The new movie Killer Book Club is out, and it features a risky take on the already post modernized genre. The movie follows the bullet points of the slasher genre almost too literally and yet manages to engage the viewers. It’s one of those films that engages because of the on-the-nose treatment of the plot and not too much because of the characters or the performances. It’s not that the characters are not well-written. But the main detrimental point is that there are too many characters to deal with, and the film doesn’t get the time to flesh each one out properly. The labeling of each character as the archetypal character associated with the genre does help, but it’s no excuse for not writing a full-fledged character. The ‘heroine’ of this slasher is a girl by the name of Angela, played by Viki Vellila. She is, by definition, the central character, and she is the one who was involved in the origin story of the killer. Let’s take a look at Angela, the heroine:
Spoilers Ahead
Viki Vellila As Angela
Angela, who once became relatively famous due to the horror novel ‘The Girl From Carrion,’ which she wrote as a teen, was now just an ordinary girl who was part of a niche book club that consisted of horror genre fans just like herself. She called them her friends, but they were more like random people who were connected by the common thread of their love for the genre. Actually, Angela didn’t even like the horror books anymore. They felt too contrived for her. Even her professor, a man named Cruzado, agreed with her. But the other members of the book club disagreed. Anyway, her college life was going as expected until she contacted Cruzado to seek his advice on her new novel. She thought she had not actually sent the mail, but apparently Cruzado had gotten it and invited her to his office. Things got awkward between the two, and Cruzado crossed all lines of decency and tried to get close to her. Things took a bizarre turn when he tried to rape her. Although Angela managed to get away and Cruzado didn’t go through with his monstrous agenda, she was left scarred.
Angela had a boyfriend named Nando, who was also part of the book club, and when he got to know about what Cruzado had done, the news got to the other members as well. Nando cared about Angela, but there was another member of the club who wanted to one-up Nando. Sebas, the man who always picked on Nando, had a thing for Angela. Nando had tried to make Angela see that Sebas was just pretending to be her friend to get close to her, but Angela never listened. When everyone heard about Angela’s horrible experience with Cruzado, they all decided to teach him a lesson, but it was Sebas who brought the genius touch. To hide their identities, he showed everyone the videos of a local clown prankster who scared people in the most unusual ways. So everyone got the masks and went into Cruzado’s office to teach him a lesson after dark.
Angela had agreed at first. How could she let him get away? She could have gone to the authorities, but Cruzado was a well-respected teacher, and there is often the fear that the woman won’t be believed in such cases. Maybe Angela had decided to be a part of this. She wasn’t even sure what they were all going to do wearing the silly clown masks, but one thing was certain: They didn’t expect anyone to die. Someone attacked Cruzado, which was never the plan, and in a state of delirium, he ran toward Angela, who panicked and pushed him away. Cruzado tripped and fell from the balcony, ending up dead.
Contacting the police would mean ending up in jail, or so they thought. Angela, who hadn’t even planned the whole thing, was terrified. Everyone decided to stay home, but this horror wasn’t over yet. A serial killer was onto them. Yes! Indeed, a serial killer was in their midst, apparently a novelist, as he started to take out the members of the book club one by one and detail the gory events chapter by chapter on the site Escrileo. Obviously, he knew that they had killed Professor Cruzado and were hiding it from the police. He did them all a favor by not revealing their identities but giving them a label that suited their personalities. For example, Angela was like the protagonist of the serial killer novel, so she was labeled the ‘heroine.’ The heroine had started to develop a serious case of coulrophobia, which is an acute fear of clowns. She started to have hallucinations where a clown was attacking her.
The members thought long and hard and came to the conclusion that the killer must be one of them, as nobody else would’ve known that they were the ones responsible for Cruzado’s unfortunate and accidental death. In horror genres, the ‘heroine’ survives till the very end and becomes a witness to the murderous mayhem caused by the serial killer. This is exactly what happened. First, the chapter on Virginia, the ‘brat, was published, and Angela couldn’t find her body. Then Rai, the ‘wild’, died. Gradually, everybody was killed except Nando, the ’emo,’ and Sebas, the’simp.’ Angela couldn’t figure out why the killer was targeting her. Cruzado was the one who had traumatized her, and yet the killer was after her. What mistake did she commit that warranted a death sentence?
If the theory that the killer was among them was true, then Angela had to figure out which one of them was it—Nando or Sebas? Nando’s chapter was published online, and yet he was miraculously alive. Was it because he was the killer? Or was this because of Koldo, the influencer’s polling idea? See, Koldo had started an online vlog where he wanted people to guess who was the next person to be killed by the clown killer. Maybe the killer had a bit of fun and bluffed the readers, which is why Nando was alive. Angela had slept with Sebas recently and was not ready to admit to herself that perhaps Nando had been right all along. He had warned her not to get too close to Sebas, and now she had to consider the possibility that perhaps Sebas was the actual killer.
To her utter dismay, Sebas was indeed the killer. But Why? Before she could ponder over that question, it turned out that Sebas wasn’t the only killer. Virginia, the ‘brat’, was also involved. Sebas and Virginia were the killer duo. Sebas had planned the whole thing because he wanted to torture Angela as much as she had tortured his girlfriend Virginia by stealing her life and putting her story in her novel, ‘The Girl from Carrion.’
The protagonist of Angela’s novel is a girl named Alicia. She was a real person with whom Angela frequently talked through Escrileo. Virginia was, in fact, the very same girl as Alicia in the novel. Alicia and Sebas were both mentally insane, which might’ve been why they were together. Alicia confessed to killing her own mother and told Sebas about Angela’s novel. Sebas had promised that the writer of that horror novel would suffer. This whole plan was Sebas’ way of torturing Angela before both Sebas and Alicia rejoiced in killing her. It was Sebas who had emailed Cruzado and set off the chain reaction. They had made a perfect plan, except they faltered a bit and left Nando alive. He came and killed Sebas, while Angela managed to set Alicia on fire, just as Alicia had set fire to her own mother, who had tortured her all throughout her life. It seemed like Nando and Angela had survived. But a few years down the road, when Angela and Nando had moved on from these gruesome murders, Alicia reappeared in her clown costume. It could be that Angela had not fully recovered from her hallucinations and coulrophobia and hence saw Alicia. Or perhaps Alicia survived the fire and came back with a half-charred face to exact her revenge. Angela always wanted to move on from the horror stories, but it seemed like they were not done with her yet.