter decades in the future, with our narrator being contacted and pestered by disingenuous, irritating Hollywood personalities about potentially remaking Horror Movie.
As readers, we’re not given a name for our lead, only that he was cast in the horror film as the killer. Since we only have the killer’s pseudonym by which to identify him, we have no choice but to start thinking of the narrator as “The Thin Kid.” The novel juxtaposes these two events decades apart, using their parallels to make some interesting statements about art under commerce.
Horror Movie achieves a sort of literary reverse cinéma vérité, allowing the reader to inhabit both sides of the camera. Tremblay is playing with forms here. Each chapter is punctuated by an excerpt from a seemingly amateur screenplay that does a lot of directing on the page ( We see, we pan, we hear); only the voice on the page doesn’t seem to be addressing the director, but rather the future audience of the film, like it knows how we’re going to respond to the film, almost like it’s coercing us to feel a certain way. When reading the script, the reader, like The Thin Kid, is under the manipulations of its writers. This only adds to the atmosphere of mystery around filmmakers Vera and Cleo, who are established as being wise beyond their years; the Thin Kid envies them for their intelligence, money, and friendships; each actor in Horror Movie has assumed a more or less autobiographical role in the film, all except for The Thin Kid. The Thin Kid’s role is as an outsider, an object, and a vessel to be poured into. His torment in the film is accepted with quiet, melancholic resignation, while the real-world Thin Kid subjects himself to the horrors of the film on his own accord but seemingly to his director’s delight. As the shoot goes on, it begins taking a toll on the Thin Kid, and it begins to change him.
Tremblay is a master, and it shows in the information he withholds. As I read, I spent chapters charging forward due to a perceived sense of malice and impending tragedy. We’re told that Horror Movie is famous, a cult classic, but as we read on we find its legacy as a film is more complicated and a direct result of the circumstances surrounding its production. Thin Kid’s torment is unbearable as the layered narratives start to blur the lines between the actors and characters. As the reader, you stop distinguishing them. You feel bad for The Thin Kid, this guy with low self-esteem who’s allowing himself to be manipulated by his friends because he’s desperate for their approval, but there’s a streak of darkness within him and a threatening victim complex. Ultimately, I couldn’t decide whether I considered this guy a victim or a monster, and that discomfort made for wonderful reading.
The book is fascinated with what it means to be an artist, an audience, a fan, and everything in between, what some people sacrifice and the credit others claim. Our narrator is disgusted by all the people who lie to tell him they were on the set of Horror Movie or know somebody who was. This act of stolen valor is unforgivable to him. We see the economy of attention lampooned regularly as being disingenuous and self-serving. One has to wonder how much of Tremblay’s experience with Hollywood staking thankless claim to his work as an artist led to this book.
Horror Movie calls to mind other meta horror books for me; Catriona Ward's manuscript jumping meta mystery Looking Glass Sound and Kea Wilson’s narratively complex tale of a cannibal exploitation film gone awry, We Eat Our Own, with its unusual changes in narration, feel like perfect companions to this novel if you want to binge read them on a weekend.
Paul Tremblay’s meta exploration of what it means to enjoy scaring and being scared, Horror Movie, hits shelves on June 11th, 2024. Some places are offering fancier editions than others, but I’d recommend your local indie bookstore. I’ll link my two St. Louis favorites below.
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