If Killer Book Club were assigned reading, it’d be the kind of paperback you skim on the bus and then pray the quiz is multiple choice. It’s a Netflix-bright, algorithm-approved slasher that worships at the altar of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Semester (not a real movie, but somehow still more original), then submits its citation page as a screenplay. The premise has bite: a horror-loving clique “accidentally” kills a lecturer and swears secrecy, only to be hunted by a masked clown who’s apparently auditing Murder 101. The execution, however, is a clown car of clichés, except the clowns are moody college kids, and the car is driving in circles in a parking garage lit like a perfume ad.
Let’s open the book—careful, it paper-cuts.
The cast, led by Veki Velilla’s Ángela, is a bingo card of slasher archetypes: the earnest Final Girl™, the handsome maybe-boyfriend who’s too handsome to be trustworthy, the brooding writer who probably says “actually” in bed, the influencer with a ring light and no survival instincts, the prankster, the one with a secret, and the one destined to trip over literally any surface. Their club reads horror but behaves as if none has ever been written: “A mysterious masked killer is texting us customized threats, should we… go to an isolated location and split up?” Reader, they split like a Kindle discount.
Stylistically, the movie has that glossed Netflix sheen where everyone’s dorm looks like a boutique hotel and even the bathrooms are ready for a vanity shoot. It’s set in University Land, a non-place of polished corridors and mood lighting where academia appears to be about 80% espresso and 20% meaningful glances. The decision to sand off any specific sense of campus or city turns what could have been a pointed Spanish campus thriller into a universal cereal box: same crunch, different label. When a horror film chooses to be placeless, it had better be personality-full. Killer Book Club is not that overachiever.
Tonally, it wants to be a sardonic riff on cancel culture, fandom toxicity, and the weaponization of online personas. In practice, it’s a thread of hot takes stapled to a body count. The social commentary arrives like a stray tweet—vague, performative, and immediately buried by a GIF of a killer clown. There’s a thesis in here about performative outrage and the way internet anonymity lets monsters wear masks long before the costume shop gets involved. But the film is too busy checking off slasher beats to build an argument, so it just gestures in the general direction of “society” and calls it extra credit.
Speaking of beats: the kills are… fine. Stabbings, chokings, scenic murders in architecturally interesting spaces. The camera occasionally finds a cool angle—reflections, long hallways, neon signage—then retreats to the safety of coverage that screams “we’ll fix tension in post.” The clown’s design is serviceable, a porcelain grin that’s more Party City than Pennywise, and that’s emblematic of the film’s commitment to middle. You’ll jump once or twice because a violin shriek told you to, but the sequences rarely escalate beyond the expected. It’s all very “this is where the scare goes,” like blood spatter by numbers.
The dialogue is a group chat clanking around in a Final Draft file. Characters say things like “you don’t understand what this means” because the script hasn’t figured it out either. Motivations flip with the grace of a half-closed laptop; betrayals happen because we’ve reached page 70 and need spice. The pact of silence, that classic horror engine, never accrues moral weight—no one’s guilt feels lived-in. We don’t sense rot; we sense plot. When your inciting sin is “accidental murder,” you need the sticky, awful dynamics of complicity: the lie that binds, the fear that ferments, the friendship that curdles. Here, the lie is a prop, and curdle is something the catering dairy did.
For a story about a “book club,” the film treats literature like set dressing. Imagine the fun of slasher nerds applying their meta-knowledge with specificity—arguing clue patterns the way readers argue unreliable narrators, referencing deep cuts beyond the same three Wes Craven shout-outs. Instead, we get the idea of people who like horror, which in 2023 is about as distinctive as “breathes oxygen.” The one legitimately clever conceit—murders accompanied by taunting chapters that publish in real time—never pays off beyond “ooh, spooky push alerts.” The killer as editor-in-chief is ripe for satire; here, it’s just pushy marketing copy with a knife.
Performances are game but stranded. Veki Velilla works hard to layer Ángela’s fear and self-reproach, and there are flashes where you feel a person under the trope. Álvaro Mel and Iván Pellicer glower and smolder on cue, the screenplay cycling them through suspect positions like they’re in a carousel of red herrings. Priscilla Delgado and Ane Rot inject some crackle when allowed to bicker, but the group chemistry never gels into the prickly, codependent mess that makes ensemble slashers sing. They’re classmates, not conspirators, and that’s a fatal distinction for a movie about the price of shared guilt.
The score does its job—strings that shriek, synths that simmer, the occasional percussive jump—but rarely comments in an interesting way. Sound design misses the chance to make the clown’s presence aurally iconic; you won’t walk away with a new sound to fear, which is a shame for a masked killer looking to franchise. Editing keeps the pace brisk enough that you won’t check your watch until the third act, when wheel-spinning sets in and everyone runs in nicely lit circles, pursued by a reveal you guessed 40 minutes ago.
Is there anything to love? A few flourishes. A death staged among stacks of books enjoys the irony of being crushed by the very knowledge you tried to curate. A scene with campus security hints at institutional complicity it doesn’t have time to explore. The killer’s taunts occasionally land with wit, like a petty Goodreads review with a body count. And there’s a funny, vicious little truth in how quickly “we’re horror experts!” becomes “we forgot the first rule of staying alive.” (It’s not cardio. It’s not forming a subcommittee.)
But mostly, Killer Book Club is cosplay: the clothes fit, the poses are right, the vibes are approximated, and the soul is missing. It mistakes references for personality and twists for surprises. It is content with being content—90-something minutes of bright, blood-dabbed distraction that evaporates before the “Are you still watching?” prompt fades. Which, to be fair, Netflix probably considers a win: you watched, you maybe jumped once, the thumbnail did its job, and the clown can now haunt a row of similar tiles until Halloween rolls around again.
Here’s the painful irony: a story about readers should understand subtext. This one highlights it and moves on. A story about a pact should feel sticky with fear; this one is laminated. And a story about a killer clown should at least be fun. But the movie keeps cutting away from the carnival to show you the parking lot. It’s horror reduced to a study guide: names, tropes, outcomes. No mood to annotate, no mythology to debate in the margins, no deliciously bad choices to shout at the screen beyond the usual “don’t go in there”s.
Final mark? C-, with a note in red ink: “Shows familiarity with the genre; needs original thought. See me after class (and maybe bring an alibi).” If you’re starving for a masked-stalker fix, this will fill the void the way cafeteria pasta fills a stomach: you’ll stop being hungry, but you won’t remember eating. And if a clown invites you to join a book club, do what literature teaches you—decline politely, then sprint to a well-lit crowd and never, ever split up for discussion sections.
