If you like a slow burn thriller and Creepy Pasta Vibes this book maybe for you.

I had high hopes for the book. While I did enjoy it. I learned a lot about my reading preferences while reading it.

No fault to the author I had thought it would be more of a Blair Witch Project vibe to it. I wanted the book to capture me and hold me. I was easily distracted while reading the novel.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read The October Film Haunt. These thoughts are my own and freely given.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for approving!

Unfortunately, this was a DNF for me. The premise of the novel was amazing, but I every time I picked it up, I immediately wanted to put it down. Maybe I will try this one out at a later time.

Michael Wehunt's "The October Film Haunt," was easily my most anticipated book since I first learned of its existence. Having been a massive fan of his collections, and particularly his lore, I was overjoyed to hear that he was turning one of my favorite of his stories into a full novel. It's hard to understate my level of excitement when I was able to obtain an ARC copy. I went into this book expecting big things....and I got them.

Wehunt has delivered what I think is one of the best tributes to horror fans I've ever read. It is a lovingly crafted, meta-horror narrative that shows respect for the history of the genre, in every medium, as well as a treat for people who are fans of his specific lore. This is a book littered with Easter eggs for you to find, and with every discovery, pulls you that much further into the mind-bending narrative he's crafting. You will feel all at once complicit, and victimized by the journey, and find yourself deliciously trapped by the end. I can honestly say my stomach fell out after turning the last page, because he got me. He really, really did.

I won't do a recap of the narrative, as the book's copy page can do that for you, but I will say that in choosing to tell the story the way he did, Wehunt re-invents the way a meta-narrative is constructed, and after this book's release, you'll never look at this particular mode of storytelling in quite the same way again. It is a book that boldly asks, many times, "do you want to belong?" and then has the sheer audacity of showing you exactly what that could mean.

I can't recommend this one enough to people who not only like horror, but who like it personal, visceral, and right up close, because this book is gonna get you, and it won't be letting you go. Check it out when it releases, for sure.

I'd like to thank St. Martin's Press for providing me an ARC.

I love books that use mixed media because it makes the reading experience so much more interesting and enjoyable. There were some really creepy scenes in this book, which made me feel like I was in some of my favorite horror movies. The premise of a book about horror movie lovers was perfect. I think what made this book less than five stars for me was the pacing. I think it was too slow at some points, which lost me at times.

This book started out so strong. The premise was really interesting and the atmosphere was tense and unsettling. The fast pace of the beginning was perfect and it really sucked you into the story, along with really tense moments and a lingering eeriness. However, around the 40% mark, the pacing basically dropped off and I felt like I was struggling to force myself to keep reading. I also felt like the writing and sentence structure was often clunky and sometimes just didn’t make sense. Plus, the constant jumping between characters was so confusing, I was often like who? Or skipping back to see if I had missed something. I was left feeling like I wanted more from the characters, I never really felt a connection with them. I also felt like some of the plot line just really didn’t make sense to me, as to why these characters in particular were being targeted. Overall, the book just felt too long. The storyline became slow and convoluted. Wehunt definitely did deliver on some pretty chilling scenes and the sense of horror was there. There was suspense, cultish vibes, and found-footage horror, but this book just needed something to make it as good as it has the potential to be.

This book started out eerie and creepy and full of missing bits—things I can’t ever stop reading. It was such a spiral into madness, and I enjoyed the format of the book so much. Definitely recommend!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book! Opinions are my own.

Oh Nelly this was a looooooong book..took me about a week to finish and unfortunately I just didn’t feel myself having that *want* to pick it up and read. It ended up feeling more like a have to finish sadly.

Although this book had a lot of really great components, I found myself getting lost in the overly poetic seeming nature of the story telling. What was meant to be beautifully written ended up missing the mark for me.

Jorie Stroud is a once horror buff turned recluse due to a series of unfortunate blog posts on her October Film Haunt blog. Retreating to a rural Vermont town, strange things start to happen to her and her son, Oli. When someone mails her a video of the movie that ended her career, something is off. The movie seems to be updated, starring her. Will she become a Final Girl, or like the title of the movie suggests is there Proof of Demons?

If you like a unique horror plot, this is for you. Thank you to SMP for sending me an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion! Releases 9/30.

I was intrigued by the horror film premise but found the execution of that plot to be fairly dry and uninteresting. I wanted a story with Halloween vibes that I could recommend this fall season but I didn't get that from this novel. It wasn't inherit bad but it was not strong enough to hold my attention past the first few chapters.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

"Will you believe in what you made?"

I was excited to read this book, as I am a big fan of any stories revolving around cursed films, but I ultimately finished feeling letdown.

I did really like the first 3rd of the book. It was building good tension and imbued a definite sense of foreboding. However, the story then started to drag, and by the halfway point I just wanted it to be over.

There are a number of good elements to the story, but it might have been more effective with fewer characters or tangential plot points. Also, the main character, Jorie, wasn't particularly engaging, and I was more or less ambivalent towards her fate.

If you are a fan of cursed film novels, possibly paranormal cults and slasher vibes, then this is still worth checking out. 3.5⭐️

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for providing this book for review consideration via Netgalley.

