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

Tremblay's horror novel about an incomplete film works really well where it needs to - as a scary story. Horror Movie looks at a student film project through three lens: the script of the movie, the remembered experience filming it by the actor who played the Thin Kid, and that actor in the present as a new team recruits him to create a new finished version of the film. Where the novel shines is in the story of the original film. Tremblay does a masterful job of not explaining things as he shows four kids performing a long tortuous ritual to turn one of them into a monster. The horror of the novel lies in the cruelty that's inflicted on the Thin Kid, and Tremblay parallels that nicely with the recklessness of the film set and the one mindedness of the filmmakers. The plot is sketched a little too vaguely towards the end of the story and while we could piece together the conclusion, we wish Tremblay had been a bit clearer about some of the final actions. None of that takes away from the skill of this work. Making a reported incident like a screenplay scary is hard, and we tip our hat to Tremblay for again giving us a nice scare to read in spooky season.