Final Cut is the latest mind-blowing psychological thriller by S. J. Watson. His first novel, Before I Go to Sleep (2011), has sold more than six million copies worldwide. It won the Crime Writers’ Association Award for Best Debut Novel and the Galaxy National Book Award for Crime Thriller of the Year. The film of the book, starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth and Mark Strong, was released in 2014. S. J. Watson’s second novel, Second Life, a psychological thriller, was published to acclaim in 2015. He now lives in London.
Today, S. J. Watson is on the blog to tell us all about how film inspired Final Cut, and about his favourite books and films which feature film-making as an integral part of the story. Read on …
S. J. Watson (Photo by Colin Thomas).
My new novel, Final Cut, was inspired by several different elements. But one of the things I’d been thinking about a great deal as I sat down to work on my next book was film-making. I’d started to become fascinated by documentaries, particularly those dealing with everyday life, as well as reality TV, which in a way has made voyeurs of us all. As I began working these ideas coalesced into a narrative about an ordinary town in which dark secrets were hiding under the surface.
Underneath all this, though, my subconscious had been working away, and I soon realised that I was looking at someone with only a partial understanding of who she was. Like with Before I Go to Sleep, I was once again exploring the realm of memory and identity, albeit through a very different lens.
Final Cut, therefore, follows Alex, a successful documentary film-maker, as she works on her new project. She wants to make a film comprised of people’s home videos, but what begins as an examination of ordinary life in a remote fishing village in the North of England soon begins to unravel as she discovers that some people there would do anything to make sure she leaves them well alone. Soon, as the video clips begin to flood in, she realises that evil runs through the town, and that she herself might be more involved than she could possibly have imagined.
Here are more books, and one film, that feature film-making as part of their DNA.
House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski
The plot of this strange and wonderful book centres on ‘The Navidson Record’, a documentary made by an award-winning filmmaker about his own home, when he discovers that it not only appears to be larger on the inside than the outside, but is growing larger still. Sensing he’s stumbled upon a story that no one would believe, Navidson sets out to capture everything on film, and in doing so discovers the inherent darkness that haunts the house, its inhabitants, and those close to them.
Buy it here
Syndrome E
by Franck Thilliez
A huge hit in Thilliez’s native France and now available in translation, Syndrome E is a thriller featuring a mysterious film in which subliminal images are embedded that are so hideous that most who view it wind up blind or dead. The search for the truth about who is behind this diabolical work becomes an adrenaline-fuelled hunt that takes in science, religion, art and politics. This is such a page-turner that it’s no surprise it’s soon to be turned into a movie. Read it first!
Buy it in eBook here
The Director’s Cut
by Nicholas Royle
Film and film-makers are everywhere in this early example of a literary thriller. When the body of a man wrapped in the celluloid film used to kill him is found during the demolition of an old cinema in London’s Soho, four former friends, all of whom are involved in film at some level, are brought together and forced to confront their past. This is a grisly tale of murder and deceit, and not to be missed.
The Book of Illusions
by Paul Auster
David Zimmer, having lost his family in a plane crash, is isolated and depressed. He becomes obsessed with the silent films of Hector Mann, a comedy actor who has been missing since the 1920s, and sets out to hunt down and watch every one of his films and write a book about them. Wrapped in this intriguing and captivating novel is the story of Mann himself, whose disappearance, ultimately, may not have been as complete as Zimmer had believed.
Buy it here
Experimental Film
by Gemma Files
A contemporary ghost story in which Lois Cairns – a former film critic whose career has stalled – becomes obsessed with Mrs Whitcomb, another disappeared filmmaker, this one a Canadian spiritualist who vanished in 1918. Her investigations unleash the same dark forces which haunted Whitcomb, forces which threaten to engulf both Cairns and her family in this captivating, slow-burn horror.
Peeping Tom
directed by Michael Powell
The film that (allegedly) ended Powell’s career, this 1960 psychological horror film about a serial killer who not only murders women but films their terror as they die is now seen as a classic and regularly features in ‘best of’ lists. It examines voyeurism in a surprisingly complex way, not least the voyeurism of its audience, and in Mark Lewis has a monster to rival Psycho’s Norman Bates, released in the same year.
—Final Cut by S. J. Watson (Text Publishing) is out now.
Final Cut
Blackwood Bay. An ordinary place, home to ordinary people.
It used to be a buzzing seaside destination. Now, ravaged by the effects of dwindling tourism and economic downturn, it’s a ghost town—and the perfect place for film-maker Alex to shoot her new documentary.
But the community is deeply suspicious of her intentions. After all, nothing exciting ever happens in Blackwood Bay—or does it?...
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