plutonian reviewed Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
"This movie is not for everyone. This movie is for some of us."
5 stars
Paul Tremblay might be my favorite horror author working today. And it is a golden age for horror in all forms. But Tremblay is consistently writing the kind of horror that keeps me up at night; sometimes because I'm too creeped out to sleep, but also because I want to keep contemplating what I've just read. His work has a unique emotional core that resonates deeply with me.
I think that may just be because we're a lot alike. We apparently have similar movie tastes (he starts this novel off with a quote from my all-time favorite director, Andrei Tarkovsky, like c'mon man) and similar tastes in music (based on his novel The Pallbearers Club, which engages with music much like Horror Movie engages with cinema). I also admittedly love the structure of this novel, which is partially a screenplay; novels about fictional films are definitely one of my all-time …
Paul Tremblay might be my favorite horror author working today. And it is a golden age for horror in all forms. But Tremblay is consistently writing the kind of horror that keeps me up at night; sometimes because I'm too creeped out to sleep, but also because I want to keep contemplating what I've just read. His work has a unique emotional core that resonates deeply with me.
I think that may just be because we're a lot alike. We apparently have similar movie tastes (he starts this novel off with a quote from my all-time favorite director, Andrei Tarkovsky, like c'mon man) and similar tastes in music (based on his novel The Pallbearers Club, which engages with music much like Horror Movie engages with cinema). I also admittedly love the structure of this novel, which is partially a screenplay; novels about fictional films are definitely one of my all-time favorite micro genres. The best of them will create a fully-formed movie in your head, and Tremblay did such a tremendous job creating this fictional movie that I kind of want to leave a Letterboxd review for it.
Not only does this novel deal with one of my favorite forms of media (lost horror films! cursed horror films!), but also one of the themes dearest to my heart: monstrosity, and how closely intertwined monstrosity is with our humanity. As you might expect, the book does not offer easy answers; you will have to decide for yourself who the monsters are, and how much you believe their stories. The novel (like the film) is a shadowy and ambiguous labyrinth, and it is a labyrinth I will gladly wander again someday.