The initial premise for Christina Henry‘s latest shockfest, The House That Horror Built, is a tale as old as celluloid. A single mother acquires work in the palatial home of a veteran horror director (think a more villainous del Toro), himself recovering from the disappearance of his wife and son following a scandal. As the two – as well as the single mother’s teenage son – become closer intertwined, the spectre of sins past begins to loom large.
Henry is a dab hand at horror, expertly flicking from genre to genre (see her meta-love letter Good Girls Don’t Die as an example), and here she spends time investing in her trifecta of leads, imbuing each with flaws, pathos, and compassion, even as some steer further into the darkness.
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The House That Horror Built runs on familiar tracks plot-wise, so much so that even an unseasoned reader will be able to sense the twists and turns coming; despite this Henry keeps things moving at a rattling pace, ensuring the reader doesn’t fail to keep turning the pages.
While it doesn’t reinvent the haunted-house tale, The House That Horror Built builds on the neat meta-horror lens that Henry loves to deploy and uses it to tell a compelling story about family ties and the families we choose to build, for better or for worse – much worse…
The House That Horror Built is out on 14th May from Titan Books.
