Publication Date: June 11, 2024
A chilling twist on the “cursed film” genre from the bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club and The Cabin at the End of the World.
In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick.
The weird part? Only three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot.
The man who played “The Thin Kid” is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions—demons of the past be damned.
But at what cost?
Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful feat of storytelling genius that builds inexorably to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.
Thirty years have passed since the creation of a film that yielded only a few scenes leaked on social media. However, those scenes generated a fan base clamoring for more.
Author Paul Tremblay delivers a complex psychological tale in Horror Movie. His distinctive voice delivers a first-person narrative from the perspective of the only surviving cast member.
The focus is on a reboot of the film, with details of the original events interspersed with present-day details. The narrator, referred to as “The Thin Kid” in the early movie, has been asked to reprise his role.
Going into the story with no prior knowledge puts readers at the author’s mercy of slowly doling out key plot elements. However, this approach works exceptionally well in building the suspense for the gripping twists and turns.
Horror Movie takes readers on a path of uncertainty, serving up pieces of a puzzle that, when put together, is horrifyingly brilliant.
Paul Tremblay has won the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and Massachusetts Book awards and is the nationally bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club, Survivor Song, Growing Things, The Cabin at the End of the World, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, A Head Full of Ghosts, and the crime novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland. His novel The Cabin at the End of the World was adapted into the Universal Pictures film Knock at the Cabin. He lives outside Boston with his family.
