Title: How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive

Author: Craig DiLouie

Release date: June 18th, 2024

*Huge thanks to Netgalley, the author and publisher for the digital ARC!*

Over the last number of years, I’ve been blazing my way through Craig’s horror-centric bibliography and loving it. Craig also has released some critically acclaimed military fiction, but that’s not something that I really read much of and so I haven’t explored any of those. Craig’s writing has run the gamut of subjects, themes and has always provoked visceral responses from readers – good and bad. If you scroll through Instagram or, lately, Tik Tok, you’ll see his novel ‘Suffer the Children’ mentioned in 99% of every video titled – ‘Horror Novels That Emotionally Destroyed Me’ – and for good reason. His novel ‘One Of Us’ is easily one of the most powerful horror/dystopian novels ever released and he’s managed to conjure cults, Djinn’s and haunting ghost hunting shows that will stay with each reader for the rest of time.

But, if you follow him on Facebook, one thing that you’ll notice is his affinity to motion pictures. When Craig posts about a movie or TV show he’s recently watched, you’ll notice that the promotional poster/image is always accompanied by a very in-depth and engaging discussion on what worked and what didn’t for Craig. It’s never a simple short paragraph, it’s a scholarly look at what he’s absorbed, and I say that positively.

Which meant, going into his newest, ‘How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive,’ I knew I wouldn’t be reading a simple slasher. A formulaic, by-the-numbers story of a horror movie and a quaint cast of characters who were specifically there to play their part before the knife beheaded them and we moved on.

No, what Craig ended up doing was flipping the ‘horror’ aspect and gave us a deep dive into the 70s slasher boom in film, where horror fits into the pantheon of genre – both in film and an introspective approach about writing horror novels – and the lengths some auteurs go in the hopes of being remembered forever and finding their place in cinematic history.

What I liked: The novel initially focuses on Max, a director who has just wrapped up his trilogy of movies titled ‘Jack the Knife.’ It started small, low-budget and dark. Now, he’s realized its become campy and too popular. Film goers are laughing when they should be screaming and he’s determined to make a horror movie so frightening it’ll make him a legend.

This of course comes with a set of problems. A producer who wants more Jake the Knife, not art-house. And the reality that most horror had been done before. Then he meets Sally Priest, a young woman who happens to be sleeping with – and attending acting classes taught by – the sole survivor of a horrifying mass death that happened on a film set. Sally and Max become unlikely sole mates, even after Max acquires the very camera that was used to film that cursed movie. A camera that is cursed itself.

DiLouie walks a really fine-line between fiction and meta-ness. If you’ve written anything before, you’ll relate to a lot of the banter and internal struggles that Max has, that Sally has and that those they interact with have. As well, as Craig dives into the making of movies, the struggle to get greenlit and have something financed and made is one of the hardest things to pull off. Add in the headbutting between Max, the director, and the producer, who each have different views on how things should be done, we get Craig injecting the novel with an unexpected psychological turmoil. Max, who desperately wants to direct and film his magnum opus turns to this cursed camera, a thing that begins to speak to him and show him how he can make the most terrifying film ever made.

In the beginning, Max is a clear cut main character, but as the story progresses, Sally herself gets elevated from a secondary starlet to co-headlining. It mirrors her transformation from sultry, blonde, eye candy, to the bad girl, the final girl, the role she so desperately desires.

Once we get to the final 25%, DiLouie has set the domino’s up perfectly to watch them all fall. There’s so many really unique aspects to this novel, but to share them would be spoiler domain and I just don’t want to ruin that for any future readers. Safe to say, there is plenty of gore, buckets of blood and some truly harrowing scenes – both physical and psychological.

It all leads to a really well executed finale and a worthy closing to this novel.

What I didn’t like: I think, for me at least, was I was more invested in Max’s journey and Sally’s transformation that I never truly found myself scared or unnerved. I was more in this for the dynamics and the ‘we can do this’-ness of Max and Sally together that the haunted camera and the horror movie making and the events that occur didn’t make for unnerving moments, not in the way ‘Suffer the Children’ or ‘Episode Thirteen’ did, and we didn’t get the emotional impact moments that were so prevalent within ‘One Of Us.’

Why you should buy this: DiLouie really has outdone himself with this one, though. ‘How to Make…’ is a novel that transcends just fiction. It speaks to those who read, watch and consume horror. It’s a love letter to the fans who don’t care what producers say. To those who don’t want a part four but a new take on an old trope. With this one, DiLouie showcases his ability to craft phenomenal characters that take you along on their journey, a journey you care about, and a journey not purely there to have them killed off by a nameless knife-wielding maniac.

Loved this one.

5/5