The Deadly Book Club or El club de los lectores criminales is a Spanish film from the slasher family. If it doesn’t claim to revolutionize the genre, it is friendly and allows you to have a good time, without thinking too much.
When reality catches up with fiction
The story begins with eight friends, students in literature. They all have a creative writing course, to become a writer. Except that one of the students is already a writer: Angela, who wrote a bestseller in her very young years and has since suffered from blank page syndrome.
No matter how hard she tries, nothing comes and naturally, I can only feel compassion for Angela. Nothing is more frustrating than having your ideas in a foggy fog, but being unable to line up three words as soon as you are in front of your text editor.
Between two workshops, friends get together to talk about horror books and scenarios on this theme. Obviously, we guess from the first minutes that our fans will be caught up in their common passion. The film aims to be a kind of homage to the Scream saga, but with a little nuance.
A first enjoyable murder
In certain horror films, when we discover the characters, there is sometimes one of whom we say “well, when is this one getting unsoldered?” “. In the Mortal Book Club, there is: the creative writing teacher.
So yes: his death was an accident, the students didn’t really want to kill him. But, too bad, these things happen, especially when a killer clown has decided to get involved. Why be satisfied with its disappearance?
Quite simply because he is a sexual predator. Having decided to abuse his authority over Angela, the latter manages to escape from him. We understand over the course of events that this character trait was not ignored by other people. So, good riddance and what’s more, his death is actually quite funny, even if we had already seen it.
Streaming and clown
After the professor’s death, a mysterious Internet user begins to tell a horror story. But, this fiction strangely resembles the murder of the professor. The friends understand that the narrator plans to attack them.
For this, what’s better than a clown? This figure, now traditional in horror cinema, continues to arouse anxiety in the real world. Our friends will therefore come across a clown each time, until reaching a sort of peak of anxiety.
During a fair, the murderer will stream the murders and the friends will embark on a clown hunt to discover his identity. Obviously, the thousands of people watching the stream have no idea of notifying the police. From this point of view, it’s quite realistic. Today, we start by filming and streaming and eventually, if we have time and three neurons connected, we notify the police.
The egg or the chicken?
What is quite pleasant in this film is first of all the fairly faithful representation of social networks by people. Film – in its conception as an artistic entity – is only art imitating life, itself being inspired by art. Here, we are in full demonstration. Unfortunately, experience shows that a person can perfectly trumpet on a social network that they are going to do something reprehensible, without anyone reacting.
But what is more interesting is the place of lies in the lives of the protagonists. Everything that happens to them would never have happened if they had just been honest. I keep saying it: the main reason I don’t lie is that it exhausts me. The amount of energy and brain time one must put into creating a coherent long-term lie is never outweighed by the result. It’s much easier to tell the truth up front.
The Mortal Book Club was quite unfairly criticized by Internet users. Personally, I didn’t see the time passing, I got into it quite easily and I really liked the fall. It’s not the horror film of the century or even of the year. However, for a low-budget film from Spain, the result is quite honorable.
The Deadly Book Club is available on Netflix.