Intensity:🩸🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Written by Nick Cutter
The Troop explodes with grotesque body horror and creeping dread. Five Boy Scouts and their scoutmaster struggle to survive a horrific engineered parasite epidemic while trapped on a lonely Canadian island.
This novel finds its power through plausibility. A globe-changing virus has put us all through the wringer. This makes the biological terror of The Troop that much more potent. Nick Cutter’s 2014 novel now seems a bit prescient. He taps into this pandemic terror by utilizing the time-honored trope of putting adolescents into coming-of-age moments through trial by terror. There is emotional resonance in using a group of tween boys and putting them up against the impossible.
This feels like a mash-up of Stand by Me and The Thing. Other natural comps would include It, Stranger Things (But MUCH darker), The Summer of ’84, and The Lost Boys. Pair that coming-of-age trope with the Canadian body horror of Shivers, Rabid, The Fly, or The Brood. What is it about Canadians and parasite horror, anyway? A differentiator from the typical is that the boys in The Troop would hardly be described as plucky. The boys in this story are not quippy. They don’t have a deep reservoir of ideas pulled from popular culture. They are just boys. Vulnerable boys. Nick Cutter pulls no punches either. Warning: horrible fates await, and it will be grotesque.
The Characters of Troop :
- Scoutmaster Tim Riggs, the town physician. Tim is a man with many doubts and low aspirations. He’s a good man, who finds personal validation in his role in mentoring these boys but struggles to connect with them individually.
- Kent is the alpha athlete of the troop. He is the biggest, strongest, and most popular of the boys, but he is not the best decision-maker. His dad is the town sheriff, and the sense of entitled power has been passed from father to son.
- Shelly is the quiet weird kid. Shelly is probably a sociopath, with whom the other boys give a lot of room. His parents have no clue as to what goes on in his mind or what wicked things he does in his spare time.
- Ephraim is the son of a convict. Anger surges through this boy’s veins, and Ephraim will speak with his fists if need be. He’s a gangly kid with more than a few grudges and a temper that often gets the best of him.
- Max is the boy with the most common sense. Max observes and quietly evaluates the situation. He’s small but tough. He is also Ephraim’s best friend and helps keep his more volatile buddy on an even keel. As the son of the local mortician/taxidermist, Max developed a steady composure.
- Newton is the chubby nerd. Always full of great ideas, but Newton’s know-it-all tendencies draw the wrath of the other boys onto him. He takes the ridicule and hazing with surprising resilience. Ironically, the son of the town’s local beauty queen, he is a very creative improviser, which will prove necessary in the trials to come.
A Short Synopsis
A bedraggled and starving man flees by motorboat to unpopulated Falstaff Island, where the troop is doing their Summer weekend retreat. Tim, being a physician, lets the man in. Meanwhile, he instructs the boys to stay in their bunk room, much to their concern. This man’s condition is beyond Tim’s medical expertise. He calls for help on the short-wave radio. But the stranger, in response, goes ballistic. During a struggle, the man breaks the radio and vomits black goo on the scoutmaster. Tim eventually subdues the man, who visibly deteriorates through the evening. In the morning, Tim sends the boys out on their mission hike on the island, while he tries to figure out what to do. Alarmingly, his mind is getting foggy. Apparently, whatever the sick man had might be contagious.
When the boys get back, Tim has made a bold decision. They are going to try and save the man through emergency surgery, a decision from Tim’s now unsteady mind. Tim asks Max to assist with the surgery since the boy has helped his dad in the morgue. When Tim cuts the man’s belly open, a gigantic white worm bursts from the cavity. This trauma wakes the poor stranger, only to have the worm strangle him to death. The worm turns its attention to Max and Tim, so Tim slashes the worm in half and they flee the cabin.
Tim confesses his illness to the boys, giving Kent the opportunity to take the lead of the troop. The boys, lock their scoutmaster in the closet. But now, they know this worm can be transmitted. Is there a cure? Can they get off the island? Are any of them also infected? Why is no help coming? It’s all up to them now, and the worm isn’t the only thing that is dangerous on the island. The boys are poised to turn on each other. As the disease spreads, so does the panic, and the dissension between the boys risks the survival of them all.
THEMES
Children and Grown Ups
A big and repeated theme in The Troop is the trust that kids put in adults. These boys believed in the grown-ups. They looked to Tim for answers. The respect and admiration that children have for their elders may have been misplaced. Unfortunately, it also becomes clear in this story that kids can make really bad decisions too. With age comes wisdom. The scouts certainly lacked wisdom. But in the end, the boys learned that adults can be assholes.
Mad Science and Corporate Greed
The mutant tapeworms in The Troop were the result of an unethical scientist creating a rapid weight loss version of the tapeworm diet, but it worked too well. When the word got out about the speed, deadliness, and contractability of the worm, the military came calling. This echoes the plot in Aliens, where a bio-weapon with horrific and violent consequences is identified and supported in secret. Classic mad science. So, it went from a get-rich-quick medical scam to a get-rich-quick bio terror weapon. Awesome! Reality check 2: The military and big pharma can be assholes.
Bullying and Adolescent Boy Social Dynamics
The hike part of the story establishes the pecking order among the scouts. A hierarchy evolved over time and forceful social dynamics. Kent clearly wants to lead, but he lacks foresight. But, when you are bigger and stronger than the others, you get to be king of the mountain. That position remains tenuous if enough bad decisions get made. Newton makes for a fascinating character study. The other boys pick on him ruthlessly. Tween boy social dynamics emphasize the pile-on mentality. