This was a super fun read!

Chopping Mall is one of my favorite movies and reading a novelization of it made me love it even more.

The additional background given for the characters added more depth to the story and helped me as a reader to better understand their motivations during the course of events. (LIke why they were adament about partying in a furniture store in the mall in the first place)

The author really makes the story more into an atmospheric horror piece through his characterization of the mall itself. It reminds me of the characterization of the forest in Robert Eggers' The Witch.

I also enjoyed the additional information about the robots and what happened to them.

I definitely recommend this book for anyone who is a fan of Chopping Mall, 80s horror movies in general, or just looking for a fast, fun read.

Like it or not, I'm a child of the 80s (albeit in the UK, where we didn't really have malls until much later!) and this book manages to perfectly capture the vibe of that insane decade and the original movie that it spawned.

Reading this book was akin to travelling back in time; not to a 1980s that ever existed, but to the first time I saw 'Chopping Mall'. The colour, vibrancy, craziness and gonzo horror is here - but with his usual flair and skill, Josh adds little touches here and there to give extra background that felt like deleted scenes from an old DVD, as well as a little political and social commentary to make it seem relevant to the post-mall world of the mid-2020s. 

We may have moved on from such sci-fi futurism (or not, given the look of the Tesla tanks!), but this is more than just a novelization. It's a fun adventure that manages to capture the characters of the movie while drawing the reader in to relate more than perhaps we could with what were previously pretty shallow waters. 

I particularly appreciated (and chuckled) at the adapting of Asimov's First Law of Robotics, changing 'humans' to 'consumers'. Because what's a priority to a mall, if not consumers - or those who aren't? I see American friends commenting online that security staff usher those who aren't shopping out of malls these days - gone are the 'hang-out' places if you're not spending...

On-the-nose '80s-style slasher fun. 

I was kindly sent an early copy of this book but the above opinions are entirely my own.

Note: This review is for Joshua Millican's edition which is a completely different book from Brian G. Berry's book that came out a month ago.

It's impossible to not talk about this adaptation without talking about the cancelled-but-accidentally-released edition that released one month prior. There's no amount of polish that can turn Chopping Mall into anything resembling a great story, but clearly there's still some stuff you can work with. Berry's book was a very trashy read; it was disgusting and nasty, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a lot of fun to share excerpts with my friends. Conversely, this edition is actually a halfway decent novel, but it lacks the horridness that made the previous edition so much fun to rip on.

It might not sound like it, but what I'm trying to say is that this is a fun book. There's a lot of little nice moments that add to the barebones (but fun) characters, and I'm a little more forgiving of some of the clunkier prose since I know that real-life circumstances made this a total rush job that was thrown together in next to no time at all. Considerations aside, you're still left with something that's enjoyable enough to tear through in a day.

The last third or so of this book completely flies by (a bit too fast), but it's really tough because that's the portion of the film that has next to no dialogue and just a bunch of running and shooting. It's a problem that Berry had as well, and quite honestly I preferred a faster tear through the least exciting part of the story. Normally I'd object to the ending being the worst part of the book, but hey... I get it!

It's a lot of fun to compare and contrast the two editions. They both have wildly different epilogues and the little bits of added characterization deviate quite a bit, with this book seeming way less nasty than its predecessor. There's a very clear winner here, and it's a shame that the better version only exists because someone put people through serious pain. I'm never touching another Berry book again, but I might check out some of Millican's other stuff someday.

Josh cut the Rambo-gram line though, and for that, it's unforgivable. 

Thank you to BookSirens and Encyclopocalypse Publications for providing a review copy. 

I love this new version of Chopping Mall by Joshua Millican! Millican's movie novelizations are so, so good. He always manages to capture the spirit of the original movie, and definitely succeeds in doing so again with Chopping Mall. It's one of my favorite crappy little movies, and the novelization did it so much justice. 5 stars