A substandard ‘original’ slasher rips off a hundred better movies but still manages to twist the knife on Netflix

Days, weeks, months, or even years from now, if you find yourself pressed with the task of naming a horror movie that features a disparate band of characters familiar with the ins and outs of the genre who end up being threatened to have their secrets laid bare and nightmares made flesh by a mystery assailant, the chances are high it won’t be Killer Book Club rolling off the tip of your tongue.

For instance, the question posed above could be answered with anything from Scream and The Cabin in the Woods to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and The Final Girls via Shaun of the Dead and Happy Death Day, with Netflix’s latest not so much wearing its influences proudly on its sleeve but rubbing them so hard in your face all you’ll be left is remembering that all of them are vastly superior.

In the case of Killer Book Club, eight students meet every week to talk about their love of horror literature, only for a prank to result in an accidental fatality and a vow of silence. However, when a masked assailant begins publishing a novel online that results in a death at the end of every chapter, they need to band together and root out the culprit once and for all.

There was definitely potential there, but looking at an audience approval rating of 42 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a sullen 4.9/10 score on IMDb, director Carlos Alonso-Ojea’s Spanish-language chiller missed the mark and then some. Of course, streaming subscribers can’t get enough of terrifying tales whether they turn out to be tedious or top-tier, so FlixPatrol anointing Killer Book Club as the newest member of Netflix’s global most-watched list is hardly a shocking development.