Sager’s twisty plot kept me riveted well into the early hours of the morning, trying to figure out where we were headed-I never guessed. Sager’s storytelling, too, is absorbingly cinematic, sucking you right into the car with Charlie and holding you by the throat as the hours between campus and Akron tick down. There’s six hours from campus to Charlie’s home, and not everyone is going to make it out of this ride alive…īut the “Please don’t do this” premise isn’t the only thing cinematic about Survive the Night: Charlie is a film buff, who makes sense of her precarious situation partially by drawing on lessons learned from films like Silence of the Lambs and Gaslight. Exactly the wrong thing to do with a serial killer on the loose. Wracked with grief, Charlie desperately wants to get away from campus-so much so, she accepts a ride from a tall, dark, handsome stranger. Charlie’s been through a lot in the last few months, including the murder of her best friend by the infamous (and at-large) Campus Killer. Riley Sager’s latest thriller, Survive the Night, starts with a humdinger of a “Please don’t do this” premise and then, right as you think you know the score, turns the story on its head to become something totally new and unexpected. A kid wanders into the basement where too many things have gone bump in the dark. There’s something I like to call the “Please don’t do this” premise, common to both thrillers and horror films: A girl walks home alone at night.
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