"The Ambiguous Horror of Modern Life": An Interview with Paul Tremblay

Abstract

"The Ambiguous Horror of Modern Life":An Interview with Paul Tremblay Christina Connor (bio) and Paul Tremblay (bio) Paul Tremblay is the author of The Cabin at the End of the World (2018), the award-winning novel and source material for M. Night Shyamalan's film Knock at the Cabin (2023). I'll admit that Cabin first caught my attention as it was popping up on "Best of??" lists in 2018, but it wasn't until Tremblay's 2020 rabies-zombie pandemic novel, Survivor Song, was released during the height of COVID that I found myself cracking open one of his books. Since then, I have read my way through Tremblay's body of work and have been impressed with his brand of psychological horror and the sheer inventiveness of his textual formatting. And I'm not the only one: Stephen King raves that Tremblay's short story collection, Growing Things and Other Stories (2019), is "[o]ne of the best collections of the 21st century."1 Tremblay has his finger on the pulse of modern horror, and this is visible in his inclusion of conspiracy theories, pandemics, stalkers, and the unknowable just beyond our periphery. "Mr. Ambiguous Horror," as he jokingly refers to himself in the metafictional story "Notes from the Dog Walkers" (2019, collected in Growing Things), graciously consented to an interview. We discussed the horror of ambiguity but also the dangers of information overload in our era of social media, misinformation, and reality TV. A writer known for using interesting and unusual narrative approaches, Tremblay spells out the rules he uses to craft his stories and explains how he gauges the effectiveness of these structures. Of course, we also discussed what it's like for a writer to have his book adapted into film, what it really means to give someone else ownership of your story, and what are the chances of it happening for the rest of us. The following interview was edited for length and form. [End Page 107] Christina Connor: Thanks so much for meeting with me. I'm guessing you're a popular person right now, with the film adaptation of your book about to premiere by [acclaimed director] M. Night Shyamalan.2 It seems like a writer's dream come true. How are you feeling? Paul Tremblay: It's a strange dream! I think most writers at some point daydream about their stories being made into movies. There have been moments where it is like, "Oh my God, this doesn't seem real," such as the couple of days I was visiting the set, but the next day I was [back at work] teaching geometry. I'd wonder, did that really happen? Months would go by with nothing going on, and then something new happens, like a trailer drops, and it all sort of explodes again. Now that we're in the home stretch with just days away from the movie's premiere, I'm definitely feeling excited and anxious—mostly excited. CC: Have you gotten to see the final cut of the film? PT: I have not, but I am going to the premiere with my family. That's really cool. CC: And how's your family taking it? Are they excited? PT: Yeah, they're excited, but I'm still, you know, just the dopey dad. [laughs] CC: Dave Bautista [star of Knock at the Cabin] told me the other day that you came by the set to work with the actors, and he was very complimentary of you. What was it like to work with the artists—the actors, directors, technicians—who are bringing the adaptation to life? PT: The set visit was amazing; it was surreal but without the political aspect of surrealism. I met them at a sound studio outside of Philadelphia where they had built a cabin inside of a warehouse for the interior shots. When I first walked in, I was like, whoa, look at all this stuff: all these people, all this equipment, all these lights, all these [End Page 108] things that they need to make a movie. It didn't look like much from the outside, but the inside was beautiful, with...