You read that right, a found footage book.
Crazy.
And brilliant.
I had discovered this book via a post on a horror blog (I don’t want to venture a guess which and get it wrong) and headed over to the Kickstarter page and chipped in to help it along. The idea of a found footage book really sparked something in me.
It was more than an epistolary story but one that was infused with images to help push the narrative forward and help ‘show’ that something was going on.
I was happy when the book was fully funded and waited anxiously to be able to check it out and am glad to say that the book lives up to the premise.
What is that premise?
The book centers around a box that is discovered what is inside the box. That ‘what’ is the journal, audio, and pictures, of a young man confined to a wheelchair after a horrific accident. Unable to return to school, he is stuck in a low-rent apartment with his mother, who is often at work. As boredom overtakes him the teen starts to look out of the window of his apartment and into the lives of his neighbors. As he is watching the apartment across the way though he begins to see movement in one apartment in particular and hear the sound of a howling dog. The more he watches that apartment though the less sure he becomes that it’s a dog in there and not something else. As a mother and daughter eventually move into the space the teen sees that it is no dog that was howling but something else, something dangerous that seems to have its eyes on the girl and mother, and there is nothing the teen, confined to a wheelchair and stuck in his apartment, can do.
The book itself consists of photos taken from the VHS footage the teen is shooting for his daily journals and the audio he includes. Here is where you learn about him, his mother, and about the thing in the apartment across the way.
The story unwinds slowly, the photos getting more and more intense as more is revealed, leading towards a really fun, pulse-pounding climax. The finale has some really interesting twists and the book really works.
It’s not perfect, some of the language stilted, and the feeling that perhaps there could have been more ‘footage’ added in, but the book is good. The footage is all really well done and captures the aesthetic of images from a VHS tape, with the green tint of night vision and a blurred look as the image is zoomed in.
It’s a fun, creepy read and it does really well by the ‘found footage’ idea behind it all. If you are a fan of the sub-genre it’s very well worth your time to track the book down.
It’s a quick read and will give you a good shiver.
Mister Howl purchase here.
…c…
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 