Night Film

A Novel

By: Marisha Pessl

Narrated by: Jake Weber

Length: 23 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

Brilliant, haunting, breathtakingly suspenseful, Night Film is a superb literary thriller by the New York Times best-selling author of the "blockbuster debut" (People) Special Topics in Calamity Physics.

On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley’s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive, cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova - a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than 30 years.

For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova’s dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself.

Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova’s eerie, hypnotic world.

The last time he got close to exposing the director, McGrath lost his marriage and his career. This time he might lose even more.

Night Film, the gorgeously written, spellbinding new novel by the dazzlingly inventive Marisha Pessl, will hold you in suspense to the final minute.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2013 Marisha Pessl (P)2013 Random House Audio

Good premise - Way too long - Awful ending

I thought the premise of the story was interesting and i liked the creepy tone. I was hooked for a while, but it went on way too long. Some of the sequences were tangents that didn't move the story forward. Also, she repeated some stories more than once. I think the author needed a better editor. The ending was disappointing and seemed lazy - like the author couldn't be bothered to resolve things, so she just ended the book. That cost the book a star or two for me. I thought the narrator was really good.

Unforgettable Rabbit Hole Mystery

Wow, what a ride. If I did not have to sleep I would have listened to this extraordinary mystery/thriller, (with a movie literature relation), without interruption.

Scott McGrath a disgraced journalist that can't help himself, reopens his investigation into the story that destroyed his career/ life years before. Scott must get to the bottom of an anonymous phone call that started the original investigation of Cordova, a snuff film producer, director. The caller insinuated that Cordova, a recluse, may be actually hurting children or worse for his films. Eight years, and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars retribution later the suicide of Cordova's daughter draws Scott back onto an almost deliberate path that leads him staight to a dark rabbit hole that he had luckily avoided the first time. Scott is pulled into a sinister mystery behind fame, excess, obsession, cult, private sex clubs, murder, witchcraft, black voodoo magic, etc..... Quoting the Cheshire Cat, "we're all mad here".

During his investigation he comes across two very unlikely characters that insist on taking the path with him: a drug and alcohol addicted charmer and a homeless young wannabe actress. As the story unfolds the circumstances leading up to the young girls suicide start to help them understand the whole big, inconceivable picture.

The narrator did an excellent job, I felt connected with the characters and did not get tired of his voice at all during the twenty three hour listen. This book is a great twisted thriller that has ups and downs galore. Just when you think..........? Don't.. Highly recommend.

So much potential

This has an exciting premise: a reclusive horror director's daughter commits suicide after getting the attention of an investigative reporter who had slandered the director years before. It seems, though, that the author reached a little to far and then, in an attempt to distract from the lacking parts of the characters and description, added the multimedia tie-ins. At least, that's how it felt to me.

The director in this book is supposedly legendary. He made films so horrific they are only available as bootlegs or in secret showings where people that watch them faint, or go insane and such. This is the first problem with the book. What descriptions there are of these movies fall short of anything horrifying. The author makes them sound like crime movies, or dramas. I got zero sense as to why these movies were so horrific.

The characters were fairly plastic, with moments of overkill of characterization. The lead character, Scott, is a investigative reporter who supposedly slandered the director by totally buying into an anonymous phone source that disappeared on him. Not much of a reporter. He is at best, naive, and at worst, a complete idiot. His sidekicks are often annoying, and, thrown in for good measure as a plot device, is an ex-wife and daughter.

There are elements of black magic sprinkled into the book, and, again, it feels more contrived than I believe it was intended, but it is not a central focus of the book. What is the central focus? The story of this director, (who may or may not be into black magic), his daughter (who seems to dabble in black magic), and his movies that this reporter is trying to uncover. At least, I thought that was the central focus.

And here's the worst part. That's not the story you get. You get the story of the reporter working with a couple of accidental assistants as he interviews people, follows leads, irritates his ex, and pretty much annoys everyone. You, the reader, never actual get the story he's after. You never get the story of the director, the truth behind the movies. You get unmercifully close in the last 7 minutes or so, but you never get there.

