Gabino Iglesias Reviews How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive by Craig DiLouie
How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive, Craig DiLouie (Redhook 978-0-31656-931-6, $19.99, 400pp, ppb) June 2024.
Funny horror is hard to do right, but Craig DiLouie delivers plenty of it in How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive. At once a send up of the movie industry, a brutal horror novel where a lot of people die in horrible ways, and an exploration of art and staying true to your artistic vision, this novel packs something for everyone.
Max Maurey is a famous horror director. His latest movie has just hit theaters, and he has everything a director could want: His series of slashers is a success, horror fans are having a blast with his latest film, and he’s making money in a business where few manage to pull that off. But Max isn’t happy. Yes, it’s the ’80s, and crowds are devouring what Max puts out there, but he has a different vision and he’s tired of making slashers; Max wants to make real art. Unfortunately for Max, his producer is more than happy with the way Max’s current franchise is bringing in money and wants more of the same.
At a party, Max meets Sally Priest, a young actress who dreams of moving away from her current roles as the snarly friend and becoming the Final Girl in a big movie. Sally has interesting ideas and, just like Max, she thinks horror should be art, that it should matter. After the death of an (in)famous director, Max discovers an old camera at his estate sale. The camera once filmed a true Hollywood horror in which a lot of people died in an extremely gruesome way. Soon after bringing the camera home, Max learns that wasn’t the only time the camera recorded real death. After more bad things happen while Max is trying out the camera, he becomes convinced that the camera is cursed, and he immediately knows what he must do: Shoot his next movie using the haunted piece of equipment. As Max pushes forward with his new project, the evil in the camera becomes more and more real, and more and more dangerous, giving Sally the chance she’s been looking for to take center stage and become the Final Girl she has always dreamed of being.
‘‘Horror isn’t horror unless it’s real.’’ That line drives Max and Sally. DiLouie uses it to explore the nature of horror in film, and he delivers an incredibly entertaining novel while doing so. How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive is dark, creepy, unexpectedly hilarious, and full of memorable characters. However, the best thing about it is the way it works on two very different levels. On the surface, this is a darkly humorous novel about a haunted camera, which fills the narrative with violent explosions and gory deaths that rival any horror movie lovers have seen in the Final Destination franchise. However, just under the surface, DiLouie takes readers on a deep, smart exploration of our relationship to horror movies. Also, the novel is a contemplation of art and the way our individual perspectives shape the things we see as art as well as what we want to create.
Creative deaths, a constant deconstruction of the way Hollywood works, and two central characters who are easy to like and who are struggling to achieve their dreams all make for a unique horror novel that is definitely one of DiLouie’s best.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
This review and more like it in the August 2024 issue of Locus.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.
©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.
