The Girl In The Video: Michael David Wilson
Reviewed By The Grim Reader
Michael David Wilson puts down the microphone and picks up the pen for a novella with Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing titled The Girl in the Video. Video killed the radio star.
For better or for worse, social media plays a huge part in our everyday lives. We use it to stay connected, to criticize, to critique, or simply to post pictures of what we had for dinner the previous night. Michael David Wilson uses social media as a platform for The Girl in The Video. We follow Freddie (an English ex-pat) and his game of cat and mouse through the claustrophobic streets of Japan.
Let’s face it, we’ve all had the DMs asking what we are wearing, what we like, what we don’t like, asking us to click a link for some sexy time. It’s intrusive and downright annoying. Who honestly clicks on these links? Freddie does! When Freddie opens such a message, his world is turned upside down; slowly at first, but things get more and more extreme, setting Freddie’s paranoia levels on high alert as he begins to fear for the safety of his partner, Rachel.
The Japanese setting for The Girl in The Video is perfect: Its closed-in streets overflowing with too many people, tiny apartment buildings with barely enough room to swing a cat all add to a suffocating atmosphere that Wilson creates. Freddie is a likeable lead character whose gradual descent into uncertainty and insanity seem plausible. The Girl in The Video broods, simmering steadily before reaching its unpredictable conclusion.
Ironically, Michael David Wilson’s This Is Horror published Nathan Ballingrud’s The Visible Filth; a gripping and horrific novella incorporating similar elements to The Girl in The Video that sits amongst the very best stories I’ve read. Whilst Wilson has some way to go to reach the lofty standards of Ballingrud’s prose, The Girl in The Video is a fine start indeed. And so…
4/5 unrewound VHS tapes from the Grim Reader.
The Girl In The Video
TELL ME WHAT YOU LIKE.
After a teacher receives a weirdly arousing video, his life descends into paranoia and obsession. More videos follow—each containing information no stranger could possibly know. But who’s sending them? And what do they want? The answers may destroy everything and everyone he loves.
You can buy The Girl In The Video from Amazon UK & Amazon US
The Grim Reader
The Grim Reader resides on the Gold Coast, Australia. A school teacher by day, a lover of dark fiction, heavy metal, Arsenal FC, bourbon and coffee at night.
The Grim Reader loves nothing more than reading and rocking.
Leave a Reply