Synopsis:
When a mysterious stalker arrives on a movie set in the middle of the night and offers the overnight security guard easy cash to procure him souvenirs from a starlet’s trailer, a cascade of events is set into motion that ends in depravity, scandal, death, and revenge.
OVERNIGHT opens a world into the dark backdoors of the film industry in which every-day grunts get paid to protect the world-famous, and degenerates will do anything to open a vein into their most twisted fantasies. But at what cost?
via Goodreads
Review:
Overnight by Philip Fracassi isn’t so much a horror story as it is a parable about paying the consequences of one’s actions. That said, I feel the story has a lot of unmet potential, particularly because it feels rushed. After Pete falls into the grip of avarice, a story unfolds that is largely void of any action.
Coming in at only sixty-seven pages, Overnight promises to be rife with “depravity, scandal, death, and revenge.” Unfortunately, many of these elements are not present in the story, and if they are, they make up a minuscule amount of the content. In fact, it wasn’t until around eighty-five percent into the novella that things felt like they were picking up. It’s here that we truly see Fracassi’s talent for madness, and it is perhaps because of this last, small bit and the hint of far greater prose that I’ll look for more of this author’s work.
The characters in Overnight are superficial. There’s no depth to them and, aside from the main character, Pete, there’s no history. This puts the perspective in third-person limited and creates a dreadfully static atmosphere.
I do feel the need to commend Fracassi on that ending, though. While it didn’t make up for the rest of the book, it certainly helped a little.
This book is an Indie Horror Book Award submission. As a 2018 judge, I received a free copy from the author and/or publisher. All content of this review is unbiased.
Rating: 💀💀
