As a child, Brian and his friend Jimmy would make home movies in their yards, coaxing their friends into starring as victims of grisly murders and smearing lipstick on them to simulate blood. Now an aspiring filmmaker, he and Jimmy, along with Jimmy’s friend Laurie – the new girl in town and Brian’s reluctant muse – set off to a remote cabin in the woods. Armed with a thrifted 16-millimetre camera, they film a true sci-fi horror movie set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are born of disembodied alien wombs, a homage to Brian’s favourite movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But as Brian’s affections for Laurie go seemingly unreciprocated, Brian writes and draws himself into a fantasy where she is the girl of his dreams – somehow both his damsel in distress and his saviour.
The beloved and award-winning Charles Burns returns with an arresting story of an artist’s obsessions and the cost of pushing the boundaries of creativity in his first standalone work since Black Hole. Final Cut blurs the line between dreams and reality, imagination and perception in this astonishing look at what it truly means to express oneself through art.
\”Rarely has the pursuit of art been more potently characterized as a substitute for love and acceptance. With perfectly attuned emotional and aesthetic details, it’s an instant classic from a master of the form.\”
–Publishers Weekly, starred review
\”A striking celebration of cinema’s power and a chilling acknowledgement of its limitations.\”
–Kirkus, Starred Review
\”A stunningly illustrated exploration of alienation, obsession, and the experience of yearning for connection with another human being, particularly when one feels that they are only capable of expressing themselves through art.\”
–Library Journal
\”Working in vivid colors…with every panel filled to the absolute edges, Burns memorably produces sweeping cinema on the page.\”
–Shelf Awareness, starred review
\”Burns delivers a moody, wistful, and creepy homage to artistic expression and unrequited longing… Fluid sequencing between frames brings a cinematic movement to the story. Burns’ characteristic and precise line work infuses the story with atmosphere, tension, and unease as imagination and real life intersect in a mash-up of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Last Picture Show.\”
–Booklist
\”Charles Burns delivers his much-anticipated new graphic novel Final Cut. You don’t need to have seen The Blair Witch Project to know that when some aspiring filmmakers head into the woods to film their creepy homage to Invasion of the Body Snatchers that things might not go as planned. Toss in unrequited love and a hodgepodge of references to classic sci-fi and horror movie tropes and you’ve got the ingredients for a disturbing spin on artistic control and a demand for final cut.\”
–Parade
\”I love everything about this book: the story, the drawings, its way with all things extraterrestrial (the alien pod inside which Laurie must lie on a mountainside as the camera rolls – and rolls – is fashioned by Brian from muslin and Velcro). It’s wraparound wonderful, as close to immersive as any comic could be.\”
–Rachel Cooke at The Guardian
\”The line between his dreams and reality becomes blurred in classic Burns style, summoning a wave of surreal imagery blending the strangeness of the natural world with the cinematic imagery of his beloved genre films.\”
-AV Club
Format: Hardback
Pages: 224
Imprint: Jonathan Cape UK
Publication date: 03/11/2024
