Review by Booklist Review
After his latest horror film fails to live up to his artistic vision, frustrated director Max Maurey discovers a camera that just might help him make the most truly horrific movie of all time. DiLouie's latest (after Episode Thirteen, 2023) takes readers back to the 1980s and the height of the slasher film era, following a cursed camera that kills what it captures and the increasingly unhinged Max and aspiring Final Girl Sally Priest as they learn the price of making horror come alive on the silver screen. DiLouie's ode to the golden age of splatter flicks delves into the details of the filmmaking process, framing the novel into sections reflecting the development of a film and giving readers an inside look at Max's creative and technical process as he makes the film that will become legend. How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive will appeal to readers who like classic slasher films and books like Stephen Graham Jones's My Heart Is a Chainsaw (2021).
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
DiLouie (Episode Thirteen) remixes classic horror tropes into a harrowing thriller set in 1988. Middle-aged Max Maurey, known for his series of low-budget Jack the Knife slasher films, is appalled that audiences are cheering and laughing at the violence in his latest sequel. He feels like a hack, but his seedy producer, Jordan Lyman, won't let Max explore his true artistic ambitions. He's inspired, however, when he encounters Sally Priest, an aspiring actor who believes, like Max, that "horror is only horror if it's real." At an estate sale for a reclusive director, Max buys the camera that recorded the infamous film Mary's Birthday, which ended in tragedy when the actors were sliced to bits by a disabled helicopter. Despite the message scrawled on the case ("Never use this camera"), Max decides to try it out--and discovers that people he points the camera at die gruesomely. It's just the kind of truth he's been searching for in his work, so he sets out to make a movie that will upend cliché, casting Sally as his final girl. The cursed object set up feels familiar, but readers will be pulled in by the morally twisted characters and serpentine plot. Film buffs will especially enjoy this paean to '80s slasher films and the people who love them. Agent: David Fugate, Launchbooks Literary. (June)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In DiLouie's (Episode Thirteen; The Children of Red Peak) new novel, set in 1988, Max Maurey is a horror movie director at the top of his game, but he wants to make something new, a film that can capture the authentic horror of real life. Meanwhile, Sally has been making a name for herself as "the bad girl" in Maurey's films, but what she really wants to be is "the final girl." When Sally and Maurey find the camera with which a director filmed the horrific, accidental deaths of most of his cast members, Maurey realizes that it may hold the power to help him realize his filmmaking dreams. Readers quickly learn that this will be no ordinary movie, as the camera's deadly intentions make themselves known. However, despite this slasher novel's high body count, DiLouie adds a tenderness to the story, encased in the horror of the camera itself, which ultimately allows Maurey to create the authentic experience he was striving for all along. VERDICT A great read for fans of authors who embrace slasher-movie tropes in their storytelling such as Brian McAuley, Grady Hendrix, and Stephen Graham Jones, and also those who love tales where artists and cursed objects collide, such as Gothic by Philip Fracassi.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
