Monsters, magic, and a missing person case collide in this riveting novella that doubles as a study of self-identity and the search for truth.
There are monsters among us in Chelsea Sutton’s Krackle’s Last Movie, a delightfully campy novella with a dark side. Evoking classic creature features and supernatural thrillers, Sutton immerses readers in a world where the upstairs neighbors might be mermaids and time can be rearranged.
“So you, like, interview monsters?” says Meggie the Mummy.
“All sorts,” says Krackle. “But I’m not keen on that name.”
“Are they all real? Like, really real monsters?” Meggie folds the construction paper collage and stores it carefully away.
“I’ll say yes,” says Krackle. “They are people. Real just like you.”
As the assistant to notorious documentarian Minerva Krackle, Harper has her work cut out for her when Krackle disappears mid-project. With a film festival deadline looming, the onus is on Harper to pore over Krackle’s decades of footage and complete the film.
But this is no ordinary movie. Krackle has been investigating the spontaneous “beastification” of citizens nationwide, conducting interviews with the so-called “monsters” who have been forced underground.
Together with Krackle’s bodyguard, a supervillain known as Dr. Danger, Harper hopes to channel Krackle’s vision while solving the mystery of the vanishing by conducting interviews of her own. The stakes are high, because for Harper, the subject of this movie hits very close to home.
Time is a prominent theme, and Sutton takes a playful approach to structure by incorporating past interviews, found footage, and Krackle’s own diary entries into the text. If this was a novel, the time-hopping effect might disorient readers, but in novella format it’s highly effective, providing relentless action while propelling the plot forward. As Harper uses this content to reconstruct Krackle’s last days with her, clues to the mystery of her whereabouts emerge.
Sutton excels at characterization, reimagining monster tropes by casting creatures as complex twenty-first century beings; Frankenstein’s monster is a Vegas casino girl, and the mummy—called Meggie—is a cursed young woman with bedazzled bandages. The result is a convincing alternate reality that eschews stereotypes and cliches. In Harper, readers will find a nuanced protagonist on a quest to reconcile her identity and insecurities with her need to secure Krackle’s legacy.
Fans of horror, mystery, and literary thrillers will find themselves wishing they could spend more time in Harper and Minerva Krackle’s remarkable world.
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