54 pages • 1 hour read
Paul TremblayHorror Movie
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Mask
The mask prop is not only a symbol for the Thin Kid character and Horror Movie’s cultural legacy, but it is also a motif that drives Blurring the Line Between Art and Reality as a theme. The mask is initially depicted as a malleable object. In the Horror Movie screenplay, the mask keeps changing forms, which is meant to foreshadow the malleability of its wearer. The longer the Thin Kid wears the mask, the more he transforms into an actual monster.
This quality bleeds into the real world as the narrator reports his ability to transform into the Thin Kid monster and then the new actor playing the Thin Kid by the end of the novel. It is a challenge to question whether the narrator is being honest by the end or if his story is compelling enough to convince the reader that the truth doesn’t matter. This also resonates with the mask’s mysterious origins, which Tremblay injects with ambiguity throughout the text. While it is possible that Cleo could have constructed the mask herself, her insistence that she had found the mask in an abandoned school is the seed of the mythology that grows around Horror Movie. The mask therefore suggests that a compelling story, even an untrue one, becomes influential and powerful in shaping perception. In the absence of his real name, the narrator might as well be called the Thin Kid, which reflects his cultural reputation.
The Severed Finger
The narrator’s finger is a motif for The Costs of Creating a Cultural Legacy, as well as The Ethics of Horror Movie Production. In the Horror Movie screenplay, the teens cut off the Thin Kid’s pinky as part of his ritualistic transformation into a monster. They pass it off, however, as a punishment for the Thin Kid’s rebellion against them, justifying their violence as a consequence for his actions.
In the real world of the novel, Valentina cuts off the narrator’s finger to cultivate the mythology around the original production of Horror Movie. This act of transgression directly mirrors the teens’ violence against the Thin Kid. Just as the teens cut off the Thin Kid’s finger to complete their ritual, Valentina convinces the narrator that cutting off his finger will allow them to perpetuate the movie’s legacy. The narrator quietly agrees to do it because he relies on the Thin Kid persona as a coping mechanism. After Valentina cuts off his finger, he swallows it, mimicking the Thin Kid’s actions in the screenplay.
The narrator embellishes the story of his finger by claiming that he lost it on the set of Horror Movie. When the fan challenges him to prove his story at the fan convention, he raises a critique on mythology and history. The embellished story becomes so much bigger than the real history that it is accepted as truth. It also is one of the turning points in the metanarrative, casting everything the narrator has said into extreme doubt.
The Symbol Markings
The markings that Cleo draws in the screenplay are a symbol for the transformative power of language, which is embodied in the real world by the screenplay for Horror Movie. In the text of the screenplay, the markings mean nothing. They are never explicitly shown to the viewer, which resonates with Cleo’s indication that the movie isn’t meant to be read literally. Instead, the markings gain importance through their repeated use in the film, drawing a connection to the Thin Kid’s transformation.
Because the markings only ever appear throughout the Thin Kid’s transformation, their function is clarified when the narrator draws it with his blood before killing the new Thin Kid actor. Using the established rules of the markings presents a challenge to accept that the narrator has successfully transformed into the Thin Kid monster before changing forms again to resemble the new actor. This challenge requires the reader to acknowledge that they accept how the markings function within the screenplay, and cements the metafictional qualities of the novel.
