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kmoreads's review
3.0
I was super excited to read this book as I am a big fan of the creepy kid trope like Children of the Corn and Poltergeist!
Kids are going missing. Parents are being murdered. There is a monster on the loose with glowing eyes. This is the stuff nightmares are made of! The horrors element was on point. There was lots of blood and gore. The only reason I knocked the book down a star is because I felt it could have been shorter. I loved the story and it is most definitely one for an horror fan to pick up.
Thank you to Blackthorn book tours for the #gifted copy of the book.
Kids are going missing. Parents are being murdered. There is a monster on the loose with glowing eyes. This is the stuff nightmares are made of! The horrors element was on point. There was lots of blood and gore. The only reason I knocked the book down a star is because I felt it could have been shorter. I loved the story and it is most definitely one for an horror fan to pick up.
Thank you to Blackthorn book tours for the #gifted copy of the book.
octavia_cade's review against another edition
dark
medium-paced
3.0
This is a creepy slasher horror where a bunch of small children are killed and then possessed, by what I won't say since it would spoil things, and promptly form a zombie mob with which to gruesomely murder their parents. There's a lot of sadistic violence here, which isn't my preferred horror type to be honest, but it moves along fairly quickly. It's helped, too, by an extremely sympathetic and genuinely well-drawn protagonist. Kyle is an average teenager, and he's goodhearted but not perhaps that bright, or that aware, so he's a good choice for this. He flounders a lot, but he feels like a teenager when I'm reading is what I'm saying. He has verisimilitude. Unfortunately, his partner in crime and incipient love interest, Marie, does not. She is far too mature for her age, especially compared to him, so much so that their sex scenes actually made me feel a little uncomfortable, because as much as Marie looks like a seventeen year old girl, she behaves like she could be Kyle's forty year old mother, and the contrast between the very believable Kyle and her completely unbelievable self is noticeable.
karlakayjenniges's review
dark
slow-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Sexual assault, and Child abuse
Moderate: Death, Death of parent, and Child death
Minor: Violence
novelbloglover's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
4.0
Book Review
Title: Cinema 7 by Michael J. Moore
Genre: Paranormal, Thriller, Horror
Rating: 4 Stars
After having read a lot of psychological thrillers and the goriest of horrors in the years I’ve been a reader I didn’t think there was a book out there that could scare me. I’ve read all of Stephen King’s work who is known as the master of horror and nothing has phased me but I have a feeling that Michael J. Moore just changed that for me. The first chapter alone had me hooked and was similar to the opening scene of Halloween where we witness a little girl called Kim stab her mother and her mother’s boyfriend to death at the command of a figure in her room and this was just the beginning and it only got darker and more gruesome from here.
Kim isn’t the only child affect as three other children do the same thing to their parents leaving six adults dead and four children, orphaned and missing. Even this early on in the book I was on the edge of my seat and wanting more. If the murders weren’t enough the children go through a change that seems to be the result of the evil monster sexually abusing them and then eating them alive. The imagery and writing style Moore uses really hits every nerve that gets your heart racing the same way the best horror movies do. The children become a sort of undead psychopaths which was creepy enough but they go through physical changes causing their voices gravellier and their eyes are replaced with orange lights which reminded of Children of the Corn and the creep factor those children have which sent chills down my spine.
I honestly won’t recommend reading this book late at night with the lights off as it will give you nightmares of killer demon children and fill you with unbridled terror. This book shook me so much that the night I finished it at around two in the morning I slept with a light on for the first time since I was a child, if that doesn’t tempt you to read it, especially if you’re a fan of horror then I don’t know what will. We are then introduced to Kyle, a local high school boy who runs into the demonic children and terrified he goes to the police with the video footage of the kids. At this point the attacks are starting to increase as the monster possess more and more children. This leaves Kyle, his girlfriend, Marie alone to face the seemingly unstoppable army of children hell bent on violence and revenge. The atmosphere throughout the novel is amazing but it will set any parent on edge and make them paranoid of their own children. There are also some disturbing images with small babies not capable of walking yet, springing up to commit gruesome acts of murder. There is even a toddler whose neck is broken during the escape that has a conversation with his older brother with his head bent at an unnatural angle that make me feel ill as I pictured it in my mind.
I don’t want to reveal too much about the novel as it spoils some of the best parts but we learn the monster is motivated by hatred targeted at a particular person. This person did something unforgiveable that sparked this rampage of the undead children and was never caught or punished for it and it makes you realise that the humans in this novel can be far worse that the undead children and the monster controlling them at times. There is no plot armour in this book as the protagonist’s families are even attacked by the children so no one is safe and the fear is building. At this point almost an entire generation of the town’s children have been possessed and many people murdered. Those that have survived are certain to be damaged permanently from it.
The utter fear the book creates in its characters and the reader is the best part of the book and I recommend going into it as blind as possible for the full effect. However, there are some drawbacks, the biggest one for me was Kyle’s relationship with Marie was tropey and full of teen angst which didn’t really fit the feel of the novel as we could have done without the romance altogether. Kyle’s relationship with his ex, despite the amount of time it was discussed wasn’t relevant at all. The decisions of the characters especially Kyle and Marie are very questionable at times and is most likely meant to make the reader suspicious and throw them off but they are proven to not be important at all. Despite this it doesn’t undo how frightening the book can be at time and I would recommend it especially for the Halloween season when you are in the mood to be scared.
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