‘Killer Book Club’ Netflix Movie Review - A Bland and Boring Slasher With a Clownish Twist

Clowns have been a staple of horror movies for decades, from the iconic Pennywise in It to the terrifying Art the Clown in Terrifier. There is something about their twisted smiles and colorful costumes that makes them both creepy and captivating. Killer Book Club, a new Netflix original film from Spain, attempts to join the ranks of these clown horror classics by introducing a masked clown who stalks and kills a group of university students who share a dark secret.

The film centers on Ángela (Veki Velilla), a young and talented writer who suffers from writer’s block after publishing a successful novel when she was in eighth grade. She joins a book club with her boyfriend Nando (Iván Pellicer) and six other friends who are passionate about horror literature. They meet every week in a secret room under the library stairs, where they discuss and critique various horror books.

One day, they decide to prank their professor (Daniel Grao), who tried to rape Ángela, by dressing up as clowns and scaring him in his office. However, things go horribly wrong when the professor accidentally falls to his death from the balcony. The group agrees to keep their involvement a secret, but soon they start receiving threatening messages from an anonymous writer who claims to know what they did. The writer also publishes online chapters of a bloody horror novel based on their lives and warns them that with every chapter, one of them will die.

As the clown-masked killer starts picking them off one by one, the group begins to suspect each other and unravel their hidden motives and secrets. They also discover that the killer is using clues and references from the horror books that they read or wrote, such as Ángela’s own novel. The group tries to find out who the killer is and why he or she is doing this, but they soon realize that they are trapped in a deadly game that has no escape.

The plot is full of clichés and big plot holes so much that it would take me a novel to point them all out. ‘The babe’ got murdered in broad daylight meters away from hundreds of people at the book fair, and no one noticed, even she and ‘the heroine’ shouted and banged at the door. When she was standing at the door, Angela could have easily shouted and asked for help from the other people just meters away from her, but she didn’t, do you know why? So that the ‘cheap’ plot wanted her not to. Not only that, after these murders, the police and law enforcement were doing literally nothing. Angela wasn’t even questioned once!

The characters are shallow and annoying. The film does not develop any of the characters beyond their stereotypes, ‘the simp’ only simps, the  ‘babe’ is always like a typical teenager, the ‘librarian’ is just a librarian, and the film offers nothing more. The film also does not make us care about any of them, as they are all selfish, unlikable, and stupid, and they are killers too! They killed their professor They make irrational decisions, act inconsistently, and have no chemistry or empathy with each other.

The film also does not use the clown theme effectively, as it does not explore the psychology or symbolism of clowns in horror or comedy. The film also does not use any clown-related jokes or gags but rather relies on cheap jump scares and gore.

The film wastes its setting and premise, as it does not explore the themes or references of the horror books that the group reads or writes. The film could have used the book club as a way to comment on horror literature and culture, or to create parallels between fiction and reality. However, the film only uses the books as superficial props or plot devices, without delving into their meanings or implications.

Killer Book Club is a film that tries to be clever and original but ends up being a dull and derivative slasher that does not do justice to its genre or its source material. The film is not scary enough for horror fans, not funny enough for comedy fans, and not smart enough for mystery fans. It is a film that should have stayed in the book club’s secret room, never to be seen by anyone.

Final Score – [3/10]
Reviewed by - Arpita Mondal
Follow @ArpitaMond33387 on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times