This concept has been used over and over again and no one seems to get it right! I did not finish this book because I was confused for half the plot

This book kinda gave me whiplash. Interesting premise and a well-done ending, but the middle dragged with endless film talk and unlikeable characters. Max was the worst. The haunted camera was the saving grace.

How To Make A Horror Movie And Survive is one of my favorite reads of 2025 so far. I just read Tim Waggoner's novelizations of Ti West's X trilogy and this felt like the perfect follow-up. Max is a horror director of a famous slasher film series. Those projects were fun but now he's something different. He wants to be taken more seriously. To be one of Hollywood's greatest.

Max discovers a film camera in a yard sale that once belonged to an infamous director who captured a gruesome, real-life tragedy on film. Max decides that he must use this camera for his next film. But as he becomes more bent on finishing the film, bodies drop, heads roll, and Max's magnum opus might just be his very last project.

I really enjoyed How to Make A Horror Movie as a horror movie fan. It has the final girl trope, a cursed object, and plenty of gore. I especially loved the tortured artist aspect of Max's character and how that led to his descent into apathy and eventual calamity.

The pacing of this story did feel slow at times but never enough for me to lose interest.

I recommend How To Make A Horror Movie And Survive to fans of 80s horror, Grady Hendrix's Final Girl Support Group, Tim Waggoner's X trilogy novelizations, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Silver Nitrate.

This book had potential, but it ended up feeling like a hollow attempt at real horror without the craft to back it up. The author seems to think he’s above the genre, aiming for high-concept scares but this delivered some pretty flat characters, muddled motivations, and a story that read more juvenile than I like.

Stylistically, it was frustrating—characters constantly growling, grinning, or scowling constantly. Instead of building tension or dread, the book asks the reader to suspend disbelief without earning it, leaving the horror elements feeling both unconvincing and undercooked.

Really disappointed in this one but will continue to read from this author as I've liked his other books before. This one was just a bummer.

Usually, this is not a genre that I prefer to read. However, the title drew me in with its concept and the beginning read like I was watching a movie with a short intriguing passage before the copyright page. I could see this being used as a text for teaching horror in classes. This text felt meta as it offered quotes from different directors about horror, different characters’ perspective on the meaning of horror as a genre, played with several tropes found in films, and interlaced passages of the horror movie script with the chapters near the end. I gave this book a 4/5 because I did not really like the other characters besides Clare until they were dead.

I was really looking forward to this book as I enjoyed his last book, Episode Thirteen. Unfortunately, I was disappointed as half the book I found to be rather boring although the end did help me enjoy it more.

An obsessed film maker, a cursed camera, and a real life final girl: the perfect recipe for an exciting story. ‘How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive’ is a campy romp of a novel.

In Craig DiLouie’s darkly humorous horror novel, 80s slasher director Max Maury is desperate to create a truly terrifying film. When he discovers an occult camera tied to a chilling Hollywood legend, he believes it’s the key to his masterpiece. But the camera may be demonic, and Max’s obsession with it blurs the line between fiction and reality, setting the stage for Sally Priest, the aspiring Final Girl, to face a nightmare unlike any other.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the main character’s inner monologue—it felt a bit forced and detracted from the tension. While the kills were gory, they lacked the vivid descriptions that could have made them truly chilling. The lore of the camera, which is one of the most intriguing aspects, could have been explored a bit further. I found myself wishing the story had been told from the Final Girl’s perspective, watching events unfold without the context of why the cast was dying one by one.

If you go into this expecting a horror novel, you're going to be disappointed, unfortunately. There's very little actual horror and a boat load of discussion on what horror actually is and how to define it. Parts were good and other parts were repetitive and could've been edited. I think this threw off the pacing and took me out of the story.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for gifting me a digital copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

If you like slasher films, then this book is for you! I am not as well versed, so, much like other books that are slasher homages, the fanboy gushing section of the book was a bit of a slog. Much like Stephen Graham Jones's slasher trilogy, we have a main character obsessed with the film genre spewing facts and making references through the first third of the book. DiLouie ups it though, with multiple slasher fans having their takes.

Once the slashing starts, the pace quickens and the actual fun begins. The twist here is that there is the person/monster, but the actual slasher is the camera itself. So it becomes about how individuals interact with the camera. I very much liked the ending, but am not here to spoil it.

Thrilling, meta-horror masterpiece that brilliantly blends suspense, dark humor, and cinematic nostalgia. Excellent!

2.5 stars

How to Make A Horror Movie and Survive is a hard book to review.

On the one hand, it’s a unique idea for a horror story. A director gets his hands on a movie camera that creates real life horror and death. Set in the 1980’s, the story really felt like it took place in the 80’s and captured that time period well. While IMO, the plot was shaky, I did enjoy the very ending the most.

I also enjoyed the exploration of a lot of well-thought out ideas and themes about the true nature of horror, what people will do for fame and not compromising on what’s important to you.

But what I found irritating and what kept taking me out of the story was the constant fluctuation of the silliness vs the book wanting to make serious commentary on the horror genre. The tone went back and forth til I wasn’t sure what the message was supposed to be.

I get that the point of the novel was probably to parallel the over-the-top nature of most slasher films, but the break in the narrative to focus in detail on the techniques of filmmaking, or waxing philosophical for too long on the horror genre, or just how ridiculous the plot and characters were at times, left me just wanting to finish the story and be done with it.

