Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Killer Book Club.
The Big Picture
- The movie “Killer Book Club” poses ethical questions about turning someone’s real life into a horror story, forcing viewers to consider the consequences of their actions.
- The complex plot of the film revolves around a book club seeking revenge on a professor, which spirals into murder and online storytelling, leading to a shocking revelation about the killers’ true identities.
- The ending of the movie leaves audiences wondering if the events are real or just a manifestation of the protagonist’s trauma, sparking speculation about a potential sequel.
How much truth is there to horror as a genre? Is it ethical to turn someone’s real life into a story? These are the questions that Netflix’s newest horror film, Carlos Alonso Ojea‘s Killer Book Club, asks of its viewers in its final moments. Well, that and whether the killer that tormented Ángela (Veki Velilla) and her book club friends is indeed gone. The movie’s final scene has our heroine standing alone at the university campus, face to face with the girl whose life she turned into a novel all those years back. Having apparently survived the boiler room fire with nothing but a nasty burn on her face, Alicia (Priscilla Delgado) charges at Ángela with her hammer. Completely alone, Ángela doesn’t have the time to do anything but scream. Is it finally the end for this horror story’s protagonist? Or is it all in her mind?
To answer these questions we first have to go back to the events of Killer Book Club. The movie has a complex plot full of little twists and turns, and averting your eyes from the screen for just a split second might already be enough for you to miss out on some key details. Who is the killer behind the clown mask? Or, rather, who are the killers? What are their motivations? How does this all tie up with the first scene of the movie, in which a girl burns her book-filled home down with a copy of Don Quixote, killing her mother in the process? In case you’ve watched the movie and remain at a loss about one or more of these questions, don’t worry. Here’s a breakdown of everything that goes on in Killer Book Club and how the dots connect at the end.
What Is ‘Killer Book Club’ About?
The plot of Killer Book Club begins for real when Ángela, a member of a book club devoted to horror novels, is sexually assaulted by one of her university’s most renowned professors, Cruzado (Daniel Grao). Claiming to have received a suggestive email from her, Cruzado asks Ángela to his office and proceeds to grope her. Thankfully, Ángela is able to escape the ordeal with the help of a nicely aimed kick but is too afraid to press charges against the professor. Feeling that this crime shouldn’t go unpunished, the members of her book club decide to pull a prank on the professor inspired by a book on killer clowns. They dress up as creepy clowns and wait for Cruzado at night, at the university, armed with hammers.
The plan is to just scare him, perhaps cause some degree of physical damage, but nothing too serious. However, the prank soon spirals out of control, and Cruzado accidentally falls from the top floor, hitting his hand on the way down before being impaled by the lance of a Don Quixote statue. Terrified that the police might think that they outright murdered him, the book club members leave the scene, hoping that Cruzado’s death will be ruled a suicide or a freak accident, and vow never to speak of it again.
Why Does the Clown Killer Start Murdering?
A while later, however, Ángela, Sebas (Álvaro Mel), Virginia (Priscilla Delgado), Nando (Iván Pellicer), Koldo (Hamza Zaidi), Eva (María Cerezuela), Sara (Ane Rot), and Rai (Carlos Alcaide) begin to be persecuted by a killer clown that claims to be taking revenge for Cruzado’s death. What’s more is that reducing the group of friends to nothing but the most basic tropes, the killer is also posting his crimes online in the form of a serialized story on a Wattpad-like website called Escrileo. It’s the same site on which Ángela originally published her first novel, “The Girl from Carrión,” when she was just a teen.
The killer — or, as we later find out, killers — takes out the members of the book club one by one, starting with young Virginia, the Brat. They also become minor celebrities at the university, with people voting in polls to decide who will be the next one to die. Cornered and afraid, the members of the book club begin to doubt one another, having come to the conclusion that the killer can only be one of them. After all, through their storytelling, the Mad Clown has shown a great knowledge of horror tropes, and no one in the university is as devoted to horror as the members of the book club.
Who Are the Clown Killers in ‘Killer Book Club’?
Indeed, they are right: the killer clown outfit is worn by not just one, but two of the club’s participants: Sebas, the Simp, and Virginia, who merely faked her death. And though they turned the gang into victims of their twisted, gory storytelling project, their motivation is actually a vendetta against Ángela and Ángela alone. It turns out that, long ago, Ángela met a girl on Escrileo whose life was turned into a living hell by her literature-obsessed mother. Said girl, whose name was Alicia, was forced to spend hours upon hours reading and writing, and this torment served as inspiration for Ángela’s novel. “The Girl from Carrión” was an instant hit, and Alicia was distraught that her so-called best online friend would turn her life into a story. This series of events led Alicia to insanity, and she burned down her house, killing her mother and herself in the process. That is the crime we see in the first scene of Killer Book Club.
The Murders in ‘Killer Book Club’ Are All Connected to Ángela’s Past
But things didn’t exactly play out like this, did they? In reality, Alicia survived the fire and, years later, disguised herself as Virginia to enact her revenge against Ángela. What revenge is this? To write a book that would bring Ángela more pain than “The Girl from Carrión” brought her. As for Sebas, he is Alicia’s boyfriend from her Escrileo days and the mastermind behind the whole plan. He was the one who sent the suggestive email to Cruzado, pretending to be Ángela, as well as the one who came up with the killer clown prank, all to get the wheels of his story moving the way he wanted to. The plan was to turn Ángela into the heroine of her own horror novel, killing her friends and offing her at the very end.
But, as is usually the case with slasher movies, the killers’ plan doesn’t work out. After all, the story needs a final girl. With the help of her boyfriend Nando, the only other survivor of the club who isn’t himself a killer, Ángela is able to save herself from Sebas and Alicia. The first one falls to his death much like Cruzado, being impaled by Don Quixote’s lance. The latter is burned alive in a fire started by Ángela in the university’s boiler room. Badly injured, Nando is rescued by the paramedics, and, having previously considered that he might be the killer, Ángela professes her love for him as they ride together in the ambulance.
What Does the Ending of ‘Killer Book Club’ Mean?
Cut to one year later. Nando, who, at the beginning of the film, was the only member of the club not attending university, is now a student at the same university as Ángela. They take classes together, and Ángela plans on writing a novel based on her experience with Sebas and Alicia. As a matter of fact, she already has a publisher interested in the book. However, her plans seem to go down the drain when she is attacked, on the deserted campus, by Alicia dressed as a killer clown. Could it be that she survived the boiler room fire? Did she fake her own death again?
Well, that is certainly an interpretation, but it is also possible that Ángela seeing Alicia on campus might simply be a manifestation of her trauma. After all, this wouldn’t be the first time Ángela sees clowns where there are none: earlier in the film, she has a panic attack in the bathroom when she imagines a clown charging at her. So maybe Alicia didn’t survive at all. Maybe Ángela is simply not over everything that happened to her.
Still, Killer Book Club is a very meta horror film. Early in the story, Cruzado complains about horror stories lacking veracity only for the movie to give us two horror stories that are deeply entangled with real life: “The Girl from Carrión” and the MadClown’s narrative. In the epilogue, Ángela and Nando are attending a class on sequels in which it is said that a story that ties up all its loose threads at the end doesn’t need a second installment. However, things are different when there are still plots to be concluded. So, maybe, by bringing Alicia back from the dead (again!), Killer Book Club is trying to establish the foundations for a sequel, reopening a plot that had been previously closed.