Book review of The October Film Haunt by Michael Wehunt. Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for my gifted ARC.

Some books don’t just tell a horror story—they conjure one. The October Film Haunt is that kind of novel. Michael Wehunt has written a deeply unsettling, emotionally intelligent work that straddles the line between supernatural terror and psychological unraveling. It’s a horror novel that never forgets the human cost of fear—or the way a story can dig into the world and refuse to let go. If The Ring and House of Leaves had a slow-burning, grief-stricken cousin raised on found footage and film theory, this would be it.

Jorie Stroud is our way in. Once the face of a horror blog turned viral phenomenon, she’s now a recluse, a single mother raising her son in Vermont, trying to stay invisible. Years ago, she and her two friends—Beth and Colin—ran The October Film Haunt, a site dedicated to exploring real filming locations from horror movies and documenting their overnight visits. Their legend peaked with an infamous blog post about a night spent at the cemetery where the obscure cult film Proof of Demons was shot. Jorie embellished what happened. The post went viral. And someone died.

Now, ten years later, a VHS tape arrives at Jorie’s doorstep. Proof of Demons—but not the version she remembers. Subtle differences. Edited scenes. It’s a message. Maybe a warning. Maybe an invitation. The past isn’t done with her, and neither are the “Rickies,” a devoted, rabid fanbase obsessed with the film and its mysterious director, Hélène Enriquez. They believe Jorie’s going to be in the sequel. She doesn’t want to act. But someone’s already started filming.

What follows is a slow spiral into dread. The book moves like a documentary gone wrong—layered perspectives, intercut blog posts, Reddit threads, Wikipedia entries, and a cast of characters who each hold a different piece of the puzzle. There’s Coleman, an older man with cancer and a lingering memory of something monstrous. Trevor, the artist who helped birth the Pine Arch Creature and now regrets what he made. Beth, estranged and bitter. And Jorie, increasingly uncertain whether she’s being manipulated, haunted, or filmed. Maybe all three.

This book is not about jump scares. It’s about what it feels like when the walls start to close in. When your past starts whispering in your ear. When internet myth bleeds into real-world violence, and horror becomes contagious. It’s about guilt, and motherhood, and the cost of telling stories that get out of control. It’s also about obsession—how it starts online, festers in dark corners of fandom, and takes on a life of its own.

Michael Wehunt’s prose is masterful—restrained and lyrical, yet full of menace. The writing carries a sense of weight, of inevitability. There are lines that chill without trying to be clever. “Will you believe in what you made?” one character asks. That quote stuck with me. Because in this book, belief has teeth. It isn’t harmless. It pulls people under.

The horror here is both intimate and meta. It knows the rules of the genre and plays with them. Jorie, a former horror obsessive herself, is painfully aware of every trope she’s walking into. She knows the “final girl” mythos. She knows how these things usually end. And yet she can’t escape the script.

The only place this novel may lose some readers is in its pacing. This is a deliberately structured, slow-burn story. It takes its time building tension. Some chapters linger in backstory or side characters, which can feel like detours. But those threads all serve a larger design. By the end, the full shape of the story emerges—and it’s devastating.

The climax is both surreal and grounded in deep emotional truth. Without spoiling anything, I’ll say that the final confrontation doesn’t rely on spectacle, but on intimacy. What’s terrifying isn’t just the supernatural threat—it’s the realization that stories, once loosed into the world, can’t be controlled. They shape reality. They consume people. Sometimes they demand sequels.

The October Film Haunt is a book that gets under your skin. It’s not just scary—it’s resonant. It explores how horror lives in us, how it spreads, and what it means to be both the audience and the subject of a story. Fans of Paul Tremblay, Adam Cesare, and Stephen Graham Jones will find a lot to love here, but Wehunt has his own voice—quietly disturbing, elegant, and deeply human.

I won’t forget this one anytime soon. It’s a novel that lingers. Like a cursed tape. Like a memory you’re not sure you invented. Like something watching from behind the camera.

I was so excited for this book when I first saw the ARC. The combination of a horror novel and movies grabs me. I have mixed feelings about how it plays out in The October Film Haunt.

There's good creepiness, mysteriousness, and suspense. This novel actually put me on edge a couple times, which is rare. The women are written as human beings, and until the middle, I believed in them. Two chapters went wrong for me with actions that struck me as out of character.

The Coleman sections didn't connect for me. Maybe I missed something. I even did a search for the first mention of him to try to make sense of all the page time for his story. By the time the point is made, it was anticlimactic.

I enjoyed the perceptions, the atmosphere of the settings, the exploration of guilt, grief, ruptured friendship, the depiction of social media trends and attacks, the blurring of the real with the possibly occult.

The greatest difficulty was the extent to which the characters don't take obvious danger seriously. To avoid plot spoilers: After A, B, and C, would any intelligent person with these characters' backgrounds do X, Y, and Z? 👀 They're 'pushing forty' and one of them has a child. My interest in the book plummeted at 50%.

