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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
I love scary books in October! Had a hard time putting this one down. Loved the visuals. Thought it was a good creepy mystery!
I'm super on the fence with this one. I keep going back and forth between 3 and 4 stars. I liked it, but did I really like it? Probably not.
It started off so well. I enjoyed the "interactive" element but those soon disappeared. It also was so fast in the beginning, really sucking me in. However, around page 350 it felt like it was dragging and would never end. Once it finally started to pick back up I was already disconnected from the characters and the story.
Throughout the whole novel I felt the author was trying so hard for it to be scary and it just never was. Instead I just felt like nothing was genuine. The situations were just never convincing for me because of this.
Another big negative for me was the author's somewhat obsessive use of italics. Do you really need 10-20 words per page in italics? Ummm no. Also her use of "Thank Christ" really bugged me. I don't know why. For God's sake come up with another phrase for your main character to use.
Also, the ending. Don't get me started. My eyes were literally rolling in the back of my head so much I'm sure I missed a solid 3 pages.
So why did I give it 3 stars? Because I think it was a great idea with a lot of potential and quite frankly I enjoyed a good portion of it.
It started off so well. I enjoyed the "interactive" element but those soon disappeared. It also was so fast in the beginning, really sucking me in. However, around page 350 it felt like it was dragging and would never end. Once it finally started to pick back up I was already disconnected from the characters and the story.
Throughout the whole novel I felt the author was trying so hard for it to be scary and it just never was. Instead I just felt like nothing was genuine. The situations were just never convincing for me because of this.
Another big negative for me was the author's somewhat obsessive use of italics. Do you really need 10-20 words per page in italics? Ummm no. Also her use of "Thank Christ" really bugged me. I don't know why. For God's sake come up with another phrase for your main character to use.
Also, the ending. Don't get me started. My eyes were literally rolling in the back of my head so much I'm sure I missed a solid 3 pages.
So why did I give it 3 stars? Because I think it was a great idea with a lot of potential and quite frankly I enjoyed a good portion of it.
I kind of feel a big 'eh' about this book, which didn't frighten me or particularly captivate me, even though I read it to the end. It felt, and this is going to sound snobby, like a dumbed down version of _House of Leaves_, which similarly integrated different kinds of materials and sort of explored film making and its relationship to the occult. I never finished _House of Leaves_ and I did finish this book, but I felt a lot less challenged and interested by this one-- with House I felt like I wasn't willing to do the work the book needed from me, whereas with this, I felt like I did no work at all. And the writing, I thought, wasn't very good on a sentence level-- why does every journalist character have to be a hack in a very particular purple way? And how can so many writers get away with using that as an excuse for overwriting? The supposedly scary bits weren't all that scary to me-- and I like being scared by a good book. I grew up reading Amityville and others and terrifying myself, but this felt like a seventies rubber suit Frankenstein movie.
I did, for no really clear reason, like the two supporting characters, the boy and girl the main guy knocks around with-- the girl, especially, seemed to have a story to tell that this book never quite got across, and I liked the boy, thinking about what he was up to, what did he know that he wasn't telling. They probably kept me reading till the end.
I did, for no really clear reason, like the two supporting characters, the boy and girl the main guy knocks around with-- the girl, especially, seemed to have a story to tell that this book never quite got across, and I liked the boy, thinking about what he was up to, what did he know that he wasn't telling. They probably kept me reading till the end.
Although this book was published in 2013, if you’re a horror fan, somehow you may have still missed this one. I have seen very few people talking about it online, and the reasons for this escape me. Maybe it’s because it resides in the no-man’s-land between horror, thriller, and mystery; whatever marketing difficulties occurred, I think it will grab all three of these audiences just as equally. It seems impossible that people just forgot about it in the span of six years. Night Film is very much a labor of love that is meant to be savored in all its atmospheric, page-turning glory.
Read the rest of this review at The Macabre Librarian:
https://macabrelibrarian.wordpress.com/2019/09/18/review-night-film/
Read the rest of this review at The Macabre Librarian:
https://macabrelibrarian.wordpress.com/2019/09/18/review-night-film/
Wow, how to explain this book... What a wild ride. It was so suspenseful. I loved all the imagery and could see it being made into a movie. However, (*spoilers!*), after the main character has reconnected with his daughter, I felt like it should end, and it didn't! It went on (and on), going back, yet again, into the search for the director. Quite honestly, I was irritated at the ending. I think it just be labored the subject to death ( pardon the pun). Good scary book for an October read, but be patient at the end.
I have to say that I really loved this book! The writing is mesmerizing and the level of detail is so spot on - not so much as to be boring, al a Donna Tart and Goldfinch, but enough to really give the reader the ability to see the story as it progresses. What was so intriguing to me is that I could not get a bead on the events: were they purely supernatural or were they purely realistic or were they a combination of both? It's like the story mimicked the leviathan in the story - the creature that is depicted eating its own tail - the story is like that - the same events interpreted multiple times but each time with a different filter - and that filter is not always a different character's perception - sometimes a character who has determined what actually happened has a bit more information revealed to him/her and then that character reforms the events of the story. And so it is for the reader, just when you think you've got a clear understanding, Pessl reveals just a bit more color and the events are recast in a completely different light. While I didn't find the ending to be 100% definitive, I wasn't dissatisfied.
Really really enjoyed this book. It would make a phenomenal movie. The audiobook is narrated by Jake Weber so I pictured him the whole time as the main character, and he has the best voice! This book would make a phenomenal movie.
2.5 stars
I was annoyed by the first half and entertained by the second half. It seemed more like a mad-hat caper than literary thriller to me.
I was annoyed by the first half and entertained by the second half. It seemed more like a mad-hat caper than literary thriller to me.