Night Film

Gave up at 27%.

Enjoyable mystery that held my interest throughout. I liked the extras like the newspaper clippings and web pages as it added a sense of realism to the story.

I'm sorry but if I waste my time to read over 700 pages there better be a satisfying ending. or any ending.

I'm speechless!!

Ultimately, I was expecting things from this book that I didn't get. 
As the author goes on to tease the mysterious Stanislas Cordova, director of the most terrifying movies ever made, exploring the worst part of the human mind, I was expecting more nuance to the story. A deep dive into the mind of such a person, what makes him who he is, and why he does what he does. Details of the movies themselves and why they are so terrifying they're banned from television. 
And that was mostly a disappointment, because I think we deserved that, especially with the length of this book.

Instead what we get is a long and winded mystery with Scott McGrath following lead after lead after lead, all of them dead ends, untill one person just word vomits everything at the end with the littlest bit of blackmailing, and after 500 long pages, it's all over. 
Now that I think more about it though, giving an unsatifisying ending is something Cordova would totally do so that might have been intentional.

The book definitely did a better job with exploring Ashley Cordova's character but I was not here for HER, you know?? I wanted more.

I loved the moody, eerie atmosphere, the mysterious Ashley and Cordova, and falling down the rabbit hole of red herrings, the occult and questionable sanity. I just wasn't satisfied with the ending. I needed a more definitive conclusion.

Dragged in the middle, but the ending charmed me. Feels like it could have been way shorter.

The mystery and the Cordova family are interesting, but the book felt longer than necessary. Sometimes the flowery purple prose got in the way of the story. And some of the investigation pieces felt unnecessary. So good, but too long.

DNF at 27%. What the hell is this? What went so absolutely wrong with this book? Multiple things, actually.

Have any of you seen Snow White and The Huntsman, the movie? It was pretty awful. Every damn character keeps talking about Snow White being the best thing since forever, her personality, her beauty, her aura just so flawless she inspires endless love and devotion in everyone. Even non-human characters. Yet you look at Kristen Stewart, playing Snow White, and she is just standing there, slightly confused, with her mouth a bit open, looking like a totally mundane human who doesn't even understand what is going on.
This book is that. Exact same feeling. Let me elaborate, because this review is unhinged at this point and I can't let you go home feeling that way.

Night Film is about mystery around an elusive movie director called Stanislas Cordova. His movies are visceral and disturbing, a force of nature. They are independently made, because he was just too weird for conventional cinema. His fans have secret communities with illegal screenings underground (sometimes literally). He lives on this secluded compound, where he works and he never engages with the public.
Then his 24-year-old daughter commits suicide.
A journalist, who used to be obsessed with finding out Cordova's secrets and got his career ruined for it, starts to try and unravel the mystery of what happened to Ashley Cordova.

Sounds super spooktastic. Sounds like it would be magnetic, you would get obsessed with Cordova and his family, like the people in universe got obsessed with his movies.
Yeah, no, think again. I know I am supposed to be confused and excited. To see more, to learn more, to get more of the clues. Yet this is incredibly boring and flavourless. The writing holds absolutely sub zero pressure on you. Sure, not all books like this need to be scary. But to be not only not scary, but THIS BORING? That's a crime.
The characters, McGrath, his UWU quirky sidekick Nora and hot, strung out, so indie Sidekick No. 2 Hopper go from place to place. They sneak into a mental hospital! Yet it all reads like an absolute slog. You never feel the danger. It never feels risky. Never feels like something could happen to them.
The prose is so colourless. Sure, we know what kind of stockings Nora wears, but none of the words build any form of momentum. We get the name of the store from which she got her sopping bags REPEATEDLY, but we are not getting any closer to even just opening up the central mystery.

I think one big issue with it is the fact it's never confidently anything. It's not existential enough, never scary enough, never gorey, spooky, atmospheric. It's just in this state of... nothing really. Characters all talk in this samey voice of no real emotion. They say what they saw and what they felt, but it's hollow. I am being told things without being convinced or infected by their ideas and any passion behind them.
Then again, the characters did really all sound the same, main and side ones alike. We get told about their quirks through their looks and surroundings, yet they all come off sounding like the author. I'm sure she is lovely and all, but she sure as hell doesn't know how to give her characters different vocabulary or ways of expressing themselves, from the 19-year-old manic pixie to the retired apple farmer. Indistinct, like the rest of this book.

The book contains a lot of newspaper clippings and such. Could be fun, wasn't.

So all in all, I just don't want to get myself into a reading slump with something that so fundamentally fails one of the big things about its genre.