I'm ultimately unsatisfied at the ending. All of the endings, not to spoil it too much. I think the author is trying to be clever, or edgy. Maybe she hopes that we care so much for the characters that we won't mind. Since the characters are so wooden, poorly fleshed-out, and difficult to like, I do mind. I was just putting up with them to get to the punchline, and it never came.

The tie-in material, articles, webpages and such get transcribed in the book, so if you read through the .pdf that accompanies this title you will hear them again, some of them twice. You can also download an app for you phone to uncover more material. I was not motivated to do so.

The narration was not noticeable as either bad or good, which, to me at least. is a good thing. It's overall, just an average, but lengthy, book. Too bad I never got the story I was promised.

It was OK

What did you like best about Night Film? What did you like least?

The performance was very good.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Didn't like it

What does Jake Weber bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Beautiful characterizations. He did a grat job.

Did Night Film inspire you to do anything?

No.

Any additional comments?

Don't see what all the fuss is about. It was an OK book...I've heard better.

SHOCKING

Not really, but it wants to be.

I shouldn't ridicule, because I really enjoyed this book quite a bit. But I was able to forgive the author her melodramatic writing. I don't know if you will be.

Also, this is a book which requires the reading of multiple PDFs. Fake newspaper articles and such. I was annoyed by this factor and it almost turned me off, but I persevered and found myself sucked in quickly.

Crazy ending may infuriate you, or you may love it. I don't like to give away things.

Warning: narrator is annoying, and so are the characters. Somehow I enjoyed it anyway.

A Thriller That Doesn't Thrill

I purchased Night Film a few years ago, started it, and then set it aside. It wasn't grabbing me at the time. I recently decided to revisit it and this time, I persisted.

It's a problematic book. The plot is certainly intriguing: the daughter of an eccentric, mysterious auteur named Stanislas Cordova is found dead after an apparent suicide and a determined reporter whose career was derailed after his previous investigation into Cordova starts digging for the truth behind her death. Along the way, he meets a young man and woman with connections to the deceased and they act as their own little "Scooby gang", investigating both the mystery of the young woman's death and the mysterious Cordova himself.

There are hints of a cult, of dark secrets, of irresponsible, horrible manipulation in the service of art, and so on. The reader is continually reminded that Cordova was an honored genius. Characters who were in his films, who knew him, who worked closely with him, etc. are introduced and reintroduced, telling their stories to the investigators and deepening the mystery around the man. This storytelling technique is repeated often enough that the author makes the mistake of doing a lot of telling and not enough showing, an approach that's not only unsatisfying but not particularly thrilling or scary. The sense of dread Marisha Pessl is attempting to create never quite materializes, although there is an extended sequence in the final third of the book that led me to believe, momentarily, it was all going to come together and finish with a bang. Unfortunately, the "bang" never arrived.

Night Film's pacing is uneven. I found the characters flat and the ending anticlimactic. The answers we ultimately get don't really satisfy and that would be fine if the remaining mystery was more intriguing.

Narrator Jake Weber does a nice job with the material (enough that I bumped the overall rating up a star) but in the end, Night Film just didn't work for me.

One of my top five books of all time

I loved the depth of the story and characters. It was amazing to listen to a story that was so well thought out without even a touch of confusion or me trying to remember a plot point or character from the beginning.
Entirely original.

Surprisingly Great Read

It's been a while since I've truly been surprised and delighted by a new author. But Marisha Pessl has just done that. I had no idea what to expect, but from the very beginning I was captured by each character and the story line. So much so that I have ordered another book by Marisha. #Clever #Creepy #Cynical #Dark #Magical

Dissatisfied by weak ending...

So I got to the end. Things had been wrapping up and the book seemed be leading somewhere... then it ended, the story unresolved and as a reader dissatisfied.

Unsatisfying Ending

Overall, the story was interesting, but the ending was completely unsatisfying. The author simply leaves too many unresolved characters and issues. Characters are introduced, have a very large part to play, and then are abandoned and/or simply forgotten.

Additionally, the author presents several storylines, all intriguing, but let’s go of each one of them - rendering all of the time spent in the development of the storyline simply moot, which is incredibly frustrating.

The narrator is...uh...he takes getting used to. Personally, I never did.

A final pet peeve for me was the author’s over-reliance upon similes - cliche or otherwise - to the point is became a huge distraction.