Low-Budget Monsters and High-Price Consequences

Paul Tremblay, Horror Movie: a Novel

Thirty years ago, when longshot indie movies became a realistic media presence, four New England kids decided to make a horror film. Decades later, the unfinished movie’s moldering remains have become a viral internet sensation, and the last surviving cast member is involved in helping the production “go Hollywood.” Between the two stories of cinematic hubris, one survivor recounts his tale of deep immersion, and the stains that don’t wash off.

Stoker Award-winning novelist Paul Tremblay’s books are often deemed “postmodern” because they comment on storytelling and the creative process. In this one, the nameless narrator recounts the two productions of his horror movie, entitled Horror Movie. Tremblay divides the novel into three braided strands: “Then,” “Now,” and the screenplay from the unfinished movie. Each, in various ways, criticizes the Hollywood process, while praising the human relationships which make Hollywood possible.

In the “Then” section, set mostly in 1993, a trio of starry-eyed artistes dragoons our narrator into their movie, mostly because a key prop fits his face. The movie, featuring adults playing teenagers in the 1990s style, addresses adolescent themes that seem simultaneously dated, and completely timeless. We know, because the narrator warns us, that this production ends in tragedy; we wait tentatively to discover what happens.

The “Now” section, set in 2023, describes how our narrator collaborates with a major studio to remake the unfinished movie. The original director used the internet to create buzz around a movie nobody saw, and the broken lives left in the movie’s wake, before she died—a death revealed only slowly. Our narrator gives the “E! True Hollywood Story” version, but only through his own, distinctly traumatized viewpoint.

Finally, the screenplay is… well… unfilmable. It represents the grandiosity that infected would-be auteurs after Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater made guerilla filmmaking look easy. Three teenagers turn the pain and ennui of suburban life into tortures they inflict on their anonymous friend, naively yearning to live inside their favorite horror films. They want, but don’t want, to create a monster. The script includes long, discursive passages which voice the screenwriter’s private misery.

Paul Tremblay

The word “metafiction” has been tossed around so heedlessly in recent years, that it’s become a parody of itself. We know the boilerplates: characters leaning on the fourth wall, aware they’re fictional constructs, commenting directly on the art-making process or the relationship with the audience. Sometimes it’s cute. But, like any movement that becomes sufficiently popular, it’s become cheapened by imitators who prefer the trappings to the substance.

Therefore, how readers receive Tremblay’s story will depend on what they bring into the experience. Fans of horror films from the peak slasher era will certainly recognize themselves. Tremblay’s characters, like their movie, and presumably like his intended audience, have been well-off and comfortable for long enough to become numb. His characters want to feel something, anything. However, their bid to create feeling, only spreads misery around.

Our narrator has confabs with Hollywood producers, attends fan conventions, collaborates with the countless hard-working technicians who make movies possible—all without telling us his name. He’s a complete cypher, an anonymous everyman moving through life propelled by others’ demands. Even before the unfinished movie made him legendary, it’s clear the aspiring auteurs cast him because he was someone they could control, and he never completely escapes them.

The overall result is thus less frightening than knowing. Tremblay doesn’t just signpost the looming moments, the tropes where horror cinema spills into its characters’ lives; he actively warns us what’s coming. When something gory finally happens, we already know the broad strokes; we only await Tremblay describing the finer details. Reading, we feel anxiety and anticipation, but never really fear.

This isn’t entirely a criticism. Tremblay presents a literary novel about horror, without necessarily being horror. Throughout the novel, Tremblay brings out themes of characters desperate to feel something, anything. The feelings they achieve, however, prove transitory and meaningless. Even the denouement, where the narrator finally shows some gumption, ends with him admitting: I don’t know what happens next. You, the fans, need to tell me.

Perhaps this reflects Tremblay’s own disappointment. Hollywood optioned his 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World, handed it to M. Night Shyamalan, and it did okay without making any waves. One can read this novel as a statement of both disillusionment and powerlessness. It teems with knowing winks to Tremblay’s intended audience, who watch these movies regularly. And it reminds them that, sometimes, it’s okay to feel nothing.