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.
Themes
Blurring the Line Between Art and Reality
Horror Movie is largely about the thin line between reality and artifice, showing that life is just as much shaped by the human acts of construction and revision as it is by the natural forces of the world. The “official” history of the film the characters set out to make is defined by the stories they tell about it and themselves, more than the true story of what happened on set.
The narrator, along with the other characters to a lesser degree, initially presents himself as a blank canvas open for interpretation. Everything from his lack of a given name to the blank clothes he wears is a character detail to be painted over. As soon as the novel starts introducing details about the Thin Kid, the narrative aims to lead the reader to overlay those details onto the narrator, especially considering that the same is done indiscriminately for Cleo, Valentina, and Karson. As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear that this decision leans deliberately into his character arc, which revolves around his transformation into the Thin Kid. The narrator finds solace in imagining what the Thin Kid might think or feel in situations like his sleepover at the abandoned school. He privileges these thoughts over his own, which offer no comfort in return. When the novel ends, any sense of the narrator’s former identity disappears as he offers the possibility that he could roam the world forever as his character. He kills the new actor playing the Thin Kid because he covets the identity for himself. If he cannot be the official new Thin Kid, then he will not only kill the actor playing him, but he will also become him through transformation.
The novel presents several key events from the making of the original Horror Movie and then later puts the truth into doubt. Chapter 12 revolves around the loss of the narrator’s finger, which is a crucial milestone in the movie’s attainment of cursed film and cult classic status. Later, in Chapter 18, it is revealed that this story was made up for the sole purpose of building Horror Movie’s reputation. Even when the narrator alludes to the falseness of the story at a horror fan convention, the fans are more willing to accept that story because it feeds the narrative they have already imposed upon the film. This casts many of the other stories he has told about the production in a doubtful light, including that of Cleo’s death. Although the cast and crew testify that Cleo died by suicide at the court trial, this story doesn’t align with the details that the narrative implies from Cleo’s last meal with the narrator. Cleo voices discontent with Valentina’s tendency to push the narrator into danger. She says that she wants to live, but, shortly after, she dies to fulfill the shot that Valentina wants from her. It is convenient that everyone in the crew tells the same story that saves them from liability. Never once does the narrator choose to share these conflicting details in his testimony.
This all builds toward the strong suggestion that the movie itself is demanding things from reality in order to come into being. Tremblay never makes this interpretation explicit in the text, though he continuously refers to it when supplying the narrator and Valentina’s motivations for going above and beyond to get a shot. The narrator and Valentina’s devotion to the film is also presented as devotion to the meaning it introduces into their lives. Outside of the film, there is very little in these characters’ lives to speak to, which would explain why the narrator never says much about it. These characters willingly shirk agency in a reality that feels meaningless to them, allowing darker impulses to take control.
The Ethics of Horror Movie Production
On the other side of the blurred lines between reality and art is the question of how far people are willing to go for art. The discrepancy in the story of Cleo’s death is an obvious example in this direction, but this is also reflected in the simple questions of ethics that arise in the context of film production.
Since horror movies are necessarily transgressive, it begs the question of whether or not its creators have to lean into transgression as well. In the case of this novel, Valentina’s directorial style lends itself to manipulation. Her frustrations about the realism of the film often push the narrator to go above and beyond to support her ends. As someone without acting experience, the narrator offers as much of himself as he can to inhabit the role, such as sleeping overnight alone on set. When he suggests the idea to Valentina, she indicates that it isn’t necessary, freeing her from the ethical responsibility that she would have to him as a director. When the narrator insists, she hardly stops him, implicitly endorsing of his actions. This escalates when Valentina expresses her frustration with the cigarette burning scene, which directly pushes the narrator to offer his body for one shot. Despite his willingness to participate in this way, the narrator’s suggestion raises the question of how important realism really is to Valentina when the film necessarily uses nonrealistic elements, such as the Thin Kid’s supernatural transformation into a monster, to convey its plot. This is not to say that Valentina willingly intended for the narrator to come into harm’s way, but that her fixation with realism could have been misplaced, which aligns with her flawed ambitions as a director. Similarly, the narrator’s willingness to offer the destruction of his body for the production undermines his own dignity by putting the film’s needs first.
The film reboot also lends itself to scrutiny, functioning as Tremblay’s critique of modern Hollywood and its profit-centric remake and sequel culture. Considering that the film was never finished and released to the public, the term “reboot” is somewhat of a misnomer. George, Marlee, and their peers are creating the first publicly available entry in the supposed Horror Movie franchise. For them to continuously refer to it as a reboot, however, is an act of fidelity to the fans whose interest they are catering to. The fans are not fans of the film per se, but of the legends surrounding it. George’s commitment to the project is thus really a commitment to the potential profit that indulging those legends would bring his company. The novel signals his insincerity early on by having the narrator call him out for falsifying a connection to the original Horror Movie crew. Considering that the first attempt at making Horror Movie resulted in the death of its screenwriter, the idea of moving forward with the reboot downplays the original production’s tragedy, which becomes an object of fascination rather than reform.
Tremblay’s story of a cursed film is also a story about the ethical oversights that occur when engaged in the endeavor of art-marking. It is a stark reminder that art should exist in service of humankind, not the other way around.
The Costs of Creating a Cultural Legacy
In the screenplay, Cleo’s room is a tribute to horror movies past. This homage to the tradition in which they are working speaks to her and Valentina’s larger ambition to make an impact on culture. Horror cinema, due to its transgressive nature, is prone to long-tailed cultural legacies, which Tremblay evidences by tracing the novel’s events over a span of 30 years. The filmmakers wrestle with one another by pushing forward different artistic intentions for which the film could serve as a vessel. Some of these intentions survive while others are forgotten by time.
One can express this conflict of intentions through the dichotomy between Cleo and Valentina. Valentina, as previously discussed, is obsessed with bringing the film to completion so that it can be seen by the world. Her intentions are generally tied to ambition and her love of film for its own sake. Valentina wants to have the same impact that her favorite films, such as the 1920 German silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, have had on her. This ambition exists broadly in contrast to Cleo’s intentions for making a film, which is to capture the reality of her real-life fears and finding wonder in its attempted representation. Cleo’s desire is to make a film that feels honest to her experience, which speaks to her sincerity and her willingness to be vulnerable for the sake of art.
Without those intentions to drive her, Valentina is willing to pull all the stops necessary to enter the annals of horror movie history. This includes her willingness to put the narrator in harm’s way to make the film even more transgressive. Tremblay leaves the nature of Cleo’s death ambiguous, but the novel implies that Valentina and the other survivors prop up a falsified account of her death to escape liability. In the years that follow Cleo’s death, Valentina’s obsession with the film continues, and instead of moving past it, she continuously returns to it, leveraging the narrator’s tendency for self-sacrifice to strengthen Horror Movie’s reputation and trigger a reboot.
Ultimately, this means that the original intentions that drove Cleo to create Horror Movie as an expression of herself become buried in Valentina’s quest to make a work of art that lasts forever. The novel leaves it ambiguous whether Cleo ever actually aligned with Valentina’s intentions, despite Valentina’s insistence that Cleo always had up to the end. Valentina succeeds in cementing her film’s status in horror history, but it transforms Cleo’s form of expression into an object of curiosity. Fans are more drawn to the reputation of the film than the film itself, as well as the wonder that Cleo was trying to capture with it.
