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In case you had any doubts, The Shape is Michael Myers’ evil form. Chapter 16 bludgeons you in the head with that, naming it no fewer than 9 times.

At times, this reads like a novel; at others, like a prose adaptation of a screenplay, with obvious writing that unnaturally draws attention to details that only make sense if you’ve already seen the film. As a standalone book, it’s a strange experience.

Being rather critical of this film trilogy, finally decided to crack open these books. The writing does help me to appreciate the movie more but at no time so far can I say that it is underwritten. In fact, to those who have seen the film, this book telegraphs big plot twist points pretty heavy. It’s easy reading, but I still find the story kinda absurd.

To my amazement, the “complete” B&N edition is missing at least one story: Two Black Bottles. Seems astounding to me considering the story itself, in my opinion, is fairly decent.

The deeper I get into this, the more I can’t help thinking this is perfect length but also feels trimmed down to be more digestible for people who don’t care so much about the specifics of making films. Lots of cool (possibly false) stories and even script samples, just wish there had been more time spent on each Ernest set and more detail about that.

Some of the cringiest dialogue at the end of chapter 18.

Where Part 1’s ending had me feeling iffy, Part 2 (Witness to the Infernal) reminded me of the stronger parts of the story and had me eager to continue reading. I’ve seen the film so many times and find the original/expanded dialogue in this novel to be a bit overwritten in places. To anyone unfamiliar with the film, it may not bother you as much.

At the end of Part One (Darkness Unleashed), I’m warming up to author Christian Francis’ style and am thankful for the extended dialogue that might’ve been trimmed for pacing in the film, but some of the writing left much to be desired for me. It’s obviously been fleshed out from what was likely a 90-100 page script but IMO it could’ve benefitted from more quality passes. Under- and over-writing aplenty.

Chapter 3 was a bit more interesting. Love the new details on what Alex sees inside the stone. If some of the dialogue is verbatim to the script, it’s no wonder it was changed for the final film. It’s not terrible, just has a different flow and some of it is a little weak.

Chapters 1 and 2 are reversed in the film and I am guessing this is sourced from the original script so many lines have been changed (some of the film ones are better) and expanded. Not sure I dig the writing style. Can’t put it into words but not gelling with it so far.

The prologue feels like a combo of both over- and under-written. Like with the Silent Night, Bloody Night opening, kinda rolled my eyes a bit at some of the new material.

Pretty basic slasher lit. The unholy amount of times the word “just” is thrown in here grew to be very distracting.

While I won’t say this is the highest quality literature you will find, it is surprisingly well-written for a just-okay 80s slasher.