The Stinal Countdown: Curtains

CONTENT WARNING: THIS BOOK BLOG FEATURES TALK ABOUT SUICIDE. IF THIS BOTHERS YOU, THEN BY ALL MEANS SKIP THIS ONE. I HAVE ALSO INCLUDED THE LINK TO THE WIKIPEDIA LIST OF SUICIDE HOTLINES AT THE END OF THE BLOG. 

Another early Stine standalone is on the menu. We go back to 1990 for this book. We have possible murder and a mystery, which already I feel will be the downfall of this book. But if there's a positive, it's set in a camp. A theater camp, but still. Can this book act its way out of a paper bag, or should it exit stage left? It's Curtains.

This cover is just okay. Though it doesn't do a job selling the concept of the book being at a theater camp, even if the blurb says so. But it's still a striking enough visual with someone just about to stab someone else. Good use of shadows to obscure their faces, as well as some solid lighting overall. Although the one strewn about mop is hilariously distracting. Well, it's a cover I like. This book is doomed, isn't it?

We open with our protagonist Rena arguing with a boy named Chip over something. Eventually, Rena is so angry that she stabs him and kills him. Well that was a quick book. Turns out that this was all a performance in front of Broadway director Merritt "Bax" Baxter. Bax praises Rena before telling her that she still needs improvement because he's also such a bitch. The kids are at Bax's theater camp for the summer to improve on their acting. Rena wasn't fully into going, but her friend Julie insisted and here we are. Bax gives Rena the lead in their upcoming play, "Curtains", alongside Chip, who he keeps calling Chuck. This angers another girl named Hedy Franklyn, who was assured she'd be lead. Though Rena thinks it's more Hedy's mother who wants that for her. Because, well, can't isolate this to Goosebumps Parents, that's a lot of theater parents.

But Bax doesn't relent. He keeps Rena as the lead and Hedy as the role of the mother, much to her chagrin. Hedy tells Rena that she'll make sure that Rena won't keep that role. Chip and Julie tell Rena not to sweat it, that it's all just hot air. But Rena's not so sure. Everyone stops for the day and begin to head to the lake to swim, with Bax warning them to stay away from the boathouse since it's all ramshackle and about to fall apart. As they head out, they spot two feet on the ground. It's the body of another boy at the camp, George. Dea-oh of course he's not dead. This is a Stine book. We're not getting a corpse on chapter one. Unless it's an animal, and apparently I'm to brace myself for later. 

Yes, George was just playing dead. Turns out he's the self-proclaimed "prop master" and has access to everything imaginable. And he uses it for pranks because of course he does. Well, at least none of them are corpse parts... I hope. He's also really into Rena, but she thinks he's too intense in a very "staring a hole through your soul" type way. Rena opts out of going swimming and heads to her room with Julie. She mentions that the incident brought up memories in her head of some horrible incident that we sure as hell aren't going to learn about on page 21. But she also doesn't care for Bax either. Thinking that he's terrible and that he seems really into the stabbing scene. But Julie decides she'll go swimming anyway, with Stine describing an underage teen in a "sexy short swimsuit". Stine getting way too horny on main again.

Julie mentions how Chip reminds her of someone named Danny, which angers Rena. See Rena ended up with Danny who used to be with Julie. But Julie's fine with it. She's moved on. And so did Danny who seems to be out of their lives once and for all. It's made them closer friends at least to have both dealt with Danny's nonsense. That's why Julie wanted Rena at the theater camp, even if Rena doesn't seem like she's the same as the other kids here. And then they see something dripping from the top of their bunk bed. Blood. And not prop blood this time. It's a swan with its neck slit because why am I not surprised? It reminds her of someone else's blood. Some boy named Kenny. Insert your South Park reference here.

Julie suspects that Hedy did this, while Rena is still in a trance about Kenny. She calms down and focuses, and both begin to suspect that Hedy sent them a threat with a slit swan. Which, while yes, more animal violence, I do wish we got a scene with Hedy, or whoever the real culprit is, wandering around the lake trying to catch a swan to kill it. Like, that would at least be fun. Rena suspects it's Bax. That maybe scaring his campers to get the best reactions is his sick fetish or something. As they talk, another girl named Marcie shows up. She's described as being short and mousey. Mousey. Marcie. You ain't slick, Bob. 

