On the face of it, Night Film has quite a fascinating premise for a crime horror novel. We’re used to film directors creating monsters of all kinds to scare us. But what if the director was the monster instead? It’s an angle not too far removed from reality, after all - Stanley Kubrick’s treatment of Shelley Duvall on the production of The Shining is one of the more infamous moments in director-to-actor relations. You also only need to read up on video nasties like Cannibal Holocaust to see the barbarism filmmakers will resort to for a cheap shock. It’s this blurring of the line between art and depravity that Night Film centers its whole story upon. It gives us a grizzled journalist with inner demons to conquer, a mysterious suicide case to solve and an elusive cult film-maker notorious for pushing his acting talent to their limits (either physical or psychological). But it while it certainly wants to be a cerebral horror - and certainly tries - it falls well short of the mark. Ultimately the only mental torture on offer here is through the chance to witness a great idea for a detective yarn get squandered.

At the very least, it’s obvious that Night Film was an idea highly thought of by its writer, Marisha Pessl. Pessl has dedicated over 600 pages to the deliverance of this piece - an awfully taxing demand considering how the content unfolds. But its length does feel initially inviting, primarily thanks to some strong early chapters. First, we're introduced to our main protagonist, former journalistic hotshot Scott McGrath. We also get acquainted with the myths surrounding the elusive, ominous figure of Stanislas Cordova, the horror film visionary who serves as McGrath’s quasi-nemesis. He’s a man whose legacy flits between genius and notoriety - his later films being so disturbing that he was forced to produce them underground, making them available to only the few dedicated enough to find the secret screenings set up for them. And crucially, we’re also introduced to the link between these two - Ashley Cordova, the daughter of Stanislas and whom McGrath sees while he;s out jogging in Central Park at night (silently watching him), before he reads about her suicide in the newspaper just days later.

These early chapters whizz by, primarily because of just how many details of intrigue Pessl is throwing in without spoiling the snappy prose. Within a few pages we know of McGrath’s history with Cordova (he was trying to out him as a paedophile before suffering a nervous breakdown on national TV from the stress involved with the case). And we also know that Ashley herself had her own dark past, having been a piano prodigy at 14 before spending time at both a juvenile correction camp and a mental institute. We have characters, we have questions and we have an underlying sense of something disturbing beneath them all. All in all, we have the early makings of a great thriller novel.

Another interesting caveat that Night Film surprises with is its frequent use of other media among all the chapters. Chapter ends will break to full page pictures of newspaper reports on certain characters and events, adding further detail to the increasingly bleak picture McGrath builds around the Cordova family. It might be a bit gimmicky but it's an interesting storytelling tactic and genuinely succeeds at providing some real-world style immersion. But the best use of this technique is saved for when McGrath stumbles on the Dark Web hub for Cordova’s underground fanbase (who dub themselves ‘Cordovites’). Screenshots of creepy message boards and the revelations of obsessive fans detailing black aspects of Cordova’s life only add to the murk, not to mention heighten the expectation of a horrifying payoff for it all down the line. Which makes it all the bigger a pity that such a payoff never comes. Nonetheless at least the book’s early going lives up to the potential of its central idea, both in prose and other clever visual cues.

So where does it all go wrong? Well despite all the early going, none of the characters wind up being all that interesting. Lead character McGrath - who narrates this whole affair -  is a fairly uninspired main figure. He’s tough, drinks whiskey, talks about his abs within the first few pages, and despite the breakup with his former wife he loves his little daughter Sam more than anything in the world (or as he saccharinely puts it, his “moon and stars” - ugh). He’s supposed to be a hard man with a sensitive soul but he just winds up dull - a typical rough detective type, but devoid of the good one-liners or any real personality or internal struggle.

For better or worse, McGrath winds up adding two coincidental ‘assistants’ along the way, both of whom feel the need to resolve their own personal pasts with Ashley. One is Hopper Cole, a brooding drug dealer who remembers Ashley from his time at the teenage therapy camp they attended together. The other is Nora Halliday - an aspiring actress and part-time hotel clerk who McGrath pins as the last person to have seen Ashley alive. Nora is the more exuberant of the two, with an offbeat personality that can make her amusing at times. Hopper meanwhile is the kind of surly, temperamental bad boy that belongs in a modern-day Harlequin novel (and yes, Pessl’s prose makes repeated insistence that he’s supposed to be good-looking too). The book makes a big deal of the supposed chemistry between all three of them, but whatever chemistry there is feels trite and forced. McGrath with Hopper repeatedly feels like the desparation of a female writer trying to capture guy talk. Meanwhile, McGrath with Nora constantly fluctuates from goofy to cringeworthy. Their giddy excitement at the revelations in the investigation are frequently cloying, and they even nickname each other ‘Woodward and Bernstein’ (of Watergate fame) which gets pretty annoying, pretty fast. It’s obvious that Pessl really wants the reader to love these three and make their own stories feel urgent. But any urgency that is present is frequently undone by a far bigger plot crime than any hackneyed character-building. It comes from McGrath’s investigation itself.

By the far the biggest flaw within Night Film’s garrulous journey is that none of its great revelations come from a moment of guile nor cunning on behalf of its lead characters. Most of the secrets revealed about Ashley or her father - the latter’s interactions with his actors or their reclusive family life at their remote upstate New York mansion, ‘The Peak’ - are exposited through the characters McGrath encounters. There’s never any shocking discoveries or adept deductions made. McGrath simply finds certain people connected to Cordova, meets them, and has them spout for whole chapters at a time about their links. There are a couple of dramatic flashpoints that lift the tedium - McGrath and Hopper going undercover at a perverse millionaires’ club and the mind-bending final discoveries at The Peak itself are both vividly written and evoke a real sense of delusional mania. But the rest is dedicated to fleshing out a world that ultimately isn't all that interesting nor, critically, that scary. Stanislas Cordova’s films are supposedly these terrifying, life-changing tour de forces, but Pessl’s own descriptions of them fail to eclipse anything that’s out there in the real world. And while the man himself does remain a fascinating enigma to the end (especially if you're a Kubrick / Hitchcock fan), there just isn’t enough here to justify a wade through six hundred pages to figure him or his daughter out. Especially when the ending itself is likely to leave you just as frustrated as the rest of the book.

All in all, the only thing truly disturbing about Night Film is just how self-indulgent it ends up being. It’s definitely an easy novel to read, and the opening quarter provides an absorbing setup. But like a lot of weird arthouse movies, it’s long, takes forever to explain the obvious and then has the gall to treat your sense of disappoint as a simple case of you 'just not getting it’. Thankfully, you can save yourself the bother and not buy the ticket to the movie in the first place.