Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! You may have been wondering where I have been! In September I accepted a new job, of course expecting it to be busy but not exactly expecting for it to drain me in the way it has. At times that I am not at work I struggle to do anything but sleep! It’s starting to even out a bit more now so I am hoping to get back to posting more regularly in the future! Whether new or old I appreciate your support on this page while I go through this transition time!

For this review, I get into a first for me from this author Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay. A super interesting horror novel, the story is told through past and present perspectives of our nameless main character as we go through his time working on a horror movie that ended up having just as much thrill off the script from as on.

Main Characters:

• Thin Kid or Nameless Main Character: For the ease of the review I am just going to refer to the main character as the Thin Kid – Was asked by two friends to play the role of the thin kid in their independent film, as our narrator takes us through his past experience working on the film, in the present it’s clear that something goes wrong on that set due to Horror Movie (the name of the film) having never been released to the public aside from small clips, in the present is asked to bring back his role as the thin kid which holds many horrifying memories for him
• Valentina: The og director of Horror Movie, creates it with her best friend loosely surrounding an experience the two had, and is obsessed with perfection in the film
• Cleo: The writer of the script for the Horror Movie, bases the script around a mask she found in an abandoned school, the thin kid wears the mask in the movie and she writes a horrifying script to bring the two to life
• Marlee: The director in the present who wants to do a remake of Horror Movie and bring back the original Thin Kid considering he is the only one alive from the set of the original movie and is the only one who knew what was going on outside of the few clips that were uploaded to the internet

My Review

I love horror novels and I’ve heard a lot of good things about Paul Tremblay before so when I saw he had a new release on the shelves I decided to pick it up. I’ve had this really weird pattern lately of checking out new authors and starting out on some of their not-as-strong books. I don’t say this to mean Horror Movie by Paul Trembley was bad in any respect but I went into it thinking I would enjoy it a bit more than I did, and when I saw some chatter online about it, people who are long-time readers of his seemed to coincide with how I was feeling that this just wasn’t his best. I am going to look into some of his other books because there were a lot of things that I really did enjoy about Horror Movie so I’d like to check out one of his stronger pieces and just see the differences.

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay follows an eerie unnamed character better known as the Thin Kid, as he reprises his famous horror movie role that originally never truly made the light of day. Approached by two friends in his early twenties he was asked to play a role in Valentina and Cleo’s horror movie despite never having any acting experience. They wanted him because he fit the vision they had of their main character, a gangly, pale, faceless man, who is easily forgettable until he isn’t. Originally uncertain about taking on the role, once he gets into it our main character starts to fully embody the spirit of the thin kid and the pain, sorrow, and anger he represents. Director Valentina and writer and actress Cleo created the movie after in her younger days Cleo found a creepy mask in an abandoned school. Feeling some type of pull to this mask she creates a horrifying world surrounding it and the man who wears it. This movie was in the past and in the present, we see what we can only take as a washed-up of sorts, lost man, who never moved on from what happened on the set of Horror Movie. Being now the only survivor after the passing of Valentina he is the only one who’s eyes know what really happened on that set that day. When approached by director Marlee to remake the movie he thinks that bringing life to the thin kid again won’t consume him in the way it had in the past, or he hopes it won’t at least. Forced to face why the first making of the movie never made the light of day we follow this creepy story to see why the thin kid is the only one left to tell it.

Overall I gave Horror Movie by Paul Trembley a 6.5/10 rating. I really struggled with how to rate it and while there were some parts of the book I really did enjoy I have to be honest that aside from the chapters where they are taping the movie in the past I didn’t enjoy much else in the book. It also given that the movie revolves around the making of a horror movie didn’t find it to be that scary. The parts I found to be most scary were the parts I enjoyed the most so I just wish more of the book brought the energy that these parts did. Given that it’s such a new book I don’t want to spoil anything in it at all, but I think my biggest downfall with the book was that I openly didn’t get it. Now look I can sit here and admit I can be a bit of a dumb from time to time so this genuinely could very much just be a me issues, but it was an issue that I had. I am trying to not say too much with saying just enough but as things come to light in the book and play out I just really didn’t understand what the lore was behind why these things were happening. Was it a curse or something? Is this what we are insinuating here? Shared mental illness? I don’t know I like a challenge but I just didn’t feel like it shouldn’t have been this difficult to get and while I would just like to fully pass it off as me being an idiot and it going over my head I don’t feel like that’s totally fair. I started to enjoy the book a bit more once I gave up on trying to understand why this stuff happened and just went with the flow.

The movie itself revolves around a group of kids kidnapping and torturing a young boy who they pretend is their friend, the thin kid. They do this to enact some type of power they don’t have in their own lives, and the things they do and stomach churning. Am I screwed up that these were my favourite parts? I don’t know I just thought we were here for a horror movie so I guess those were the parts that just couldn’t help but pull my interest. I enjoyed the main character at parts but again without the context we get later in the book his obsession with his role as the thin kid doesn’t make total sense. He’s challenged by his past because he gave everything to play this role and has very little to show for it at the end of the day.

The strengths in Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay are strong and really makes it a book that you want to finish out. Given all the harshness I shared about the book I did really enjoy how the book was laid out almost like the thin kid was giving us the script for the movie of his life and experience as the thin kid. I always like when books that include movies write script style for bits of the book, it just helps bring this fictional movie to life in your head. I thought Valentina and Cleo were such interesting characters because I felt like they were so real in how attached they became to creating this movie in their vision. I struggled a bit with the main character being nameless so I enjoyed that they brought some life to the book and gave some character. I mean the thin kid was a bit of a bland character. It made sense why he was that way but aside from his singular role he didn’t have much else about him that was interesting. At least with these ladies, we got a bit of lore as to why they wrote the movie and came up with this horrifying idea.

If you’re in the mood for a horror read that definitely has its scary spine-tingling moments but remains fairly tame throughout large chunks of the book, then I would recommend picking this one out. If you like books that are kind of stylized around movies and scripts then this is definitely an interesting read to check out. It’s not an overly long book so it didn’t take me much time to get through it.

Have you read Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay or any of these other books? What did you think?

Thank you for checking out this review! I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review!