‘Night Shoot: A Horror Novel’ – David Sodergren

 

Page Count: 230 Pages

I normally open these posts with a little ramble about how a book came to my attention, this time though? The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur, what with one thing and another, and honestly, it’s like ‘Night Shoot’ just turned up on my doorstep, demanding to be read. Rationally, I know that I must have ordered it. I just can’t remember when or why. Anyway…

I had some free time on my hands yesterday (finally!) and wanted something that I could just dive into and let the plot ‘happen at me’ (well, that was an awkward phrase but, you know what I mean). The blurb describes ‘Night Shoot’ as ‘a delirious homage to the slasher movies of the 1980s’ so I figured it could very well be the book I was looking for.

And you know what? My eyebrows invariably raise when a blurb gets all cocky and full of itself but on this occasion, the blurb was telling the truth…

A group of desperate student film makers break into Crawford Manor for an unauthorized night shoot. They have no choice. Their lead actress has quit. They’re out of time. They’re out of money.

They’re out of luck.

For Crawford Manor has a past that won’t stay dead, and the crew are about to come face-to-face with the hideous secret that stalks the halls.

Will anyone survive…the NIGHT SHOOT?

‘Night Shoot’ ended up being exactly like a 1980s slasher movie (in all the best ways)but at the same time, very nearly wasn’t… After a frantic opening (which was brilliant by the way, it showed us a lot without actually telling us anything, very intriguing), the plot slammed on the brakes and proceeded to take its own sweet time building up to the main event. And when you think about it, that’s probably fair enough. Dialogue and the kind of anecdotal details that don’t take so long to establish on screen are naturally going to take up pages in a book and slow things down. I’ll be honest though, I struggled with the abrupt change in pace and the time that it took for things to get going again.

I’ll tell you what though, I’m really glad I stayed with it.

The lead-up to the main event may not create much in the way of tension but what it did end up doing was give me many reasons to hope that everyone on the crew, except Elspeth, died horribly over the rest of the book. I’d be very hard pressed to come up with a group of people more deserving of what waits in Crawford Manor. Honestly, bastards the whole lot of them (apart from the hitch hiker who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time). And it was like Sodergren looked into my head, saw what I was thinking and said, “don’t worry Graeme, leave it with me…”

If the first part of ‘Night Shoot’ was like going from 60mph to an immediate full stop, the second part sped up to a point where I literally felt like I was hanging on by my fingertips. I’m not going to give too much away but I will say that the ‘Second Act’ is pretty much relentless in terms of jump scares and people dying messily, all set against a gorgeously realized gothic backdrop. I’ll admit it, I found it a little too easy to get lost in Crawford Manor (if you’ve seen one stately bedroom…) but that just added to the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped. I’m not sure if that was the intention but that’s how I ended up feeling so if that was the intention, it worked ;o)

And fair play to Sodergren for taking Elspeth on a journey such that when the final scene was playing out, she was able to take the next step on her own terms. You wouldn’t have seen her doing that at the beginning and it’s a testament to Sodergren’s characterization here that it feels more like organic growth rather than spectacle for the hell of it.

I did wonder where ‘Night Shoot’ was going to start off with but I’m really glad that I stuck around to see where it ended up. ‘Night Shoot’ does exactly what it says on the tin and does it bloody well, I’m going to have to check out more of David Sodergren’s work.