For high school math teacher turned author Paul Tremblay, a lifetime of watching scary movies has led to an acclaimed bibliography full of enjoyably creepy horror novels.
So with the title of his latest being โHorror Movie,โ you know Tremblayโs not messing around. This spin on the โcursed filmโ trope centers on an art-house flick made in 1993 by a group of indie filmmakers but never released, outside of a few scenes put online. A fandom has grown around its legend, to the point that itโs being remade, and the only surviving member of the cast โ who played a masked teen called โthe Thin Kidโ โ is a producer. Through past and present perspectives, and the script of the film, Tremblayโs book is a slow-burn narrative of creative egos, disturbing circumstances and the tragedy at the heart of the original production.
Tremblay didnโt read for fun until his 20s, โso my very nascent early understanding of story and story structure was all through movies,โ says the author, whose 2018 book โThe Cabin at the End of the Worldโ was adapted by M. Night Shyamalan into last yearโs โKnock at the Cabin.โ Writing โHorror Movieโ was โgetting to break that apart and try to make a horror movie be a part of a book.โ
The 52-year-old Tremblay, whoโs currently working on the middle-grade horror novel โAnotherโ (coming in 2025), runs down the cinematic chillers that influenced โHorror Movieโ and inspired his own writing over the years.
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โThe Texas Chain Saw Massacreโ was the initial โHorror Movieโ inspiration
Tremblayโs original impetus for โHorror Movieโ came from an online conversation he saw about the 1974 slasher classic that mentioned the 2013 book โChain Saw Confidential,โ Leatherface actor Gunnar Hansenโs first-person account of what happened making the movie. โIt just sent me down a โChain Sawโ rabbit hole. I read that book and they took so many chances on set, like what would’ve happened if the chainsaw slipped?โ Tremblay says. โThen I just started thinking about the 1970s and the โ90s, people making an independent movie and something went wrong, and that was just really the start of it.โ (A chainsaw also heavily factors into the plot of โHorror Movie.โ)
Tremblay mined โthat raw, almost desperate energy” of indie horror movies, be it the arty works of A24 โ the company known for the likes of โThe Witchโ and โHereditaryโ โ or the Dutch film โBorgman,โ a โweird, messed-up movieโ about a drifter taken in by an upper-class family. โI definitely wanted some of that same messed-upnessโ in “Horror Movie,” he says.
Tremblay surrounded himself with possession films for โA Head Full of Ghostsโ
When writing one of his books or short stories, Tremblay tries to tailor his entertainment consumption and surroundings to stuff that best serves his project. For 2015โs โA Head Full of Ghosts,โ about a possibly possessed teenage girl featured on a reality TV show,ย Tremblay watched and rewatched โThe Exorcistโ and others of its ilk.
โIโm usually reading things that I think will sort of inspire ideas, too,” he says. “I’m not too worried about the intrusion of other voices. In fact, I enjoy getting unexpected sparks from things.โ (A movie version of โA Head Full of Ghosts,โ which โscared the living hellโ out of Stephen King, is in the works from producer Robert Downey Jr. and โGoodnight Mommyโ directorsย Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.)
โThe Cabin from the End of the Worldโ spawned from home invasion movies
Admittedly a โlongtime scaredy cat,โ Tremblayโs love of horror stemmed from watching 1950s and โ60s black-and-white movies like โThe Killer Shrewsโ that โwould give me nightmaresโ when he was 7. To this day, he doesnโt like home invasion movies, โpartly because they’re so icky, they’re so scary,โ he says, but the ones Tremblay digs โ the French film โThem,โ โHushโ and the old Audrey Hepburn film โWait Until Darkโ โ inspired him to do a book version of one with โThe Cabin at the End of the World.โ
โIt was more messing around with, oh, it’d be really weird if the strangers showed up and started killing each other instead of the family,” Tremblay says. “Why would they do that? That was just sort of a little bit of a logic puzzle for me.”
โKnock at the Cabinโ turned into a meta influence for Tremblayโs โHorror Movieโ
The author visited the set of Shayamalanโs โCabinโ adaptation, which featured a significantly different ending than the book, and the author’s experience so far in the movie industry informed the filmmaking bits of โHorror Movieโ where the older Thin Kid is dealing with producers and directors to get a movie made. โI have enjoyed it, but it has been weird. It’s been super-stressful at times, too,โ Tremblay says. โThe business side of it still just makes zero sense to me. That’s fine, maybe it’s not supposed to make sense to me.โ
The writer admits some of the โHorror Movieโ stuff is from personal stories, others are anecdotal from other authors: โWe novelists don’t have a union so when weird things happen in Hollywood, our only revenge is to write about it.”
