Oh my God! A horror slasher about a book club that focuses on horror fiction?! Can't believe I just discovered this one. It's as if it were written for me in particular.
El club de los lectores criminales, the film's original Spanish title, is based on the book of the same name by García Miranda. From a plot standpoint, it shares a lot with Scream. In fact, much of the plot and the tone are lifted almost directly from Kevin Williamson's deconstruction of modern slashers.
But Killer Book Club takes the premise of a campus slasher and moves it into territory I love -- writing and reading books. Even the mysterious death that sets the plot into action involved writing and coming up with story ideas. Any more than that, well, that would be spoilers.
Writing that lacks truth. What is truth?
In the first few minutes of the movie, we have a scene set in a writing course at college. Our professor, who is clearly not in favor of horror writing, says: "Monsters, demons, ghosts, witches… and other representations of darkness have never been well received by critics, despite their commercial success. I've always seen horror as a mediocre genre. It has a major weakness. It always seems to be missing something. What could it be?"
A student responds: "Maybe that the stories lack authenticity?"