4.5/5 - Fantastic mystery thiller novel with unsettling horror themes throughout! This book had me hooked from start to finish as you work your way through the clues with the main characters.
Although I'm docking it 0.5 of a star as I feel the author perhaps relied on considences and people just willing to hand the main investigators information a little too much for my liking, however this did not take away from the overall story.
Overall this book is a gripping, unsettling and creepy read and for someone who isn't really seen in the book for the majority, Cordova has chilling presence the entire way through. I will be thinking about the ending for while to come. I highly recommend!

This book completely played me!! And I absolutely loved it! I spent most of the book in the same state of disorientation and puzzlement that McGrath was feeling himself. Then the book turns our world upside down rendering everything we thought we knew irrelevant. And when I was starting to accept this new reality, the book PLAYED ME AGAIN!!
Beckman could not have explained better in page 531: “His endings are seismic jolts to the psyche. Parting shots that keep you awake wondering for days, for the rest of your life.”

I did really like this but when I read it I was having a rough time and couldn't focus my full attention on it so I think I would like it better if I reread it. Overall I enjoyed the vibes, atmosphere, mixed media, and themes.

For more thoughts watch this liveshow.

I love the story and the mood of this but it could use to be 200 pages shorter and then 100 pages longer still to give it a proper ending.
First off - the story takes a lot of twists and turns and anytime they're in a new locatio ntalking to a new character there is a massive infodump that doesn't matter wahtsoever. I don't need pages on classical music and pianos just because a character happens to be into it. Ditto with black magic. Just give me what's important to the story!

As for the ending , if it ended a few pages before I'd be content. But the specific moment it cut off felt cheap. I like open endings but this is an ending where the character I've been following for 600+ pages will get resolution, it is only I that is left out. Feels very constructed to me. He should join me in my confusion.

I really enjoyed this but if I was being really picky, everything just felt a little bit too convenient. I imagine the author had a room where the walls were covered in notes with bits of string connecting everything together. There is one chapter in particular near the end where literally every clue, every loose end is explained. Normally this would be a good thing but there are SO MANY OF THEM it makes the ending of the book feel a little more light weight than it should have done.
If you strip this book down to its most basic form, it's basically an 18 rated version of ABBA the Movie but it definitely doesn't end with a rendition of “Thank You For The Music..

Een bochtige, boeiende, beklemmende en bizarre rit waarbij je je afvraagt of je al dan niet een echte verklaring wilt of dat je liever in het onmogelijke gelooft.
Vooral de atmosfeer en de reis die in dit boek wordt gemaakt, zijn dingen die me bij blijven. De puzzel steekt bijzonder goed in elkaar en de oplossing is heel bevredigend. Alleen het einde liet me een beetje hongerig.

Her father's daughter
a manic pixie dead girl
obsessed on impact.

The most unique book I've ever read. EVERYONE needs to read this, doesn't matter if its not your taste, it wasn't mine either but I gave it a shot and it was worth it.

3.5 stars

I ended up not writing this review last night when I actually finished the book because I felt I had to give my brain a second to decide what it thought of this. I guess the first thing I need to say is that this book took me an uncalled for 3.5 months (even though I probably only read it for a week or two effectively) and that may be part of the reason I couldn't really get into the flow of this book.

Let's just start with this: this book has a great prologue. Very very intriguing, very makes-me-want-to-read-right-on, which, kinda what a prologue is supposed to do but okay, kudos for that one. I really liked the focus on the cult-aspect of Cordova's films, because, I won't lie, if he existed in real life I'd be fascinated with the guy and his stories as well. So then the mystery starts, young woman dies, reporter goes on a hunt with his two side-kicks, yada yada yada.

Thing is, right: I picked this book up again a couple of days ago after literally 3 months of not reading it, I didn't remember very clearly what specific ~mystery things~ had been happening because let's face it, I don't have the memory for that, and I didn't feel like I missed anything. Spent the next week wrestling through the middle section of the book until things picked up again nearing the 70% mark and I finished the last 30% in a day. So I guess I feel mostly like the whole middle section of the book could've been condensed drastically because you have build up and you have tedious telling the reader about what's happening and the latter just doesn't interest me.

Also, the characters? One dimensional. Mr Scott Protagonist is a dick for most of this book, very judgemental, supposedly a good reporter but that's debatable, bad father to his five year old child (literally takes her on trips that he knows are gonna be dangerous multiple times, uses her to get close to sources). And because most of the book is written from Scott's perspective, characters like Nora and Hopper, which seem to have potential, stay flat, one-dimensional people, their choices rushed (I don't even want to talk about the love story plotline that popped its head in for two pages 60% in, never to be seen again).

