I should have liked this, but the author made it unbearable to enjoy.
The first stumbling block is the text's presented. Little arrows, camera direction such as 'we pan over/zoom in, from character X's POV' - it reads like a screenplay with an extra sentence of description. Not only is it jarring, but it leaps around so much with jumpcuts that anyone without ADHD is going to get whiplash. Even more confusingly, you will have two characters' dialogue in the same paragraph. But fine, let's just chock that up to style.
The author then goes to break the fourth wall so thoroughly as to directly speak to the audience. Here's some passages:
What matters, though, is that Izzy, she’s stood up for Lindsay, then for Crystal. Completely not in keeping with what we know about her.
The way this is framed, too, there’s this big empty space over his shoulder, so that we’re holding our breaths (but grinning, be-cause he’s so going to deserve it), and jump hard when, instead of some shape stepping into the sheriff’s space, the garage door of Izzy’s house starts
Ben mumbles, and nods to himself, pushes hard away from the concrete with his feet so he can situate himself on the surface properly: arms crossed over his chest grave style, so we’re all holding our breath for him, don’t want a kid to die.
“Boop, boop, boop,” she says, pinching the windows shut with her fingers, some personal game we don’t know anything about. It’s enough to steady
Why would you do that? Might as well say "We should be worried about the killer. We should be getting tense. We should be scared now."
Also, one character is named Crystal Blake, which is obviously a reference to Camp Crystal Lake, another is Mandy Kane (Mandy Lane). That's acceptable. But then the author does this:
Close on the business card: “Jamie Curtis, Telegraph,” and the usual email addresses and phone numbers and faxes, all the area codes obscured enough we can’t really guess at a state.
“Tell me your middle name’s Lee,” she says to him, tucking the card into her bra so that most of the card’s still out in the open.
“And my brother’s Michael , yeah,” Jamie says.
If you're going to give the characters these names, they shouldn't acknowledge them unless the whole plot is a conspiracy or questioning reality. A subtle wink to the audience is fine. Here it's so blatant it comes off more as the author saying, "See what I did there?" The book is so self-aware I expected a character to bump into the camera.
You know that part of the horror movie where it's introducing the main cast and their young adult drama BS? The part where you want to hurry so we can get back to the slashing? That's 47% of the book. The plot here often goes nowhere, drags on unnecessarily, or creates plot threads that the book never goes back to. Worst of all, it lacks tension and there's barely any buildup at all. W're told that Lindsay is surrounding herself with Final Girls but only two girls are given detail as to how they're Final Girls. So if the plot's worn thin and the writing is choppy at best, what about the characters?
The main character Izzy and her friend Brittney spend 90% of the novel being every 80s-90s teen movie main characters - snarky, witty and rebellious. However, all their dialog, all of it, is smarmy, self-aware banter. That gets old after page 90. A horror movie can get away with stock characters because most of it is spent with them cowering and running, but when the focus is on those characters for 200 pages, that void needs to be filled with something other than constant hollow movie references. Prime example:
“Unless it does turn out to be you, of course,” Izzy adds. “Then I’ll spit on your grave myself. Take you to the last house on the left just before dawn.”
The author can't even describe things without referencing pop culture - 'Oprahing her eyes' 'Spocking her hand' 'Uses his Morpheus fingers to invite' 'Velociraptoring up on the counter'. One character's complete description is just 'Tony Todd'. After describing the characters as Robert Englund and Tony Todd, and I am not joking, the next line is "The Bulldogs' head coach is Freddy Kreuger, their assistant coach the Candyman." Easter eggs are one thing, but this is spoonfeeding. Why even bother describing anything, just tell the story only by stringing together movie quotes and actor names for nouns and verbs.
I came away from this book insulted as a horror fan, a movie fan in general, and finally as a reader. What really frustrates me is that all this self-congratulating fanservice buries some good stuff. When the action starts it gets good. There's a sequence that had me turning pages, desperate to find out what happens next, in part because it's so damn unique and inventive. The buildup is excellent, the tension at the last part of the book is excellent, the reveals are well done. There is obvious talent here. But it's so thick with pure fanservice desperately passed off and hyped as slick, clever, stylish homage.
It was a real struggle not to give this one star, but it gets two here because of the parts that are good.
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