The three get the sheets and dump them in the nearby trashcan before cleaning up the rest of the mess. Rena tries to rest, but the thought of the blood keeps her up, so she decides to head to Hedy's to confront her about the swan. Only when she goes to her closet, all of her clothing has been slashed. Rena then begins to suspect that maybe it wasn't Hedy. Maybe it was Julie. Maybe she didn't really get over the Danny incident and brought her to theater camp to get her revenge. But she shakes that off and heads to Hedy's room. Inside she finds a bloody cloth. When Hedy arrives in the room, Rena tries to get her to confess, showing the bloody cloth, but Hedy says that she cut her arm earlier in the day and that's not swan's blood, it's her blood. Oh, and she still plans to have Rena lose the lead role before the last week of camp, so for an actor she's doing a bad job with that alibi.

Rena leaves, when George catches up to her. He asks to talk with her, but she refuses until she ultimately gives in to get him off her case for now. She then gets a dream about Kenny. It was two years ago. Kenny was a boy about her age with slicked back hair... and a gun that he puts bullets in and tells Rena to shoot, which she does. That's all we get for now as she wakes up to a tapping sound at her window as if someone's watching. And then we cut to breakfast in the next chapter, but it's set up like Rena grimacing about Rice Krispies making sounds, so I got confused and thought that she had left cereal on her windowsill or something. 

At breakfast, Julie tells Rena that Chip wanted to talk more about Rena during their date instead of her, which makes her jealous. Jealous enough to tear up Rena's clothes and off a swan? Rena goes to Bax, but he's busy going all Christian Bale on the set designers. That's still timely enough, right? She tries to tell him about the scares, but he's busy with everything else and ignores her, which again makes her think that maybe he's the one screwing with her. Rena and Chip perform in front of Bax, but Rena is so messed up she can barely act. Chip starts to berate her, telling her to quit, which gets her to snap at him. Turns out that this was Bax's idea. To get that genuine reaction again. Getting real Kubrick vibes from Bax. Not the good director vibes either. The "traumatizing Shelley Duvall" type vibes.

Rena is unable to continue, so Hedy takes her place. She does well, but again Bax doesn't think she's good enough. She's too slick. So, it's Rena's turn again to do the stabbing scene from earlier. This proves to be a bad idea as Rena ends up stabbing Chip in the chest for real. He doesn't die, but it again triggers Rena's memories of Kenny. Marcie then mentions that this would be odd since why would there be a real knife on set and not a prop one. Someone clearly did a switcheroo. Julie again suspects Hedy. Rena also feels she can finally talk about what really happened to Kenny. 

Kenny Malone was Rena's former boyfriend in Hartford. He was known for being all over the place in terms of his mood. Sometimes high energy, sometimes seemingly hating himself. A lot of that has to do with his parents divorcing and his siblings moving to California with his father. It affected his depression. And even though Rena tried to help him, it didn't change things. Until one day Kenny put a bullet in a revolver and handed it to Rena to shoot him. It messed with her so much that she can't remember if she killed him or he did it. She was ultimately let off on account of an accidental suicide. But people still thought she did it, so that's why her family moved. Things were getting better and the incident no longer clouded her mind, until the recent incidents. Julie comforts her over this, then makes a comment about how Rena gets all the boys, which like, dude. Not the time.

They talk with the cops and mention the possibility of Hedy switching the knives, but the cops found none of her prints on the weapon, which confuses Rena and Julie. That night, George shows up and the two go for a walk. It goes fine, albeit with George still being a creep. She mentions that George is wearing a jacket with A.M. on it, but he says he borrowed it. Then he becomes a bigger creep when he forces himself on her, then says it was only acting. Ewww. He's also super apologetic which I call BS on. You're only sorry because you got called out on it. Either way, Rena runs off. She gets to sleep and now has a dream about Bax wanting to stab her. So, it's not a Kenny dream this time at least...

Rena's not in a good way the next day, so much that even Julie suggests that she should step down from the play, because that's not suspicious. George shows up and mentions that Bax is sick. Not only that, but he now has Chip's spot in the play, so he's co-lead with Rena. What a coincidence. At rehearsal, sure enough, Bax looks like death warmed over. He also mentions that "Curtains" is a play about fear, something that interests him a lot. He then gets all angry, talking about how he's working with amateurs. Whether or not he's going to crawl into bed with a bottle of Amaretto remains to be seen. 

