Horror Review: Killer Book Club (2022)

Netflix delivers some more bad horror with Killer Book Club (2022), and it's an original movie, so they actually paid to have it made rather than just buying it on sale. Warning: this review contains SPOILERS.

Ángela, her boyfriend Nando, and her friends Sara, Virginia, Rai, Koldo, Sebas, and Eva are aspiring writers and horror fans who have a book club. When she's assaulted by one of their teachers they decide to punish him. However, after he accidentally dies, they end up trapped in their very own horror story thanks to a vengeful killer clown who's using their murders to write his very own book. But is this about the teacher’s death, or are they hiding other dark secrets?

If you love 90s slasher movies, you'll find this very familiar. It pays homage to hits like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Urban Legend in an incredibly obvious way that sometimes looks more like a shameless copy than mere inspiration. I actually cringed when Ángela copied the whole Can you see me now? bit from Scream. There's even a hint of The Cabin in the Woods in how the characters were reduced to stereotypes. If you're going to be this bold, you better have an amazing original story to back it up. Unfortunately, Killer Book Club doesn't, though it could have. The Mad Clown's book concept, which sees their stalker publish their deaths as chapters in a public website, was good (though maybe it's from another movie I don't know), as was the Alicia backstory. However, the movie was clearly more interested in aping Scream's meta approach with the characters attending writing classes that explain the horror genre and question the merit of sequels, while replicating other's scary moments. It was such a weird choice. An even weirder choice was the fact that it didn't even keep the chapters gimmick till the end. That was one of the few good things it had going for it, FFS! Killer Book Club just gave up after chapter 4 and did away with the last 3 unimportant characters in quick succession, 2 of them off-screen.

Killer Book Club did offer one surprise. The beginning, with Professor Cruzado's accidental death, made it look like it was going in one direction, but thankfully, everything changed with Ángela's confession about Alicia. Her having stolen someone else's life story and passing it as an original work is much more interesting as motivation for a crazy killer clown. So, naturally, the movie barely did anything with it. She never really discussed it with the others, and the usual research was reduced to Sebas googling an old newspaper article. Seriously? An abused girl kills her crazy mother (oh, look, there's room for Carrie, too!) by setting her on fire and there's only one article? This was 6 years ago, not 60! And how did no one ever realize that Ángela's book was based on that? And that wasn't not the only thing that didn't make sense. The Mad Clown is clearly a very tidy killer on par with Ben Willis, but there are limits. Following Chapter 3, which described Rai's death, the surviving friends went to look for his body but they found nothing except a "continuara" graffiti. This had already happened with Virginia, who was the first victim. For reasons I will explain later, it made sense then. However, it's crazy that there was no trace of Rai. We'll even see a flashback to the killer burning his body exactly how and where was written in the chapter! It's not like he was put in a crematorium - there should've been something left, or at least some marks on the bottom of the dry pool. Koldo's behaviour didn't make sense either. Weren’t they friends? How the hell is he encouraging people to vote for the next victim just to save his ass? And why didn’t the characters spend more time together investigating the clown? It's not like in I Know What You Did Last Summer where everyone had drifted apart.

The killer clown looked appropriately creepy and his weapon of choice, a pickaxe, promises some gory deaths. Sadly, the killings were nothing special - only Sara got a longer death scene. Given the Scream influence, the 2 killers weren't much of a surprise. Their identities weren't shocking either. I sincerely hope that the movie didn't really expect the audience to believe Alicia was dead, because come on. The moment Sebas and Ángela had sex, I figured he had to be the killer (or a killer), and when he was "kidnapped" by the clown, I was 100% sure. When Virginia disappeared, I thought she was going to turn out to be the killer, and Rai's reaction made me think it had to be a woman. Frankly, I would've been more surprised if it had been Sara or Eva, who, by the way, practically disappeared from the movie halfway through. Sebas and Virginia were such dull choices. And yes, Virginia was, in fact, the totally not dead Alicia. How shocking. The last interactions between the killers and Ángela weren't scary. This never felt like the type of movie that would let the villains win - it didn't even let Ángela strike Nando - so the final confrontation wasn't really suspenseful. However, the acting didn't help. Sebas and Virginia were probably aiming for psychotic, but landed on ridiculous. They should've kept the clown masks. And why didn’t Ángela try to use the fact that she and Sebas had had sex to turn them against each other? He even said it was his favourite chapter! And how the hell did Nando not only survive a pickaxe to the gut, but also still have enough strength to attack Sebas? Him only being knocked out in the first attack made sense as it fitted with the Mad Clown's planned ending, but the second one was a killer blow. Somehow, Ángela setting Alicia on fire just looked fake.

I'm guessing the very end was a homage to I Know What You Did Last Summer's nightmare ending, but it made me think about Scary Movie instead. The Scream franchise has humour but it's also legitimately scary - Killer Book Club ends as a bad comedy.

VERDICT

The first time we see Cruzado, he's telling his students how limited and superficial the horror genre is, and, throughout its roughly 90 minutes, Killer Book Club seems intent on proving him right. Thumbs down, Netflix.

By Danforth