I think Scream may have finally surpassed Halloween as the most imitated slasher movie of all time. Now in Spanish!
Did you know that they are using AI to match actors’ lips to the dubbed voices in foreign language films? It took me a while to realize that fact with the new Spanish-language Netflix import, Killer Book Club. The dubbing was immediately obvious, this AI matching is not capable of that level of illusion yet, but partway through the movie I started to notice that the actors were ostensibly mouthing the same words that were dubbed in, and upon closer inspection realized the digital manipulation at play. Do I have a broader point to make about this latest technological advancement? Not really, although I think it does raise questions about the sanctity of the original performances and further enforces that if you want to truly absorb those performances in a language you don’t understand, sub-titles are really the only option. The performances in Killer Book Club are not particularly demanding of such reverence, however, the AI trick is simply the most interesting thing I took away from watching this movie.
A killer in a clown costume is picking off the members of a book club at a Spanish university and accompanying each kill by posting a new chapter in a book about the murders. There is potential that the murderer is coming from inside the group, potential that they are coming from outside the group, and there is some complicated backstory that points to past sins as a motivation. The film follows the slasher formula to a tee, and more specifically follows the version of the formula created and popularized by Wes Craven in his 1996 film, Scream. I just mentioned Scream as an inspiration for Totally Killer, another 2023 horror movie I streamed for the marathon this year, and its becoming more and more clear to me that the impact of Scream is far wider reaching than just the glut of copycats that littered theaters in the late 90’s. Look, it makes sense, that film is a classic that revitalized the genre during its creative and commercial nadir. The difference between something like Totally Killer and Killer Book Club, though, is the former uses inspiration from Scream to inform its tone, and the latter is derivative to the point of becoming a re-skin of the original.
Have you noticed that I keep finding ways to avoid actually writing about Killer Book Club? That’s because there is nothing to say about it. It simply exists. It is no longer novel to reference the world of horror entertainment inside your horror entertainment anymore. At this point, it would be novel to forgo any meta elements in a horror movie. I like slashers, so it was a reasonably fine way to spend 90 minutes, but I would have already forgotten about it completely if I didn’t have to feed the 31 for 31 beast. I can’t count the number of times I’ve typed a variation of this sentiment, but it is infinitely more interesting for a movie to fail at trying something new than to succeed modestly at something that has been done a million times before. Even the big dumb round clown masks in the movie fall in line with a style that has become trendy since Happy Death Day, itself a movie that derives much of its plot from a 90’s classic. Do yourself a favor and spend your waning October evenings on scary movies with more creative ambitions than this one.
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