Endings are the Second Hardest Part (Right After Titles)

I really liked this book right up until the last 10% or so. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, so I’ll move the reason down to the end of the post.

Night Film is about an investigative journalist, a filmmaker and his daughter; it’s about living each moment of your life fully. It’s about horror movies and why they scare us.

Scott McGrath is a disgraced journalist. After comparing filmmaker Stanislas Cordova to Hitler, McGrath was then accused and found guilty of slandering the director. McGrath insists he was set up, natch. Cue loss of career, marriage, and credibility.

The set up was pure gold, I couldn’t stop listening to the story. Cordova’s daughter commits suicide, and McGrath is convinced there’s more to it. He finds two sidekicks and the trio hunt down the daughter’s final movements, Cordova’s whereabouts, and finally infiltrate the locked down estate where Cordova’s cult-classic films were made.

I enjoyed the way this author incorporated different forms of media, web pages, scripts, etc. I enjoyed the way we were led to believe something hinky and perhaps supernatural was afoot. I enjoyed reading about the Cordova films and how weird they seemed.

I did not enjoy the ending. It felt, deflated and like a missed opportunity. The denouement inside Cordova’s estate was thrilling, crazy and suspenseful. I wanted it to be something more, I wanted to find out that Cordova was an alien, or 200 years old, or an emotional vampire. Something.

Alas. This book had an interesting theme of how we live life, what are we living for, are we so preoccupied that we are not truly living. But I cannot recommend this book to you.

MCM