What a read!
British horror-writer Adam Nevill’s Last Days doorstopper is part found footage, has a true crime-vibe (figuratively only, there is nothing true here) and part old-school horror.
Last Days tells the story of down-to-his-last-penny filmmaker Kyle, who is offered a lucrative job by a strange benefactor who wants Kyle to make a documentary about a cult that destroyed it self in a horrible murder suicide in 1975. The cult was started in London, moved to France and then ended in the desert in the United States
Kyle sets out with his mate Dan to investigate and film interviews with surviving members. Dan is his camera-man and Kyle refuses to work with anyone else. They start filming in the cults first HQ in London, interviewing a woman who was part of the cult’s early days.
Pretty soon, however, Kyle and Dan realize something is wrong. Strange visions and sounds haunt the footage they record, and the people they interview meet their deaths soon after filming. As they travel from site to site, filming and interviewing they realize that the cult isn’t quite as dead as the reports from 1975 indicate.
This is a proper horror book. Scares and grisly details and a great ending.
It was recommended to me by Neil over at the fantastic Talking Scared podcast.
My only gripe is that the middle of the book sagged – we realize something strange is going on but Nevill insist on beating us over the head with it. The ending is great but a little sudden. Small gripes for such a great book.
Solid horror.
Aside: I seriously recommend you listen to Talking Scared. You could start with this episode, where Neil talks to Sadie Hartmann and Emily Hughes about forthcoming horror and some greats.
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