G. Deyke reviewed Experimental film by Gemma Files
[Adapted from initial review on Goodreads.]
4 stars
I have a lot of very complicated feelings about this book, which I'd very much like to discuss with someone before considering them worthy of mentioning in a review; unfortunately, my ideal discussion partner doesn't exist. This leaves me a bit unsure of where to start with this - it's a complex book that could be reviewed on several levels: the thematic ableism/capitalism stuff; the horror; the content; the style; the characters; the way these things interact with one another... seriously, I don't even know where to start. In fact, without having properly worked out the more complicated of my feelings with someone who shares enough of my background to get it, I feel like I can't even touch most of these things in a review. In order that I do more than nothing, I'm going to evaluate this book on the most shallow of surface levels available.
For the …
I have a lot of very complicated feelings about this book, which I'd very much like to discuss with someone before considering them worthy of mentioning in a review; unfortunately, my ideal discussion partner doesn't exist. This leaves me a bit unsure of where to start with this - it's a complex book that could be reviewed on several levels: the thematic ableism/capitalism stuff; the horror; the content; the style; the characters; the way these things interact with one another... seriously, I don't even know where to start. In fact, without having properly worked out the more complicated of my feelings with someone who shares enough of my background to get it, I feel like I can't even touch most of these things in a review. In order that I do more than nothing, I'm going to evaluate this book on the most shallow of surface levels available.
For the first several chapters I found the book extremely dry. For the most part, it consisted of a doubtless fictionalised depiction of the Canadian film industry (complete with technical terms and many, many names), something I'm neither inherently interested in nor familiar enough with to recognise as fictionalised or not; nor could I recognise when a name or detail would wind up being important (several of them do). There's just enough there, at the beginning, to promise that it'll get interesting later on.
Which, thankfully, it does - in the extreme - as it starts to get into folkloric horror, with Lois' narration occasionally broken up by various epistolary-type sources. Folklore is something I both find inherently interesting and am somewhat familiar with, so that I recognised the figure who dominates the book: and it's perfectly done, really, with nothing I'd known before being at all contradicted, and everything I didn't know before fitting in so perfectly that even there, I can't say what, or how much, was invented by Gemma Files.
And this is where the horror really shines. Lady Midday is real, insomuch as any folkloric entity is real. Everything about Her resonates. And a major part of the horror in Experimental Film is based around perceiving - and, thus, also being perceived by - Her; She is unknowable, never seen directly, but the book still comes really close to describing Her closely enough that one might be said to perceive Her just by reading it; and basically what this all works out to is that reading this book, especially right before bedtime, leaves one with the super spooky feeling of maybe very nearly having attracted the attention of an ancient god (whose very worshippers worship mainly by praying that She turns Her attention elsewhere, even). It's incredibly effective, and also it hits all my buttons - this more than makes up for the dry beginning.
(I did feel that this effect was weakened a bit by the ending, wherein theme seemed to supersede horror; [in the climactic ending scene She was too well-defined to feel properly unknowable, and She didn't visit divine vengeance upon Lois only because She... missed, essentially, in a way that would be completely plausible if She were mortal but kind of cheapens Her as a deity (hide spoiler)]. But horror is often allegorical, and in terms of theme a [victory (hide spoiler)] against her was incredibly important.)
So: overall very good, very much worth reading. This is a surface reading, though, and there's a lot more going on in there; just not much more that I'm able to properly put into words at this point. It may have planted the seeds of a friggin' essay.
Selling points: excellent horror; VERY GOOD FOLKLORE; autistic narrator, 4(+?) autistic characters; overall nuanced representation; highly immersive, at least once the first few chapters are past; have I mentioned how truly excellent the folklore is yet? It is very good.
Warnings: lots and lots of internalised ableism; severe depression in the narrator; some fairly traumatic things happen to various characters; there's a magical disabilities thing going on here that I should at least mention, though I'm not up to dissecting it for this review; some fairly caustic relationships.