Suddenly, the lights go out. And when they come back up, Bax is hanging by the neck on a noose. Well that escalated. The kids get him down and try to resuscitate him, when he pops up and talks about that's what he means by wanting to see fear. You know, I get method acting, wanting to get the actors to really emote, but, like, emotionally scarring 16-17 year olds is not a good look, my man. Also, like, if they just left you up there, this plan would have failed horribly. But all of this is enough to convince Rena that maybe it was Bax the whole time. He did say how much he wanted real fear, so now she's certain he's the one screwing with her. She quits the play and runs off with George trying to follow her.

Rena packs her things and is ready to meet with her parents. She's tired of being everyone else's victim. As she leaves, Hedy gloats about how easily Rena broke, but Rena again accuses her of sabotaging everything. Like, at this point pick a culprit already! She heads back to the lake where George meets her and takes her to the boathouse. After admiring some baby robin, they notice the room is starting to fill with water. George goes to open the door, but it's locked. After a while, Rena finally realizes that George is lying about it being locked. 

George then reveals he was the one who killed the swan. Who sent the threats. You see A.M. stands for Andy Malone. Kenny's brother. He has been trying to kill Rena this entire time to get vengeance for Kenny. He drags her into the water as the boathouse begins to break above them. Rena manages to escape in time. Andy isn't so lucky as he winds up face first in the water. It's enough to make Rena remember. She didn't kill Kenny. Kenny shot himself. She tried to stop it, but was unable to. But now she has a chance to save Andy. She saves him and he manages to live, though he wanted to die to be with Kenny. And the book ends with Rena, mind in a better place, leaving theater camp. She's tired of acting and wants to live in the real world now. 

I give R.L. Stine a lot of crap here. And sometimes he does deserve it. When it comes to touchy subjects like mental health for example, he's not very good at it. As evident with Fear Street, he uses poor mental health or trauma as a reasoning for a villainous act. So, once we got into the plot about this being about trauma, I feared the worst. But instead, Stine handles this well. Rena is one of the more interesting protagonists. She has a mental trigger that has haunted her for years. Believing she was the one who murdered Kenny, when the ultimate truth was she simply wasn't able to save him. And at the point in time, perhaps nobody could. So Stine having to do a story about suicide of all things is handled with enough class. Granted, in a book where the dickhead acting coach pretends to die to scare his students, but that's even used well. A sign of how awful some people look at suicide. As a joke that can be used at the expense of the wellbeing of others. 

Curtains has a decent mystery and is a rare occasion where anyone could be the culprit. Perhaps not Hedy, she's the book's red-haired red herring. Bax is possible given how twisted he really is. Julie is also possible, but Rena thinking that she's the likely one becomes a bit too obvious it might not be her either. So George, or Andy, makes the most sense. And the reveal works well enough, even if again Stine makes things too obvious with the whole jacket thing and his creepy obsession. I will say the book spins its wheels a bit midway, but otherwise still works for its horror and mystery that it's not the biggest issue this time. Even though we have another case of animal slaughter for cheap horror.

Rena, like I said, is a solid protagonist. And a lot of that has to do with how her trauma feels real. How Kenny taking his own life affected her, making her think that she was the one who killed him. Granted, she ran for help instead of trying to grab the gun. Would she have been successful? Would Kenny have lived, or would she have died? It's a tricky subject to really handle and I think Stine does a fine enough job in absolving Rena for most of it, and using her saving Andy as a way to redeem herself. To lift the guilt she had for not saving Kenny's life. A character with dimensions and pathos. In an R.L. Stine book. Well now I have seen everything. 

So, in the end, this is a high recommend. Not perfect, has the standard Stine issues and flaws, but otherwise is more respectful on emotional trauma and suicide than I would have expected from him. Granted, it still feels like a gimmick for a story, but handled with more class than I had feared. I guess I still haven't truly figured this guy out after all. Curtains gets an A. 

It Was Acceptable in the 90s: Cher comparisons, Keds, "Matt Dillon Smile"

I'd be remiss if I didn't finish this blog by saying that if you feel like suicide is your only answer, it isn't. There are people who want to talk with you and want to help you. This includes suicide hotlines. Mental health is a bitch. It's also a liar. You are loved and you are wanted in this world.