Experimental Film

By Gemma Files

Fired at almost the same time as her son Clark’s Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis, former film critic turned teacher Lois Cairns is caught in a depressive downward spiral, convinced she’s a failure who’s spent half her adult life writing about other people’s dreams without ever seeing any of her own come true. One night Lois attends a program of experimental film and emerges convinced she’s seen something no one else has—a sampled piece of silver nitrate silent film footage whose existence might prove that an eccentric early 20th-century socialite who disappeared under mysterious circumstances was also one of Canada’s first female movie-makers. Though it raises her spirits and revitalizes her creatively, Lois’s headlong quest to discover the truth about Mrs. A. Macalla Whitcomb almost immediately begins to send her much further than she ever wanted to go, revealing increasingly troubling links between her subject’s life and her own. Slowly but surely, the malign influence of Mrs Whitcomb’s muse begins to creep into every aspect of Lois’s life, even placing her son in danger. But how can one increasingly ill and unstable woman possibly hope to defeat a threat that’s half long-lost folklore, half cinematically framed hallucination—an existential nightmare made physical, projected off the screen and into real life?

• Language: English
• Publisher: ChiZine
• Release date: Nov 17, 2015
• ISBN: 1771483504

Gemma Files

Gemma Files, a former film critic, journalist, screenwriter, and teacher, has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published two collections of short work; two chapbooks of speculative poetry; the “weird western” Hexslinger Series; a story-cycle; and the standalone novel Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst Award for Best Adult Novel. Files also has several story collections and a collection of poetry forthcoming.

Reviews for Experimental Film

[quondame · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A strange wonderfully inside out upside down horror tale. Middle aged mother protagonist beloved by husband, female old god of noontime, sun not slime. And flickering movies!

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Strange book. I liked the writing and the point of view character, but this book never really grabbed me. The opening incident of the woman disappearing from the moving train intrigued me. A lot of the esoteric details about Canadian film lost me. The Lady Midday vengeful pagan work goddess didn't do much for me it all.

[allison_s-802575 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Think The Ring The Curse (another Japanese horror flick icydk) Begotten (a crazy German... experimental film) The Blair Witch Project.

One of the best horror novels I've ever had the pleasure of reading. A great mix of film history/technology and Slavic folklore. So glad I went ahead and bought this with Files' other book "We Will All Go Down Together" because this is slow-burn horror at its finest.

*shiver*