Horror Movie

by Paul Tremblay

I had yet to read and would not read until 2008, after she posted the screenplay online.

I want to go weirder.”

“Fuck fun,” Valentina said. “Fuck it to hell.” She laughed, and we did too.

it was how she prepared for her dual role as the director and character Valentina, blurring and stubbing out the lines of separation.

This wasn’t manipulation, it was direction. The Thin Kid needed direction.

forever. The cigarette attack is one of three scenes that Valentina eventually uploaded to YouTube.

Artists posted and shared their fan art: the Thin Kid as the goth, emo little brother of Jason, Michael, Freddy, and Leatherface; the Thin Kid walking hand-in-hand with Cleo, or Valentina, or Karson.

What’s wrong with you people?

She was in her early forties, five-foot-zero, bragged about owning five weekday pairs of the same jeans, and swore like a character in a Tarantino movie.

kibosh

His banner proclaimed he was “The Nightmare Scribe”

Just because our movie was the tree falling in the forest for no one to hear or see didn’t mean we didn’t fall.

I asked if I was the baby squirrel now, and she said no, of course not, and, “You’re all grown up.”

I think we’re in more control of what we remember and what we don’t remember than we assume.

Maybe that’s why I left the pinky there, hidden under the fake finger. Maybe it had nothing to do with the Thin Kid and I wanted to see and feel what would happen.

My theory is that we’re in hell. Some of us are demons and some of us make demons because we don’t know what else to do,

*The staging is important here and will be replicated later.*

“‘More mature physique.’ That’s a nice way of saying my older man’s body brings extra body horror.”

“There’s a version of this movie where I use young, age-appropriate actors and I also use actors who were semi-famous teen actors in the ’90s for all the roles. I shoot two versions of the film with both sets of actors. Then in editing, I intercut them, switch them around, scene by scene, maybe shot by shot. To show us who we were and who we are at the same time. Maybe by the end of the film, we’ll have killed nostalgia dead.”

“Spoken like a true gore hound. You sound like one of the superfans that accost me at conventions.”

What kind of art-house pretentious bullshit is this? We heard this was a fucked-up movie, and we want fucked-upness. We want blood, guts, and tits, and there’s been barely any so far.

This movie is not for everyone. This movie is for some of us.

The movie has now achieved the second horror of this scene.

Some of us attempt to analyze the image: the empty archway, the expanse of room between the archway and the viewer, the dim light on the other end, the pool of darkness from which we stare. Some of us attach meaning and metaphor, but there is only one meaning.

Finally, now approaching the five-minute mark of wait time, is the third horror.

Some of us will remember his walk with a giddy thrill and we’ll continue to seek out movies and books that make us feel the same way. Some of us will remember that he is inexorable. He will get us no matter what.

Hey, you do you doesn’t quite cut it as a response in this case. My case.

I’m a bug in amber, to be kept in stasis for eons. Or I’m safely buried in the ice of a glacier, but it’ll melt because everything is melting, and once I’m set free . . . watch out.

I am used to wearing masks.

I bet you know what I imagine they’re drawing.

Leaving pieces of myself behind is part of the bargain, has always been part of the bargain.

Well, things changed in the cocoon. What did you expect?

The pinky bit looked so small but also flawlessly designed, beautiful. Beautiful because it had come from me. I had grown it, like a piece of fruit. The flesh wasn’t weak. It was divine.

My teeth could not be trusted. They were always stupid with want, with the desire to render and chew.

My throat instantly expanded and distended not only to accommodate the pinky but wide enough so I could swallow the world.

The Thin Kid is done running. He walks plenty fast enough.

The movie-watching part of our brains might interpret this as a physical manifestation of her desperation to live, an admission that she’s not as in control of what’s happening as she and we thought. We are more scared for her because of

We’re also afraid of what Cleo has planned as an endgame.

but I think all of us at some point in our lives, especially when we’re teenagers, feel like we want to die, and yet, at the same time, we’re terrified of it. That’s—that’s part of the human condition, right?”

“Don’t blame me. Blame the mask. It’s cursed, remember?”

The Thin Kid is closer, and he is bigger and his reach is longer and the expression on his mask is the ageless look of a predator.

We sensed calamity and we were about to collectively lean into it.

She succeeded in putting the toothy chain in my mind.

Cleo’s face without her glasses has become a different mask, or maybe she’s been unmasked, finally. Monsters can reveal who we are.

Her face is a mask too. Everyone’s face is a mask.

I can’t be me in the new mask.

I’ve yet to say the following in the slew of recent interviews when asked what makes Horror Movie so scary: in a movie chock-full of symbol and portent, it all amounts to nothing, to the horror of void.

There is no mask. The mask is me.

Monsters can be very persuasive.

I think folks would have loads of fun picking through that carcass for metaphorical and psychological meaning.