Michael Wehunt’s sophomore novel arrives like a cursed VHS tape through the mail slot—unexpected, unsettling, and impossible to ignore. Following his acclaimed debut story collection Greener Pastures, which established him as a master of atmospheric dread and emotional precision, Wehunt ventures into full-length territory with The October Film Haunt, a novel that interrogates not just what we watch, but what watches us back.
When Fandom Becomes a Haunting
The premise reads like a horror fan’s fever dream: Jorie Stroud once belonged to the October Film Haunt, a beloved trio of horror enthusiasts who documented their pilgrimages to infamous filming locations. Their blog attracted devoted followers until one night at the graveyard from Proof of Demons—a fictional cult film that feels disturbingly real—when everything collapsed. A decade later, Jorie has retreated to Vermont with her young son, having abandoned both her online presence and her love for horror cinema. Then the videotapes begin arriving.
Wehunt constructs his narrative with the patient menace of a tightening noose. Rather than rushing toward reveals, he allows dread to accumulate in the margins—in the way Jorie checks her doorbell camera obsessively, in the increasingly boundary-crossing behavior of “Rickies” (devotees of the reclusive director Hélène Enriquez), in the growing sense that someone is orchestrating events with cinematic precision. The novel operates simultaneously as psychological thriller, supernatural horror, and meditation on parasocial relationships gone toxic.
The Architecture of Dread
What distinguishes this novel from standard meta-horror fare is Wehunt’s commitment to emotional authenticity. Jorie isn’t a stock final girl or genre-savvy protagonist winking at the audience. She’s a mother grappling with guilt, isolation, and the specific terror of watching her past resurface when she’s built a fragile present. Her relationship with her son grounds the more surreal elements, creating genuine stakes beyond survival. When supernatural intrusions begin—and they do, with Wehunt’s signature restraint—they feel invasive precisely because they threaten the domestic sanctuary Jorie has constructed.
The prose itself adapts to its subject matter, shifting between clinical observation and lyrical unease. Wehunt writes with the specificity of someone who understands horror not as cheap thrills but as art form and obsession. His descriptions of Proof of Demons—the fictional film within the novel—achieve the difficult feat of making a nonexistent movie feel like essential viewing. You can almost see the grain of the footage, hear the unsettling sound design, sense why this particular film would inspire cultish devotion.
The pacing rewards patience. The first quarter establishes Jorie’s current life with deliberate slowness, painting her isolation and routines before introducing the escalating strangeness. Some readers expecting immediate shocks might find this measured approach frustrating, but it serves the novel’s deeper purposes. By the time events accelerate—and when they do, they accelerate violently—we’re invested enough in Jorie’s psychology that each transgression feels genuinely violating.
The Weight of Truth and Fiction
Central to the novel’s power is its examination of narrative unreliability in the digital age. Jorie’s original blog post about Proof of Demons was “truth-stretching,” and that ambiguity haunts every page. Did something supernatural happen that night a decade ago, or did collective hysteria manufacture terror from atmosphere? The novel refuses easy answers, instead exploring how stories—whether told through blog posts, films, or whispered legends—can develop material weight, bending reality through sheer belief.
This thematic richness elevates what could have been a straightforward haunting narrative. Wehunt interrogates fandom itself, questioning where appreciation ends and obsession begins. The Rickies aren’t cartoonish villains but recognizable figures from contemporary fan culture, their boundary violations escalating with algorithmic logic. When does devotion to art become parasitism? What responsibility do creators bear for their audiences? These questions simmer beneath the surface horror.
The character of Hélène Enriquez, the elusive director whose presence looms over the narrative despite minimal page time, represents perhaps the novel’s most intriguing achievement. Without spoiling specifics, Wehunt has crafted a figure who embodies both artistic vision and potential monstrosity—someone whose relationship to her own work raises uncomfortable questions about authorship and control.
Where the Seams Show
Yet the novel isn’t without its imperfections. The secondary characters, particularly other members of the original October Film Haunt trio, occasionally feel underwritten. While their relationships with Jorie carry emotional weight, they sometimes function more as plot devices than fully realized presences. Given the novel’s length and ambition, more development here would have strengthened the emotional architecture.
Additionally, the middle section—roughly pages 150 through 220—experiences some momentum issues as Wehunt layers in backstory and expands his mythology. While the information proves necessary for the novel’s conclusion, the delivery occasionally feels expository rather than organic. A handful of scenes exist primarily to convey information rather than advance character or atmosphere.
The novel’s genre hybridity, while generally a strength, occasionally creates tonal uncertainty. Is this primarily a supernatural horror novel, a psychological thriller about obsession, or a critique of contemporary fan culture? Wehunt’s refusal to commit fully to any single register creates productive tension, but also moments where the competing impulses feel unreconciled. The conclusion attempts to synthesize these threads with mixed success—powerful on an emotional level, but leaving some metaphysical questions frustratingly opaque.
The Craft on Display
Where Wehunt excels is in his understanding of horror’s relationship to grief and trauma. The supernatural elements aren’t arbitrary but expressions of psychological states made manifest. The film within the novel becomes a kind of emotional archaeology, excavating buried guilt and unprocessed loss. This emotional grounding prevents the more outré developments from feeling gratuitous.
His prose maintains the literary precision that distinguished Greener Pastures, though adapted for the longer form. Sentences have weight without becoming overwrought. These aren’t exact quotations but capture Wehunt’s ability to find uncanny angles on familiar images, to make the gothic machinery of horror fiction feel freshly disturbing.
A Place in the Contemporary Horror Landscape
The October Film Haunt occupies fascinating territory within current horror literature. It shares DNA with Riley Sager’s exploration of horror fandom in Final Girls and the metafictional playfulness of Paul Tremblay’s Horror Movie, while maintaining its own distinct voice. Unlike those works, which often foreground their genre awareness, Wehunt’s novel feels more interested in using meta-horror as a lens for examining obsession, motherhood, and the permeability between fiction and reality.
Readers who appreciated the slow-burn dread of Michelle Paver’s Thin Air or the folk horror sensibilities of Andrew Michael Hurley’s The Loney will find similar pleasures here, though Wehunt’s contemporary setting and media-focused themes create different resonances. The novel also shares thematic territory with Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves in its examination of how narrative itself can become haunted, though Wehunt’s approach is more accessible and emotionally direct.
Final Verdict: A Haunting Achievement
The October Film Haunt represents a significant evolution for Michael Wehunt, demonstrating his ability to sustain dread and emotional complexity across a novel-length narrative. While not flawless—the pacing occasionally stumbles, and some secondary elements feel underdeveloped—it succeeds as both visceral horror and thoughtful meditation on contemporary fan culture’s dark potential.
The novel’s greatest achievement is making us complicit. As readers, we’re consuming Jorie’s story, participating in the same voyeurism the text critiques. This self-reflexive quality never becomes didactic but adds layers that reward rereading. The conclusion, which I won’t spoil beyond saying it earns its emotional devastation, lingers long after the final page.
For readers seeking intelligent horror that doesn’t sacrifice atmosphere for ideas or vice versa, The October Film Haunt delivers. It’s a novel that understands both the genre it inhabits and loves, and the dangers lurking within that love. Wehunt has crafted something rare: a horror novel that frightens on multiple registers—viscerally, psychologically, and existentially.
Similar Reading Recommendations
- Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
- Final Girls by Riley Sager
- The Grip of It by Jac Jemc
- Experimental Film by Gemma Files
- Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt (for those new to his work)
- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
- The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
