You know all those stories of horror movies where it seems like everything that could possibly go wrong on set went wrong? This book by Paul G. Tremblay is about the making of one of those movies. And then the attempt to remake it.
Our main character/narrator is never named, just like the character he portrays in “Horror Movie.”
A friend of his approaches him in the 1990’s, not long after they’ve graduated college. She’s making a horror movie that’s just called, “Horror Movie.” It’s a very low-budget film, and they’re on a tight schedule because a lot of the movie takes place in an abandoned school. It’s the school where she attended high school in real life, and it really is abandoned. It’s scheduled to be demolished, and they do have permission to film there, but they have to hurry up before the building gets torn down.
She wants the MC to play the “Thin Kid,” a teenager who gets turned into the movie’s monster throughout the course of the movie. The Thin Kid has no lines, and the script says we should never clearly see his face, so in theory, our MC’s lack of acting experience shouldn’t be an issue. Of course, acting is something we do with our whole bodies, not just our faces and our voices, but maybe Tremblay isn’t aware of this? Or doesn’t care?
Anyway, the filmmakers are in a bit of a bind because the guy they had originally lined up to play the Thin Kid had dropped out at the last minute, and like I said, they’re on a tight schedule, so they need someone to fill in now. Our MC has a dead end, low-paying job he’s happy to quit in exchange for a few weeks making a movie that doesn’t pay much, but pays more than he’s making now.
The movie being made is about three teenagers taking a fellow teenager to an abandoned school, putting a mask on him, drawing runes on the floor, making him sit in the runes, and then leaving him there. He becomes a monster who ends up killing two of the three, but the movie is not so much a monster movie as it is about the horrible things people do to each other.
It’s never clear why the teenagers set out to make this monster. Maybe they were just doing it to see if they could. Maybe they didn’t think it would work, but decided to try it because they were bored.
The mask they put on the Thin Kid is waiting for them at the abandoned school when they get there, and the writer/director claims she really found the prop mask they’re going to use at the abandoned school. Our MC isn’t sure whether to believe her, but if it’s true, it explains the ending of the book, which I won’t spoil for you.
What I will say is that there are a few major accidents in the course of making the movie, and the biggest and most tragic accident stops the production of the movie, sets off a major lawsuit, and ensures the film never gets released.
Three scenes get released online, and then the full script, ensuring the movie has a cult following, and if anyone ever wants to remake the movie, they have everything they need to make that happen.
So, 30 years or so after the tragic first attempt at making the movie, our MC is the only one involved in making the original who’s still alive, and he’s getting approached by people in Hollywood who want to remake it, and they want him to be involved.
The book goes back and forth in time from the filming of the original to present-day when our MC is dealing with the making of the new movie, the fallout from the original, the endless internet theories that tend to sprout up around anything and everything, etc.
I have to say I was pretty disappointed in the end of the book, just because I saw it coming from miles away. I like to be surprised by my books, especially horror books.