When you read the synopsis of a book, you expect the book to follow through with what those two paragraphs promise. Boy, does Scream All Night not follow through.
Scream All Night by Derek Milman follows Dario, the youngest son of a eccentric indie horror filmmaker. Dario has been emancipated from his family and the crazy world of the Moldavia movie studio for several years, but he is called back for his father’s funeral. During the will reading, Dario is appointed head of the failing studio and must find a way to help save the company from having to sell to a bigger corporation that will turn their projects into cookie cutter horror flicks.
The book started off promising, introducing us to Dario and his less than favorable feelings toward Moldavia and having to grow up on a movie set. However, this should have been an introduction and then something he overcomes, Dario spends the entire book gripping about this point. The reader learns very quickly how much Dario’s father stunk as a parent, but Dario does nothing to show how he can be better than his dad until the last 30 pages of the book. Instead he complains to every person about what a terrible person his dad was and acts superior to his older brother who has known nothing of the world outside of the castle.
The other characters were similarly angsty and were constantly repeating their issues without truly growing or trying to move past them. The only character I kind of liked was Hayley, but she was not fleshed out at all. She ended up being a manic pixie dream girl. Still, she was more bearable than the rest of the characters.
I thought this was going to be a fun look into the indie/horror film industry. Instead I trudged through a 394-page story focused on family drama. The only way I managed to get through it was by imaging the Moldavia castle as some sort of Scooby Doo-Tim Burton hybrid. Even that didn’t help. Sadly, this book was a huge let down.
Rating: 1 out of 5 Stars.
Have you read Scream All Night? What were your thoughts? Share in the comments below!
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