Tag: heads will roll

Heads Will Roll is a horror novel set in a remote retreat, in which a digital detox summer camp quickly becomes a slasher. A sitcom star, known as her character Willow, checks into Camp Castaway after being ‘cancelled’ for posting something stupid online, where she meets fellow campers with reasons to run away from society, and a harsh ‘Camp Mom’. After a ghost story about a headless girl, Nancy, who knocks on your door, people start disappearing, and being cancelled becomes the least of anyone’s problems.

I enjoy slashers and I find summer camp slashers particularly scary for some reason, so I was excited for this one. It is very aware that it is a slasher, which most slashers since the 90s have been, and the Hollywood aspect gives enough excuses for genre-savviness too. The novel is told mostly from Willow’s perspective, with a slow build-up and then plenty of heads rolling as the action gets going. The horror plotline itself is pretty fun, with some twists and turns and the classic concept that everyone there has some kind of past they are escaping from. I think some of the gore/beheading would work better onscreen, as in the book it becomes quite forgettable as more and more characters just seem to suddenly have lost their head.

The element I found less convincing was Willow’s backstory. I liked the detail of her burgeoning romance with a fellow camper (it was a bonus to get a surprise queer romance as a subplot in a slasher), but once you found out more about what she tweeted, and what happened next online, it all felt a bit flimsy. I guess the difficulty is having the protagonist do something to be cancelled that actually isn’t bad enough to make them seem like an unlikeable character, but because of this, it lacked the complexity of really exploring cancel culture, and seemed to pass it off once it had been revealed. The internet troll element also felt too rushed over, and way too neat in terms of who it was.

Heads Will Roll is a fun slasher that I found genuinely a bit creepy in the middle when I was reading it late at night, as it did make good use of the isolated camp setting. It felt like it would make a good slasher film, but for my tastes, I wanted it to have a bit more substance around the ‘cancelled’ setup and maybe how that plays into who people think might be a villain, given that it is a genre that often relies on having villains anyway.