Have You Read This? Rin Chupeco's The Sacrifice

 

YA horror has always seemed rather nebulous. What exactly is YA horror? It can be defined as “horror that specifically targets young adults ages 11-18” (and that’s my definition that I’m using to make a point, so bear with me here), but that then leads to the question of how exactly does fiction target a young adult market? Does it use teenagers? Does it reference Pokemon? Being that I am old enough to have grandchildren, when I talk about YA horror, I feel like the Steve Buscemi meme where he’s wearing skater garb and asking “How do you do, fellow kids?” Before I’m called a curmudgeon or advised to go play stickball in the street, I’m reminding people of my age only to illustrate how I need to broaden my own horizons. Thus, I’ve decided to give Rin Chupeco’s The Sacrifice a try, and it offers a narrative that borders on both folk horror and even a smattering of metacommentary.

There is no found footage necessarily in this story, but it does involve a Hollywood film crew that visits the remote island of Kipsmata located near the Philippines. The locals know that the island is under the sway of a dreaming god, but that’s exactly why a film crew has decided to film their latest reality show there. They hire a local teen, Aton, who is familiar with the island and its curse, to be their guide, but he also might have to be the crew’s savior when someone attempts to wake this god and claim its power.

The story collects a lot of different folklore and tropes to create its funhouse of an island, from ghosts that torment the living with guilt and regret to folk horror where the trees are said to grow around corpses. Chupeco’s use of East Asian mythology also gives this story a setting way different from the Gothic house with creaking doors. There’s a mishmash of characters who fill out the crew but the real linchpin in the story is Aton, the main POV character who offers an outsider perspective to a film crew blithely wandering into a trap. He also serves as the voice of reason that, of course, no one listens to, all while pursuing a relationship with teen Chase, a boy who is recovering from a nasty breakup through social media. Its focus on the teen protagonist puts this tale squarely in the YA category and its scares are fairly conventional but the setting does keep them interesting. Another YA horror novel, Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield, has more moments of sheer terror, but The Sacrifice does offer a spooky action-adventure in an exotic locale.