Important Fact:
Release Dates : 25 th August, 2023 (United States)
Genre: Horror
Language: Spanish, English
Ratings :
- latestmoviesreview Rating : (2/5)
- IMDb Rating : (4.6/10)
OTT Platform: Netflix
Carlos Alonso Ojea
Writer : Carlos García Miranda
Star Cast : Veki Velilla, Álvaro Mel, Priscilla Delgado
A killer clown who appears to be aware of the dark secret they all share starts to kill eight friends who love horror one by one, forcing them to battle for their lives.
The appeal of a good murder mystery lies on its cliches, unlike other genres. In a whodunit, clichés aren’t frowned upon; instead, they’re used to good effect, lulling the audience into an amusing sleight of hand that will eventually identify the guilty party. Such a storytelling magic trick is used at the start of Killer Book Club: Moving away from a roaring fire, the camera pans across a carpeted floor covered in pages covered in gasoline. The young woman then sets herself and her mother on fire after dousing her mother in gas. The fact that it appears to be a lame B-movie ripoff of a murder mystery is kind of the idea. Killer Book Club desires to use a well-known deck.
In the end, that ease exposes the desired tension. Throughout the bloody, horrific Killer Book Club, we have the impression that we understand what is going on well enough to make hasty hypotheses. The audience is teased repeatedly before being informed that their best guess was completely off. Despite the deception, this is fundamentally just another generic slasher film, driven primarily by jealousy, false motivations, and an idiotic gang of teenagers.
Velilla, the de-facto lead in this film, expertly and faithfully communicates the 1.28 emotions that the screenplay assigns to her.
Memorable Dialogue: “Personally, I’d like to believe (the killer is) just some sadistic prick who knows us from school,” says Eva, an equal opportunity developer of theories. or a bitch. It might be a female.
The sex scene in Sex and Skin is disappointing because we can’t quite make out a boob or a butt, but at least it’s SUMPTUOUSLY illuminated for maximum faux-eroticism.
Story
The eight companions appear in the serial killer’s online book, which he publishes chapter by chapter, each chapter focusing on a murder. The film’s self-referential elements peak at this point. The novel refers to the eight characters as the archetypes of the horror subgenre. The ‘heroine’ is Angela. Her boyfriend, Nando, is the ’emo’. The “simp” is Sebas, who is vying for Angela’s affection. Virginia is the ‘brat.’ Remaining there are Rai, the ‘wild’; Koldo, the ‘influencer’; Sara, the ‘babe’; and Eva, the ‘librarian’.
The way the movie progresses now makes it impossible for the killer to fit into any of the other horror genre clichés. So the movie kind of already gives you a hint as to who will live and who will die. Being the main character, Angela appeared to have the “plot armor.” Unexpectedly, this doesn’t make the movie any less thrilling. The ruse is successful because the focus shifts from identifying the killer to focusing on how these other people will perish and Angela’s efforts to identify him. It draws viewers farther into the narrative.
The main issue with having these eight characters is that the film’s running time will not allow for their development. As a result, the characters are somewhat caricatures. Only because there was no other way to convey that sense of the archetype in such a brief amount of time did they suit the archetype so perfectly. The actors’ attire and makeup assist to emphasize the archetypal quality. They are introduced as if there is a limited amount of time, and it could be difficult to distinguish which character is being discussed. The killer appears to be invincible, which is another unique aspect of the slasher, and the movie takes the gore component seriously.
The killer is typically someone with supernatural or superhuman strength, and the movie does a fantastic job of fulfilling that cliche. The movie’s lack of comedy is its one major flaw. The movie could have used more humor, which would have given it a more well-rounded feel. Sure, it’s funny when the murderer is kicked and punched but still manages to catch up with their victim or triumphs over all odds, but I don’t think it’s always on purpose. There wasn’t a scene where the overwhelming sense of doom actually took a break, either. Only at the very end did a scenario of that nature appear, and it made a suggestion at a continuation.
Best Horror Movies on Netflix
The shy ngela (an elusive Veki Velilla) is the subject of the college campus horror-mystery directed by the Spanish director Carlos Alonso Ojea. The Girl from Carrión, a book that ngela authored six years ago while she was in the eighth grade, is thought to be the source of the opening scene of Killer Book Club. She has experienced writer’s block ever since. Angela makes her way to her weekly reading club in the school library by crossing the busy quad with her emo, peroxide-blonde lover Nando (Iván Pellicer). The meeting spot for the group is not just a desk, but rather a room concealed beneath some unsettling steps.
The other club members are Priscilla Delgado’s annoying Vanessa, Carlos Alcaide’s hot-tempered Rai, Hamza Zaidi’s influential Koldo, Mara Cerezuela’s snarky Eva, Ane Rot’s ngela’s best friend Sara, and snobbish Sebas (Lvaro Mel), who may have a crush on ngela. One of the few surprises in a film that urgently needs them comes from the fact that these temperamentally different characters were already friends rather than being put together by chance. The group’s chemistry is good enough to overcome any first skepticism that one might have when listening to them discuss the fictional novel Killer Clowns.
The fear of clowns doesn’t stop there: In his adaptation of I Know What You Did Last Summer for Killer Book Club, screenwriter Carlos Garca Miranda draws on people’s phobia of clowns. The scariest moment in the movie involves ngela’s professor (Daniel Grao) trying to rape her during work hours. She and her friends come together to punish him. The eight students decide it would be a bad idea to capitalize on a viral video craze by masquerading as clowns and scaring the professor. He accidentally dies after a series of lengthy pursuits down even longer passageways. The friends make a doomed agreement to keep quiet, but remorse quickly gives way to fear when an online forum user posts excerpts from a book that not only discusses the murder but also appears to foretell the friends’ deaths one by one.
Killer Book Club begins to resemble Scream when a frightening man in a clown mask and carrying a lethal hammer begins to menace Angela and the others. The crisp sound mixing gives simple thrills an edge by enhancing each cut into a raging rip. Every image is illuminated in unsettling tones of pink, crimson, and green as if waiting for splatters of blood to fill the frame. These murders don’t offer the cathartic catharsis you’d hope to see in a horror movie since no sexual, psychological, or even political tension is driving them. Instead, some scenes simply enjoy imitating classic horror films.
The murder-mystery cliches in Killer Book Club are entertaining, but it irritates me that dialogue must constantly refer to them. You kind of expect that to happen because these characters are book nerds, after all. But Ojea’s movie criticizes the clichés’ effectiveness before using them. While giving viewers hints keeps them interested, keeping them guessing until the very end is not the same as entertaining them.
Being left guessing until the end is not the same as being entertained
That divergence includes a discussion of the ngela. She serves as a cipher around which all of these conventions of horror films can be built. A murder mystery thrives on deceit, whereas a slasher is sustained by a sympathetic lead character. Because she embodies a certain innocence, trauma, or other human feeling, you want her to survive. There are also some expectations associated with horror film villains. The antagonist in this novel is a character with a complicated past who emerged from online chat groups. They lack any outward signs of bodily emotion, such as fury or bloodlust, making them terrifying. In order to keep the banal secret at the center of the uninteresting Killer Book Club secret, this murderer’s blandness grows as the twists multiply.
The Verdict
In order to create a well-balanced horror story about a bunch of college students eluding a masked murderer, filmmaker Carlos Alonso Ojea of Killer Book Club kneels at the altar of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream. The movie has a weak primary character and no terrifying antagonist. It is made up of stereotypes and clichés that give off a recognizable feeling of dread but don’t go to the level of bloodlust that creates memorable scenes.