On a prose and sentence level, I did enjoy the author’s writing, so I’d be willing to give future books a shot, but I’ll go in cautiously optimistic.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Redwood Books for the digital arc. All opinions are my own.

I was so excited to read this book. I had such high hopes that I would love it since the concept is fantastic and feels very original. Unfortunately, I struggled with this one.
The writing style didn’t work for me. It wasn’t bad by any means; it just wasn’t for me. I found my mind wandering a lot while I was trying to read this and had to keep pulling my attention back to the story. But I think a lot of people will really enjoy the main characters’ narratives and have no problem staying immersed in the story. If you like horror and have any interest in film-making, I would say give it a try.

*Thanks to Redhook Books, Craig DiLouie, and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced e-book in exchange for honest review*

this one was just okay for me. I didn't hate it and I didn't love it. it was a quick read to get through.

2.5 stars

I'm starting to think that myself and Craig just don't mesh well together and I'm not sure if it's him or me. This is only my 2nd by him and while I think the premises sound amazing and I have anticipated reading them these past couple of years the execution is just not there for me. I find myself bored but yet interested and have high enough hopes to keep reading and it just ends up mid. The gore is definitely there and done ok but that's about all I can say for it.

Thank you to Redhook Books publishing and Netgalley for allowing me an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Disappointing book from DiLouie about a horror director's passionate love of the genre which takes a wicked turn when he finds a camera that has the power to kill. DiLouie tries way too hard to make an ode to horror so that it eventually becomes a sledgehammer to the face. Those of us who read and watch the genre already know how good it is, we don't need it rammed down our throats. We get it. The story gets very silly and dopey as it progresses, with stilted dialogue and way too much philosophizing, the same problem in his last effort. Another book that thinks it's way cleverer than it really is. Not sure I'll read another by this author. Thanks to Netgalley for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was not what I was expecting, but I wasn't disappointed. I found it more humor than horror which ended up being fine.

There was more technical information about moving making than I was expecting. I went back and forth because I found the writing to be good and a lot of it to be interesting, but I also found some parts to be slower than I like.

Overall, it was fairly unique and I would encourage others to read it.

Max is a horror director. A cult hero, even. He changed the face of the slasher movie in the early 80s. But now it's the late 80s, and the Slasher Cycle is heading towards the Parody Stage. Max needs to figure out a way to inject REAL HORROR back into horror movies. Maybe something like a cursed video camera would do the trick?

Sometimes I think I shouldn't try to write a book because it would end up just being a lot of movie references and pieces of horror trivia I know. Then someone writes a book like that and it's a pretty fun read.

A little camp, just enough gore, a complex final girl, and a truly hateable man character are the main ingredients for this slasher casserole. It doesn't break any new ground. it didn't make me swoon. But it's a reminder of why I love this genre.

If you're the type of person who falls asleep to Dream Warriors, this one might be for you.

While I really enjoyed the concept of the novel and the message it wished to portray with the contrast of horror movies and real life as well as the mentions of the importance of horror as a genre, I felt as though both the book and message dragged itself out towards the end, diminishing the impact of the ending. Despite that, throughout my reading, I was thoroughly entertained and enjoyed reading as a whole.

I'd like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read this book.

I like / enjoy horror stories. I like ones that are meta, too. Where they reference things or play as an alternate reality to the world of horror films / tv that we already know about.

This book started off strong. Here we have a director who started off as a poor kid obsessed with horror movies / horror. He creates a low budget film about a character he came up with. The movie was so popular, it gained him several follow up films. To which the studio decided to change the horror character make him go from scary to goofy, give him a love interest, ... basically milk the product dry. This angers our director and at the release of the newest film, during the premiere, he is absolutely disgusted with the movie and his producer's reception (positive) and the audience (positive). He vows to make something scary.

While at the after party, at his producers' house, he comes across the remaining, unedited film of a horror movie that was never completed. In which a director had a real accident / tragedy unfold on film - malfunctioning equipment, leaving people dead. The director wants to recreate that - horror, real horror, is more scary when you discover it's real and not fake. The widow of the director of the unfinished piece is having an estate sale. He finds the camera that may have shot the film and takes it. There, he begins filming with it and strange things start happening.

It was around this time, after that great build up, the book started loosing momentum. That the horror vibe that it promised started slipping through. That the horror I was hoping to happen... wasn't as grisly or creepy as the book made me think. He started hearing the disembodied voice of the dead directors' spirit talk to him, seemingly connected to this piece of equipment. ... And it it was there that the book started loosing me a bit.

I think the story required more fear and creepiness for me to keep reading on. Some who are new to horror books might enjoy it, some who have read horror books might (like me) find the story interesting but the final product not what they thought.

This was a great spooky haunting. I don't know if this would be classified as a haunting. It's a little more complicated than that. This story is about a movie director wanting to make the scariest movie ever. He finds a film camera in a director legend who just recently passed away and our main character is convinced that this specific film camera is what is going to help him make this movie. He soon realizes that the camera might have a mind of its own but there's even more to it. I loved this story. It was refreshing and scary. The ending was all high notes. Once the ball started to roll there was no stopping it till the end. Great ending, I'd even consider it as a HEA.