'Something has taken a liking to the children of Mount Vernon, Washington. Its eyes are orange, and glow like fire. Its hissing voice is the autumn wind. It hovers over them at night, casting snake-like shadows that dance on the walls. It laughs and taunts as they cry in their beds. It says it wants to take them trick-or-treating. Halloween is in a week.
'Kyle McIntosh is hardly aware when the first four kids are abducted, their families slaughtered. Though news-vans litter the streets, his 16-year-old heart has just been broken. Night-after-night, more children are taken. More bodies are left behind. When Kyle’s little brother claims an orange-eyed monster has been visiting him at night, ignorance ceases to be an option - because their family might just be next.'
I feel it might be slightly controversial to say this, but kids are damn creepy. I don't mean on a whole, generally they're fine little folks even if they're not for me. But as soon as kids start taking part in horror they turn the creep factor right up, and Cinema 7 is no exception; and if anything, it pushes the use of kids in horror into some disturbing directions.
The story follows the residents of the town of Mount Vernon, and the terror that comes to their peaceful lives one October. We begin with a little girl trying her best to stay in her room and sleep whilst her mother entertains her new boyfriend. The girl knows that she can't go and ask her mother for help, nor can she go and find shelter in her bed even though she desperately wants to; because there's a monster in her room. Stuck in her bed, alone and afraid, the girl listens as the monster tells her frightening things, before killing her.
Whilst this would be awful enough, the girl doesn't stay dead. She wakes back up, her body dead, and her eyes glowing with an orange light. Driven by dark urges and evil desires the girl kills her mother before leaving the home. This is a terrible and tragic event in itself, but it's far from the only one. Other children have suffered the same fate across the town, resulting in dead parents and missing children.
We then meet Kyle, a sixteen-year-old boy who's mostly just coasting through his life. He's not excelling in school, his love life has taken a recent hit, and he's spending his time smoking weed with his friend group. He's not a bad kid by any means, he's simply a little lost at the moment. When Kyle spots a group of dead children walking around town, covered in blood and with glowing eyes he tells the police what he's seen. Whilst the cops seem to believe him, they don't treat him too favourably, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth; especially as it gets him in trouble with his parents for skipping school to score some weed.
Kyle feels like there's something awful happening in his town, something that might be targeting his own little brother, who he hears crying at night. Determined to find out more Kyle ends up getting help from new girl, Marie, who believes Kyle's story, and thinks that something evil is out to destroy the town's children.
Cinema 7 feels like two books in one a lot of the time. There are two main narratives, which are of course connected. The first is the story of the possessed, dead children. These sections are scattered throughout the book, and are definitely some of the darker and most disturbing moments by a big margin. Michael J. Moore doesn't hold back in these parts of the book, and provides graphic descriptions of violence done both to and by children.
These parts of the book reminded me a lot of the books by James Herbert, things like The Fog and The Dark, where people are driven to awful, evil acts of mutilation and murder. The children in this book go after their parents and their extended families with a viciousness that is honestly quite shocking. They don't just kill their family outright, which they easily could as some of them do have guns. Instead, they torture their parents, they take their time with their killings, and they revel in the harm that they cause. It takes a lot to make me feel squeamish whilst reading, but this book managed it a few times with some of the things that were happening here. So if you're adverse to graphic violence, or scary children, this is a book that will test your resolve for sure.
The other story is that of Kyle and Marie. As said earlier, Kyle is a very average kind of kid, just trying to get through life. When he meets Marie he's not too sure about her, she's attractive and fun to be around, but he's just been through a break-up and doesn't want to rush into anything. But through the course of their investigation into the strange events around Mount Vernon the two of them grow closer, and a genuine friendship begins to form between them; and it's no surprise when things turn romantic.
Their story feels like a nice mix of a mystery investigation and a teen romance story, and whilst their entire story and character arcs are connected to the greater events some of the best moments with the two of them were the quite times when they weren't running for their lives and just got to connect and bond. I also appreciated how the book didn't shy away from showing both of them as vulnerable, and that Kyle was allowed to be something more than the 'masculine' teen boy, and actually had times where things got too much for him and he needed to grieve. And I appreciated that Marie was there for him in these moments and was able to comfort him.
Cinema 7 is an intense read at times, one that has some dark and disturbing moments and some violent imagery; but it's also a book with a lot more going on in it than you'd first think. It has some interesting characters, and the themes of how abuse leads to more abuse are pretty out in the open. If you look at this book and just see a violent gore-soaked mess you're probably missing something. Definitely one worth reading, though probably not if your kid is sleeping in their room at the time.
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