Five words from the blurb: journalist, director, disorientating, mystery, reality
Night Film is an unusual thriller. It follows Scott McGrath, a journalist investigating strange events linked to the famous, but illusive Cordova family. Stanislas Cordova is a cult horror film director and his daughter recently committed suicide. Their lives are packed with secrets, many of which involve dark magic. McGrath’s investigations lead him into some very strange situations and the line between reality and imagination was often blurred. Some scenes were a bit weird, but I loved not knowing what would happen next!
I began listening to the audio version of this book, but quickly realised that I was missing something. The first few chapters were packed with photographs, Internet pages and other images and this meant I wasn’t understanding subtler aspects of the plot. In order to fully appreciate the book I got the hardback version from the library and was impressed by the visual content, but found that it was poorly written and couldn’t hold my attention. I switched back to the audio and noticed that the dialogue-led writing worked far better in this medium – all my issues with writing quality were resolved and I was gripped!
The story was long and meandering, but I loved the twists and turns. I thought it was well paced and some aspects were very cleverly thought out. It wasn’t great literature, but it was entertaining and original.
I was slightly worried that I’d find the horror film aspects of this book disturbing, but I didn’t find that to be the case. I guess that some people might have issues the darker scenes, but I found that descriptions were toned down to the right level for me. There was no gore or gratuitous violence and most of the scary sections involved psychological fear, mainly of the unknown.
Overall this was a memorable mystery and I recommend the audio version to anyone looking for something a little bit different.
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The thoughts of other bloggers:
I read this book not once, but twice, unable to cut the ties that bind me to its brilliance. Jenn’s Bookshelves
…in a few places the novel veered into territory that was a little unnecessarily weird for me. The Book Project
It is overwritten and could have been edited down to about half its size… Caribousmom