NIGHT FILM by Marisha Pessl (Bond/Random House), 489 pages, $34 cloth. Rating: NNN
It’s easy to see why this thriller is getting such big buzz. It explores how people develop unhealthy obsessions with pop culture figures, and Marisha Pessl goes way beyond the usual lengths thriller writers go to make such fixations credible.
Disgraced investigative journalist Scott McGrath is still licking his wounds after being sued by horrormeister Stanislas Cordova. Sensing that elements of the reclusive filmmaker’s shocking films may have been based in a terrifying reality, he’d made one too many statements suggesting the director was dangerous.
When Cordova’s daughter Ashley is found dead in a warehouse, McGrath, despite his professional travails, can’t resist looking into what the cops have called a suicide. Soon he’s gathered evidence that Cordova and his film team are fiendish devil-worshippers.
Pessl’s tendency to overwrite is at times almost laughable. She’s never met a simile she didn’t like. A chandelier hangs like a jellyfish – really? Artificial aspects of the narrative will have your eyes rolling so fast you’ll get dizzy. McGrath inexplicably accepts assistance from two people after chance encounters, and the revelation at the end of the book emerges from a move McGrath could have made way earlier.
But Night Film is nevertheless hugely absorbing, and Pessl’s added creative elements to the story – screen grabs from Cordova fan sites, repros of printed materials, Cordova memorabilia – that make this thriller unique.
Best of all, her portrait of the possibly depraved filmmaker is meticulously drawn. Characters – especially McGrath and a prof who’s a Cordova specialist – expound on his oeuvre in such deep detail, you’d think a filmography actually exists. The book’s app at nightfilmdecoder.com is also cool.
And the story gets pretty creepy.
No surprise that it’s soon to be a major motion picture. The last chapter reads like the final tableau in a screenplay.
Pessl appears at the International Festival Of Authors in October. readings.org.
susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole
