Killer Book Club (El club de los lectores criminales) is a Spanish horror mystery film released on Netflix on August 25, 2023. It is directed by Carlos Alonso Ojea and Carlos García Miranda writes the screenplay. The film has a runtime of about 1 hour and 29 minutes.
The cast of the film includes Veki Velilla as Ángela, Iván Pellicer as Nando, Álvaro Mel as Sebas, Daniel Grao, Priscilla Delgado as Virginia, Iván López, Carlos Alcaide as Rai, María Cerezuela as Eva, Ane Rot as Sara, Hamza Zaidi as Koldo, Carmela Lloret and others.
Killer Book Club Review
The film starts with the scene of a young girl ripping off books and a lady with her knees on the floor, begging her to stop. The girl then puts fire to the place and everything gets enveloped in the flames. The story then takes a leap of 6 years and introduces us to the eight characters, whom we would be following on this harrowing journey. They are Angela, Nando, Sara, Rai, Eva, Virginia, Koldo and Sebas, who all are a student at the university, except Nando, who is Angela’s boyfriend and just hangs out with the group. They are all a part of the book club and their latest read is Killer Clown.
By sharing their thoughts on the book, they come across the term – Coulrophobia, an irrational fear of clowns. Another word that comes up a few times at the start is – contrived, which is something that’s created deliberately. Angela is a budding writer, who had a best-seller book when she was young but hasn’t been able to write anything since. It all starts when she is about to mail her Professor to ask his opinion on a few chapters she wrote. But she doesn’t send it, yet he somehow gets an email and invites her to his room. There he tries to take advantage of her and when she protests, he feels confused and screams that isn’t this what she wants.
To take revenge, the book club members decide to scare the Professor by donning the clown masks and chasing him in the college, at night. However, while chasing him away, someone from the group hits him in the face with a hammer and by the time he reaches where Angela is, the Professor falls from the corridor – on top of the statue with a spike. Horrified by what their actions had led to, they swear to never tell a soul about what happened and burn their masks together.
Also Read: Street Woman Fighter Season 2 Episode 1 Highlights: Lots of Drama and Intense No Respect Battles
Although the case closes as a suicide, an ambiguous novel turns up on a fanfiction site by a person named Mad Clown. They write about every single detail that happened with the professor and give the eight friends a nickname like Angela is the heroine, Nando is the emo etc. The clown also claims that it will kill each member of the book club, one by one, sending everyone into a frenzy to figure out who is the clown & if it’s one of the members. One by one the members are killed but their bodies can not be found, making them believe that it could be a prank, until Angela realises that it could be deeply linked with her life.
As a slash horror, it is a decent film that everyone would fairly enjoy. But if you look at the story, then it starts off with a good hook and mystery but becomes quite predictable after 30-40 minutes into it. And the end is like a dramatic soap opera, where the ‘heroine’ Angela survives it all. To give a hint, everything starts because her debut novel was actually based on a real person’s life and they were quite angry with her for publishing it as her story. So she relates that the person could be taking revenge on her.
When this part is revealed, the film just loses all the momentum. It would have been a much better plot if Angela was the real antagonist, due to some twisted mind or something like that. This is where the word contrived comes to mind, as everything feels so made up that you want to believe it’s not real and the story will salvage itself. Either everything will turn out to be the content of Angela’s new book or some dream.
However, nothing like that happens and it’s a disappointing end. What I really liked in the film is how they used the lights creatively to create a dramatic effect. Most of the scenes use props that emit neon, fluorescent lights and they work as the main key lights or to divert the attention towards a certain object or person. Other than that, fans of slash horror might enjoy it, if you don’t pay much attention to the loose storyline and subpar acting.
Rating: 2/5
Killer Book Club is available for streaming on Netflix.
Also Read: Who Is Erin Carter Ending Explained: What is Erin Running Away From? Is Harper Her Real Daughter?
Leave a Reply