Discuss Your Deeper Dive Here! - LibGuides at Miami Dade College Learning Resources

Studio cheapie AIP knocked out the movie "How To Make a Monster" back in 1958, about a murderous makeup artist using chemically-treated masks and hypnosis to turn two teens into killer creatures and take his revenge on those who'd rejected him. Sound a little familiar? The author here is of an age where, like me, he could have caught this flick on a midnight "Creature Feature" TV show growing up. Now, I'm not saying he swiped the plot from this old film- there's so little plot to Horror Story, that even if he'd tried, he came away empty-handed.

What we have with this novel is a one-punchline shaggy-dog story, moving at the pace of a dragged cinderblock with no real character development, no plot to really speak of, and no real point to the story. It feels like the author was doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and grinning at himself for being so hip and sooo meta: People with a conveniently "cursed mask" use it create a vengeance golem by making a movie about people with a conveniently "cursed mask" using it to create a vengeance golem (that goes stab-happy at one teen party and then turns on its creators, woohoo).

The novel is half first-person narration, half movie script, cutting back and forth and paralleling each other. The narrated portion is apparently an audiobook spoken by the original 1993 movie's last surviving cast/crew member (who portrayed the Thin Kid who becomes the "monster" in the film), ruminating on making the movie then, the weird things that happened, and reflecting on the current reboot. Except it's not really. Maybe it's just an internal monologue - I mean, how likely is it you're going to be recording your process of killing and eating a guy while you are killing and eating a guy? I know-I know, unreliable narrator... But you have to have some grounding to depart from or all you end up with is meaningless game-playing. Oh wait, that is all we end up with here...

I'm not clear oh how this script is to be factored in to the overall work because it's not a part of the "audiobook" even as it cuts in and out of the text and interrupts the narrative flow of the book more and more. Internal clues suggest it to be the script version posted online by character Valentina in 2008, just before TK narrates in his "audiobook" how she cuts off his pinky (again), how he then assists her in her suicide (for which admission he would likely face legal action), and then tells us how he swallows his severed digit (again). So this script is rendered "unreliable" too. Once more, if the idea was to produce the worst kind of first-year film student pretentious, over-written and meaningless pablum - mission accomplished. And may I point out - having the script itself and the characters say several times "This movie is not for everyone", and "Oh, I know this sounds pretentious", does not let the book off the hook.

So what have we got? Not characters, not plot, not meaning. We do have ideas, sure, all just kind of swirling around but failing to coalesce into anything tangible. We have a minor mystery involving how the rest of the original cast/crew died since we know ol' TK is the only one still living… But this never really pays off, because without meaningful characterization, there's no sense of tragedy or loss when these cutouts die. We have a last ten-pages reveal that just had me blinking and going “eeeh…”

I want to close with some positives and the first is about the cover - the front cover is pretty neat; good visual appeal, creepy vibe, got me to pick the book up. The second is - Horror Movie could probably work pretty well as an actual movie; in the style of a documentary about this lost film, with cut-ins of the original scenes and footage. Everything that falls flat in text would probably work in a visual medium. Lastly - some recommendations for similar novels that work this kind of material more effectively: A Child Across the Sky by Jonathan Carroll, Night Film by Marisha Pessl, and The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix.

Have you read this book? Get it here in the Library! Do you agree with the review above, or disagree? Share your thoughts!

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