Ugh you guys this was such a disappointment. Suuuuuuuuuuch a disappointment. This book started out so good. And it ended so good. But oh my god there's a solid block in the middle there that is a fifteen-car pile-up of loathsome shit, and it leaves me incapable of recommending the book with the unbridled enthusiasm that I would like to. 
 This looked so good on paper. First of all, it's an epistolary novel, kind of like House of Leaves, with segments in the form of news clippings and websites and journals, but unlike House of Leaves, it also has a multimedia aspect. You download an app for your smart phone and hover over pages marked with a little symbol, and it gives you access to extra in-world articles and tidbits and audio clips omg. It's amazing. I admit it, I'm a sucker for puzzles and ARG-type stuff, so a hidden puzzle-y app that gives you access to secret audio files? It fucking works on me, I love the feeling that I'm being drawn deeper into a secret world that nobody knows about, even when it comes in the form of an obviously commercial novel. 
 The app is awesome, and even when they're not perfectly acted, the sound clips have a great vibe. There's stuff that's creepy without being overtly horrifying, poems and children's stories that have the same feel as, say, an episode of Welcome to Night Vale. None of it's cheap, there are no screamers, no jump-scare pop-ups, it's all world-building and atmosphere. I have no complaints about the multi-media bits, I literally wish that every single book came with something like it, that's how much I love it. 
 But even without the app, Night Film is exceptionally good at being atmospheric. From page one this thing is creepy as fuck. It's the kind of creepy that has you peeking over the edge of your book every couple of pages to make sure that nothing is sneaking up on you, even when you're reading it with every light on in the house. The writing is so crisp and vivid, you can see everything that happens as easily as if you were watching it on screen. Pessl has a great eye for visuals, and it is super cinematic, like, there's not even that much adaptation required to make this into a movie, it's basically a screenplay already. But, unlike some books I could mention, it doesn't just rely on creepy visuals to make it scary. It's the emotion that Pessl imbues the characters with as they experience those visuals with that make Night Film work so damn well. That's how you write a damn atmospheric book, y'all. 
 Plus, the actual concept of the novel is really, really interesting. The base premise is familiar, but it's one of the familiar ones that tics my boxes. I love bizarre, mysterious deaths that needs investigating, I love having a chunk of missing time that has to be filled in, I love vague, possibly supernatural weirdness, I am on board with all of these things. Even in addition to that, though, Night Film is exceptional in the story department, thanks to the world and the mythology that it builds around its basic premise. 
 The central figure of mystery in the novel is Stanisla Cordova, a legendarily eccentric film director whose movies are (potentially) supernaturally affective. I'm impressed with how much work Pessl has put in to building this character and working him in to the fabric of her world, how much content we get in the way of personal history, and especially film analysis. She basically had to come up with in-depth details and premises and themes and symbols for like thirteen films for the characters to pick apart, so you know, kudos there, man. She absolutely went the extra mile, and it pays off. 
 It isn't all about Cordova the elder, though. The death that kicks the novel off is actually that of Cordova's daughter, Ashley, and while the mystery surrounding her suicide obviously ties in to Cordova and his life, Ashley is a character in her own right, with her own shadowy history and dealings and relationships to be uncovered. Obviously I'm not a fan of using the deaths of women to further the stories of men, and this novel absolutely falls into that category, but I do feel like Ashely gets more agency and motivation and personality and presence than most Opening Victims are allowed. Ultimately the man Cordova is the goal and the focus, but this is Ashley's story, too. 
 At any rate, it's a solid story. The investigation into Ashley and Cordova's lives and deaths is fascinating and compelling, and it got its hooks in to me good. The doling out of information is, I'll admit, a little easy and a little contrived, but I didn't really care about the way the information was being given out because all I wanted was to know what the hell it was. The book did a good job of piecing things out, building up the reveal and then, once the reveal came, prolonging the suspense by making us doubt the validity of the theory we'd been given. Basically, there was no point in the book that I was bored, or did not want to know more. 
 So, having read all of those unusually positive things, you may be wondering, what's the damn problem? Well, there are a few - a handful are minor, get-overable things, the rest...not so much. 
 Minor Problems: 
 The voice: While the writing was mostly acceptable, the narrative relied very heavily on exposition dumps, occasionally in the form of news articles or blogs, but usually as a spoken conversation between the MC and another character - "Cordova stories", the protagonist calls them. While a repetitive technique, it wasn't the delivery method that bothered me, so much as the language that was used in the process. Regardless of the background, personality, or even the medium through which the story was being told, the language inevitably turned, well, novel-y. Lots of flowery descriptions and metaphors that I doubt most writers would ever say out loud in casual conversation, much less your average security guard. It wasn't a deal breaker, but it was jarring as fuck and surprisingly bad writing practice in a book that was otherwise good about that sort of thing. 
 The italics: This is kind of an odd thing to have to bring up, but the italicizing in this book is weird. Look at this shit: 
 It's like reading a fuckin' Frank Miller comic. It got to the point where I actually thought the words might be another puzzle, like a code that would emerge if we just strung them together in the right order, but I've poked around online, and that doesn't seem to be the case. It just seems to be a bizarre stylistic choice. 
 The ending: I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the ending. On the one hand, I would have loved a more thorough explanation of what happened and why, but on the other, I acknowledge that with a premise this good, almost any thorough explanation you're likely to get is going to be disappointing. It's the Stephen King curse: intriguing premises almost never have satisfying explanations, so not giving us a concrete explanation is probably the smartest thing you can do. Leave it to our ~imaginations~. 
 The ending that we got was by far better than the ending I expected about ten pages prior, so I dunno, I guess we call it a wash? 
 So yeah, small things, legitimate issues but not bad enough to tank the novel for me. You know what tanked the novel for me? The same thing that almost always tanks novels for me: casual fucking bigotry. 
 Our protagonist, whose name I honestly don't even remember anymore, is a huge fucking dick. Casual racism, casual sexism, rampant transphobia, there is not an oppressed minority he isn't cool with shitting on. 
 A woman was standing in front of a lamppost, her face in shadow, her red coat catching the light behind her, making a vivid red slice in the night. 
 A young woman out here alone? Was she crazy? 
 I turned back, faintly irritated by the girl's naivete - or recklessness, whatever it was that brought her out here. Women of Manhattan, magnificent as they were, they forgot sometimes they weren't immortal. They could throw themselves like confetti into a fun-filled Friday night, with no thought as to what crack they fell into by Saturday. 
 Page two. I shit you not. Charming, right? 
 THERE'S A SHITTON MORE but it all requires quotes and screencaps, so I'm just going to link to the full review at You're Killing.US, but tw for horrifying transphobia and racism. The bottom line is that even if the book picks up in the end, it's not worth the block of terribly bigotry in the middle. Fuck it.