But alright, to be entirely fair: this is a mystery/thriller and while that obviously doesn't mean you shouldn't put an effort into character building it also means there's usually just more of a focus on plot, which, fine. And I will say that when I did get to that 70% mark, I actually got excited and curious again. For about a 100 pages, after which we suddenly take a dive into an ocean of exposition - and that wasn't even that bad. I think I would've given this four stars if it had ended after SpoilerInez Gallo tells Scott about Ashley's illness, if then he'd gone home, sought contact with Hopper and Nora again and maybe showed some fucking humility for ONCE about the way he felt he had the right to deconstruct someone's life the way he had. And then the final ending... I really wasn't a fan of the open endedness of it. I just wasn't interested for a second in the sudden personal development that's trying to be forced onto Scott in those last couple of pages and then we also don't actually get to hear from Cordova (a conversation I was lowkey expecting because I thought there were more pages left in the book)? I would've liked for Scott to see Cordova, realise he's a mere mortal after all, maybe see some humanity from him and hopefully be put in his place a bit by him. But nope, none of that. I think this book left me wanting for answers, but not in the good way, just in the confusing, annoying, trying-too-hard-to-be-mysterious kind of way.

Like some other reviewers said: the book mostly left me with an urge to watch one (or all) of Cordova's films. So I guess in the end, I ended up feeling kind of unsatisfied with a number of things.

This was captivating and misleading the entire time (in a good way). I never really knew what to expect with each chapter because everything was always in question right until the very end.

So. Night Film was quite a long journey for me. And with disappointing finale. I wasted so much time for that book, had so many expectations and got nothing in return.

Yes, I read this in one day. It starts off a bit slow but gets pretty intense by the end. It's kind of like House of Leaves, if House of Leaves was actually a readable story.

(What was up with the goddamn italics though? WAY TOO MANY ITALICS.)

I don't even know where to begin with my thoughts on this book. The writing was excellent, for the most part, but I found the story to be kind of slow and dragging at some points. It was so easy to get immersed in this novel and to feel like it was real. I still want to think that Cordova and all of his films are real because of how much detail the author described them in. The scenes are The Peak were amazingly suspenseful and exciting, and made up for a lot of the slowness of the earlier parts of the novel. So much was left wide open at the end of the novel, but I completely understand and appreciate the author's decision to do that, as it reflects the mysterious Cordova's directing style. Cordova is the main focus of the entire novel, yet he remains mostly a mystery and a complete stranger by the end. He's just like the locked briefcase described in one of his own movies that never gets opened. I also loved the ambiguity of Scott's entire investigation. He goes into it firmly believing in reality and refuses to get caught up in others' beliefs in supernatural and demonic explanations for what's going on. Yet over time, he changes completely and is so caught up in the case that he starts to lose touch with reality. I loved that the novel led me in the same direction, and I started believing (somewhat) that this case must be more than it seemed. In the end, it turned out that there was nothing paranormal about the case, and Scott's original belief in reality was the right one. But finding the final truth of it all didn't really matter at all, and I loved that this novel was one of the first ones I've read where that didn't disappoint me. While this novel wasn't as suspenseful or scary as I was expecting, I was surprised by how much I ended up enjoying it and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for something that's likely very different from anything they've read before.

Review: Night Film Thanks to painsomnia, I have spent many darkened hours this week listening to this novel, expertly and deliciously read by Jake Weber. What an odd, previous gift to receive from physical pain.
 
Deadly, sovereign, perfect
 

Dario Argento's Suspiria
 
screams and bright red birds, and astounding hints of hope, as the sun can, in an instant, christen the blackest sea
 

Dario Argento's Tenebrae
 
the edge of the end

I was not sure how to review this. I think if you ignore its literary pretensions, the over-use of italics, the rambling, cheesy ending, and the poor editing and proofreading, what you are left with is quite an entertaining (if bonkers) novel. Prepare yourself for a rollercoaster ride where you will question your grip on reality as you encounter documentary evidence relating to the mysterious film director Cordova and his family. It can be eerie at times and I thought the way that Pessl blended fiction with reality was quite clever at times. I also liked the use of the mocked-up webpages and other documentary evidence. It definitely could have done with more work on the writing, however.

This book was incredible. Hands down one of most inventive mysteries I've come across in quite some time. I loved how immersed I got into the story of this book, at some points feeling just as confused and off balanced as the characters. It was a wild ride that I really enjoyed.