The October Film Haunt is a horror thriller novel, written by Michael Wehunt, published by St. Martin Press. A novel that expands a previous short story from the Greener Pastures collection, a proposal that pays homage to horror cinema, especially to found footage and slasher, and that will delight any person that is depth into the genre; an intense thriller that plays with the narrative structure including a bit of in-universe elements that add more depth to the story.

Jorie Stroud loved horror movies; she and two friends created a group called The October Film Haunt, that would camp at film sites of horror movies they loved. A gig that ended after their article featuring the filming location of Proof of Demons led to terrible consequences, and Jodie was done with horror films.
10 years later, she lives with her son in an isolated part of Vermont; she left her old life behind for good, until a VCR tape arrives in the mail. A moment that comes to change her life, putting her at the center of what seems to be a big try to make the sequel of Proof of Demons, with Jorie as the final girl in the twisted mind of the Rickies, the fans of Proof's director.

From the very start, Wehunt gifts the reader with an intriguing plot that later leads into anxiety for our main character; a plot that is sprinkled with many Easter eggs that will delight those that love the modern horror genre. All while Jorie is trying to survive and discover what's behind this new Proof of Demons, and how she can return to her life; a mother that is trying to keep her son out of everything that's happening to her. The narrative also includes pieces that could have been extracted from an imaginary in-world Internet, including Reddit and blog posts, adding more context to the plot, sometimes revealing a bit, but in other cases creating more questions.
In parallel to Jorie's own plot, Wehunt also creates two more threads to follow: an apparently unrelated man with terminal cancer, whose past seems to have the key inspiration for Proof, and a second one on how Enriquez is trying to put together pieces of the team involved in Proof for this sequel.

Wehunt manages to keep the reader in tension, constantly thinking if they are missing something that might be threatening our character; everybody might be part of the scheme, but we are never sure (despite in retrospective, Wehunt plants enough hints to direct us into certain secrets).
The pacing is really good, alternating slower scenes that help tie together the knots with faster ones, especially when the plot derails into a slasher with supernatural tints. I literally devoured this book in two nights.

The October Film Haunt is a marvelous novel for genre-lovers, a tense horror thriller that also explores themes such as the origin of beliefs (there's a good passage on creepypastas) and the own slasher genre, from the perspective of a woman that only wanted to escape from her past. Simply excellent.