Horror Movie

The narrator is isolated away from the cast and crew at a Howard Johnson’s hotel. Valentina wants to prevent the narrator from interacting with the others, strengthening the air of mystery around him. Studying his sides for the first day of shooting, the narrator gives the Thin Kid a character background based on his experiences in high school. Although he expects that the movie will have little impact on his life, he still thinks of it as an inflection point.

Two nights into the shoot, the narrator reads the first classroom scene for the first time. He becomes nervous about being half-naked in front of everyone when the teens strip him down. He tries to call Valentina, but when she fails to answer, he calls Cleo. Cleo listens to his concerns, but remains distant in a way that the narrator interprets as resignation. She explains that disrobing is required by the scene and reassures him that no one will judge him for his body. She further encourages him by offering to talk more if he still feels worried at the shoot. The narrator reluctantly accepts the outcome, knowing that he doesn’t have it in himself to quit the movie. Cleo anticipates that Valentina will switch the boxer shorts to briefs to heighten the Thin Kid’s humiliation. The narrator expresses ambivalent enjoyment in his experience as an actor so far. Cleo tells him that she hasn’t really been acting at all.

The narrator spends the rest of the night pacing around the room in briefs and distorting his body in the mirror. He covers his face with his hands to simulate the mask and feels easier about his nakedness.

After the narrator films his classroom scenes, he stays on set to watch the remaining shots being filmed. Valentina works to finish the shooting day on time so that it doesn’t affect the next day’s schedule. As the crew wraps up for the day, the narrator dresses up with the help of Karson, who handles makeup and effects for the production. Karson’s assistant is his cousin, Mel, whom he often spends time with between scenes. The narrator had expected to get closer to them, but they hardly get past the routine exchange the narrator and Karson form together, apologizing for what they do to each other as characters in the film. The narrator suspects that Karson is playing his real self in the film, just as Cleo seemed to admit during their conversation.

Valentina compliments the narrator on his performance. She offers to give him two days off while they shoot party scenes where he isn’t scheduled to appear. The narrator asks to come and watch anyway. When the narrator expresses his confusion over how the Thin Kid will become a slasher villain, Valentina and Cleo avoid explaining it to him. 

The narrator suggests staying overnight in the classroom to internalize the Thin Kid’s isolation. Cleo and Valentina disagree with the idea, but the narrator insists that he can look after himself and lock up afterward. When he stresses that he needs to do it for the role, the filmmakers accept his suggestion.

In the screenplay, Cleo returns to her bedroom. The room contains several horror movie posters, all of which have been turned around to face the walls. It is hinted that she does this to hide them from her parents, though the screenplay indicates that her reasons for doing this are more complex, suggesting her love-hate relationship with horror as a genre. 

When the Thin Kid’s mother calls their respective houses, Cleo, Karson, and Valentina’s parents ask their children if they’ve seen or heard from the Thin Kid. The three teens say they haven’t. Cleo refuses to rejoin the tennis club at her parents’ insistence. Karson’s father warns him not to tell his mother about the Thin Kid for fear that she will “baby” him. Valentina’s mother wants her to try new colorful clothes, which Valentina hates. 

Cleo brings the Thin Kid’s clothes to her desk, which is strewn with materials implied to have been used in constructing the mask. She pins a polaroid photo of the Thin Kid to a foam head, then takes a matchbox and leaves the room with the Thin Kid’s clothes. Karson navigates his house, which distorts itself in size and scale. His father looks for him, but Karson indicates he is going to bed early. Valentina draws a sketch of the crouched masked Thin Kid in her notebook. Cleo burns the Thin Kid’s clothes outside. Unseen by the viewer, the Thin Kid waits inside the supply room.

The narrator settles into the abandoned classroom, weighing the embarrassment of his request against the embarrassment of abandoning his sleepover. While looking at a pattern of scratches in the supply room, the narrator recalls a grade school teacher who told him to create abstract art, which she would then interpret for secret pictures. He remembers trying to challenge the teacher with his artwork, leaving him disappointed when the teacher located a nested bird in the image. The young narrator became upset upon realizing that he wouldn’t always be able to make sense of what he was looking at. Now he fears he might see the bird again in the supply room.

The narrator enters the supply room, then closes the door as much as he can without locking its latch. Sitting against the wall, he imagines himself as the Thin Kid before turning off his flashlight. Deprived of any visual stimuli, the narrator focuses on the sound of his breathing. He hears a scrabbling noise behind him and briefly panics. He ultimately stays in place, believing that the Thin Kid would have so much to be afraid of in his regular life that a noise in the classroom might actually comfort him. A rodent passes by, seemingly acknowledging him in his loneliness. The narrator voices his confusion with his life to push away the noise of the world. Soon he falls asleep and wakes up half-naked the next morning. He does not remember taking off his clothes and piling them under the chalkboard.

The screenplay presents the teens in school the next day. The Thin Kid remains missing, but the teens try to feign ignorance and calm. That afternoon, on their way back to the abandoned classroom, Valentina warns Cleo against climbing up the stairs with her hands in her pockets. The screenplay diverts from the action, revealing crucial subtext for the performance of the character. Shortly after finding the mask, Cleo had told Valentina that she wanted to die, but only by passive, accidental means. This causes her to behave recklessly on stairs. Cleo puts her hands back in her pockets anyway.

The teens speculate on the Thin Kid’s well-being. When the Thin Kid emerges from the supply room, he is still wearing the mask. Karson retrieves debris from his backpack, which he and the others start throwing at the Thin Kid, who tries not to react. The teens empty the backpack’s contents. Valentina then gives snacks and a bucket to the Thin Kid for his bodily needs. Karson runs off ashamed, followed by Valentina. Cleo reassures the Thin Kid she will return for him later. As she leaves, Valentina explains off-screen: “We’re doing this because we have to” (86).

The teens’ parents express their continued concern over the Thin Kid’s disappearance. They order their children to come straight home from school the following day. Later that night, Cleo returns to the abandoned classroom on her own. She tells the Thin Kid that she had found the mask in an abandoned place, though the circumstances of its discovery do not matter. The only element of the story worth sharing is the pattern of symbols she had seen underneath the mask. Cleo memorized the symbols and recreates them on the floor with a paintbrush. She indicates that the symbols come from a powerful ancient language. The symbols resemble an eye with markings inside of it, though they are never shown in full to the viewer.

Cleo makes the Thin Kid promise to sit atop the symbol once the paint dries. She promises to return again. After Cleo leaves, the Thin Kid obeys her instructions.