There are some strong, fresh takes and good imagery, but the excessive mysteriousness and character jumps make it painfully slow to get to the reveals. To me, A lot of the book is concerned with sadness rather than horror. By the final 20% when things begin to tie together, I was no longer engaged and only finished it out of curiosity.

I'm considering whether all the Scooby Doo and Scream references suggest things aren't meant to be taken seriously, but that doesn't fit the tone of most of the book. If it's intended as parody, it's a jarring, discordant result. Taken as a horror novel, it dropped into idiot plot territory, drastically undercutting a book that had the potential to be so much better than it turned out to be.

Thank you for the eARC for consideration. These are solely my own opinions.

solid and fun horror book movie thing. i was VERY surprised by the trevor henderson collab fictionalization. definitely interesting. 4 stars. tysm for the arc.

Good, scary premise about Jorie, a former horror fan/influence/blogger, who is caught up in a sequel to the film that ruined her life. But the story drags a lot, there are too many characters that you don't really care about, the supernatural elements are hard to understand, and the ending is way too confusing.

Thanks again to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for providing me this eARC in exchange for an honest review. Not exactly a lost horror film but a scary entry in "is this real or not" horror genre The October Film Haunt satisfied this reader's yearn for original horror. Needless to say I was spellbound by the story and really fell into it. Now I need to read the origin story for the idea. Highly recommended.

There is a great story in here, but it's beneath a lot of filler, flowery writing that goes too far at times, and no real hook to keep me interested in the book. The first half is kind of boring, repeatedly going into a vague depth about characters and a film that I still felt I didn't know by the end of the book. The second half of the book is great, but by then, I don't care for any of the characters because they don't have much of a personality. The Coleman sections disturbed the pacing. Wehunt is a great writer, but the story didn't click for me.

Book Review 📚
Title: The October Film Haunt
Author: Michael Wehunt

Jorie was the rising star of October Film Haunt. It was her and two other friends. They would camp out at filming locations of their favorite scary movies and share on their popular blog. But something happened that night, causing Jorie to now live an isolated life. What happened that night?

This book honestly sounded like something I would love. I was so excited when I received an eARC. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure if I’d finish this book. I sadly found this book really boring. I just kept waiting for it to get better. It took too long for something to happen. I also didn’t really care for any of the characters.

Id definitely recommend checking out the trigger warnings. I wish I had before I read it, I probably wouldn’t have read it. Some things were a little tough to get through. I really wish I had enjoyed this book but unfortunately it wasn’t for me. I’m glad I got the chance to read it but I don’t see myself reading this again.

Thank you NetGalley, Michael and St. Martin’s Press for the eARC!

Publication Date: September 30 2025
Rating: ✨✨

#BookReview #PsychologicalThriller #ThrillerBooks #Bookstagram #BookRecommendation #THEOCTOBERFILMHAUNTTHEFEARISREAL #NetGalley

Legitimately scary. I did think the first few chapters felt very slow, but when it picked it, boy did it pick up!

I found that I needed to set it down a few times, as is was scarier than I anticipated.

Definitely any fan of the horror genre should pick this book up.

I find this recent obsession with slasher films as a plot device to be somewhat fascinating, even though the books themselves (for the most part) don't wind up appealing to me, much like the movies (for the most part). Such, unfortunately, was the case here. I just couldn't get into it. The plot and characters didn't click for me.

Michael Wehunt’s The October Film Haunt is an eerie, emotionally resonant blend of supernatural horror and psychological suspense that digs into the parasitic nature of internet obsession, grief, and truth itself. Anchored by a compelling lead in Jorie Stroud, the novel explores the long tail of a viral moment gone wrong, weaving her past with the chilling resurgence of a cult horror film that refuses to stay fictional. The atmosphere is razor-sharp, the dread slow-building and deeply human, and the way Wehunt handles paranoia in the digital age feels both timely and deeply unsettling. The prose is clean, evocative, and often quietly devastating.

One minor suggestion: a slightly quicker entry into the central supernatural conflict could tighten the pacing in the early chapters. But once it finds its rhythm, the story grips you and unnerves you in the best way.

I desperately wanted to like this book. As a longtime, active member of so many different horror film websites and subreddits, a massive fan of the genre in all its permutations, this sounded like it was going to be right up my alley. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Mostly the story of Beth and Jorie, who years before helped run the titular October Film Haunt, Michael Wehunt's new novel is a laborious slow burn that fails to ever ignite.

I was shocked to find out it was only 336 pages -- I never look at page count when I'm reading on my Kindle, but I'd have guessed it was over 500 pages. That's how slow the pace is. The descriptions of the film 'Proof of Demons' at the center of the story are almost always vague to the point of filler. The scares simply never arrive in the film, the discussion of the events surrounding the film, or the fallout of a bad experience involving the film years earlier. Like I said, I'm a big time horror film fanatic and unfortunately no part of Wehunt's descriptions of movies or movie blogs ever rang true for me.

So many conversations felt dragged out or inconsequential, as well. One like that stood out to me in a bad way: "But wouldn't you agree this tape is too--too SOMETHING, or not something enough?" There are so many empty sentences like that along the way.

Wehunt's a good author, this one just wasn't for me. Perhaps I'm too close to the genre trappings at its core.