Synopsis
“The modern day Goosebumps for adults.”
—Horror Obsessive
Four friends unearth a unique VHS tape that, when viewed, causes short-distance teleportation with euphoric after-effects, inadvertently launching a perilous trend.
As copies of the original tape are made, the results become less predictable and ultimately gruesome due to analog generational decay. Despite the danger, some will risk everything for just one more trip.
Review
Huge thanks to Shortwave Media for the physical arc! The review below may contain some spoilers, as well as somewhat gruesome images/descriptions from the story.
Holy cow. This book was freaking awesome, and so compulsively readable. I know the blurb likens it to Goosebumps already, but it really felt like an amped up, adult version to me. The chapters that flashed forward, featuring different sets of people, all read like Goosebump-infused interludes. And with some pretty horrific outcomes.
When bong hits and spliffs aren’t enough, best friends, Barry, Lars, Frankie, and Snaps, take a fateful trip to Lars’ sleazy uncle’s house. All for the promise of a great high… through teleportation. Some clearly explained, and rather scientific reasonings linking the story to The Philadelphia Experiment, make the reader buy in immediately. The rest is history. Some dangerous, mutilating, and deadly history.
The four best friends convince Lars’ uncle to give them a copy of this killer VHS, the ultimate teleportation device, which leads them to make their own copies. The years that follow are different for each of them, but no less gruesome across the four. And despite the dangers, this would totally become a trend…y’all remember the tide pod thing, right?
Millican does a great job of creating some unique and awfully gross body horror. And I really enjoyed the evolving and differing scenes he painted in each instance the teleportation goes wrong. Some of them brought to mind the multi-zombie from The Walking Dead: Dead City, and the murderous blob from the end of Evil Dead Rise.
The single human world, the differing dimensions, infiltration, as well as the ending, really introduced some intriguing and really unique thoughts on how teleportation could possibly work, and how it could go wrong. So while this story was an absolute blast for me, it also introduced some things that I’ll be thinking through for some time.
Check out additional FanFiFam reviews here: From Seanchalant Josh Anna
I also got to do the cover reveal for this! How cool is that??? Check it out here
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