BURN THE NEGATIVE

In this homage to classic horror, a reporter is forced to cover the remake of an infamous 1993 film she starred in as a child.

The last time Laura Warren was in Los Angeles, she was a young kid going by another name and reluctantly starring in a slasher flick called The Guesthouse. The intervening years saw eight of the movie's cast and crew members come to terrible ends. Now living in London, she's been strong-armed by her editor into flying west to write about a new miniseries based on the original film. Why is he so adamant about making her write a puff piece anyone could do? Anyway, Laura is determined to stay in LA no longer than the 48 hours it will take to run through a few PR–sanctioned interviews. As if on cue, the body count starts to rise on set, and Laura becomes certain that somebody involved in the production knows who she is—knows and has been waiting for her. The question becomes: Is the show truly cursed, or is it Laura’s past doing the haunting? To figure it out, she teams up with her struggling-actress sister and the psychic hired by the young director in charge of the remake. The mystery is a compelling one, the details unsettling from the jump. Adding to the cult-classic ambiance are the documents interspersed throughout, ranging from social media posts to script pages. These add much-needed texture when the choices Laura and others make begin to feel oversimplified. If the characterizations aren’t always consistent, the nods to movie magic and monsters certainly are. And if the relationships seem to exist only to serve the plot, it’s because the heart of the story belongs to genre. After all, as a fellow child star reminds Laura, “Horror fans are for life.”

A pulpy exploration of the monsters we make and a love letter to cult-classic frights.