Found-Footage Novel ‘Mister Howl’ Is Frightening and Gorgeous
Chad Collins
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T.W. Burgess’s Mister Howl is a groundbreaking exercise in found footage literature. A terrifying, meta-riff on Rear Window, Mister Howl is unease incarnate. Replete with stellar illustrations emulating the protagonist’s digital perspective, this is a literary novelty and a must-read for horror fans this Halloween.
Burgess is not the first to imbue a horror novel with meta, almost filmic subtext. Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstör, illustrated by Michael Rogalski, is akin to a haunted Ikea catalog, while Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves remains one of the most enduring pieces of epistolary metafiction ever conceived. Then there is Andrew Cull and Gabino Iglesias’ edited 2022 anthology Found, a collection of short found footage horror stories. Yet, while Burgess isn’t necessarily breaking the mold, he augments it considerably with style and scares. Don’t read Mister Howl in the dead of night.
15-year-old Jason Marks is wheelchair-bound following a catastrophic injury. Consequently, his days are spent messing with the camcorder his mother bought him (second-hand, he assures us), playing video games, and spying on his neighbors. There’s an entire world in the apartment complex across the street, and Jason routinely gives the adjacent strangers names (e.g. Uptillate, because he’s always up late). Thematically, it’s Jason coping with his nascent condition. His mother works nights, and it’s clear both are marred by tragedy they’d rather talk around than directly address. Jason is a boy with an imagination, and the machinations of his own mind are questioned with the arrival of Mister Howl.
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At first, Jason presumes the midnight howling he hears is a dog. Captured on-camera secretly and indirectly, Jason pieces together that the sound is emanating from something more akin to a man, less akin to an animal. The presence of Mister Howl remains a perennial interest for Jason. He’s telling everyone about it, and in conventional horror fashion, they’re not keen on believing him. Video games not only rot your brain, but they also manifest cryptids across the street.
Terror ramps up steadily, easily rendered visceral on account of Burgess’ illustrations. Firmly within the realm of less is more, readers see enough without an overabundance of physicality. Violence and danger augment the stakes in the novel’s latter half of urgency. While the eventual reveal and subsequent epilogue are fascinating, if a bit lore-heavy, the brief journey there remains inimitably terrifying.
Found footage might not be in its heyday (though the likes of Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva and The Outwaters would say differently), but Burgess expertly makes use of the subgenre’s best practices. Audio logs written textually add flavor to the otherwise standard teenage stream-of-consciousness. Though noted before, the frightening efficacy of the many still images included throughout cannot be overstated. They coalesce into a breathtakingly terrifying take on found footage that scares are all but certain to rattle even the most hardened horror fans this Halloween.
Mister Howl is an easy recommendation from a burgeoning voice in horror storytelling. It’ll rattle, shake, and terrify you, imbuing its emotional heft with earnest, bone-chilling scares.
T.W. Burgess’ Mister Howl can be purchased here.
