Book Review: Paul Tremblay, Horror Movie

It’s been a whirlwind year for Massachusetts-bred best selling author Paul Tremblay. After seemingly spending an eon enjoying/enduring an epic Swift-ian (Taylor, not Jonathan) “will they/won’t they?” relationship with Hollywood, one of the scribe’s books finally made it onto the big screen (2023’s M. Night Shyamalan-directed Knock At The Cabin, based on his 2018 tale The Cabin At The End Of The World).

The punk-loving scribe’s latest novel Horror Movie is his first full length release since being officially embraced by Tinsel Town and it gives Hot Press much pleasure to report that The Mainstream hasn’t tamed him, he sure as fuck hasn’t $old out and he definitely still means it, maaaaan.

Paul Tremblay. Photo by Allan Amato

An unbridled and indeed unhinged offering, if you thought 2022’s pleasingly prickly, Hüsker Dü-indebted The Pallbearers Club was a walk on the weird side, buckle up readers as Tremblay takes us on a thrilling and chilling journey further down the rabbit hole over the course of 300-plus pages. Telling the tale of a group of teens who decided to make a scary film in 1993, Horror Movie flits between past and present, truth and lies, and melancholy and menace.

Narrated by the last surviving member of the aforementioned movie, who is known only as the Thin Kid, the venomous book won’t be everyone’s glass of snakebite, but those of you who loved the scabrous 2022 flick Speak No Evil will talk about it for years.

Nihilistic, inventive and unabashed in its oddness, Horror Movie is a scream baby!

Horror Movie is published by Titan Books and out now.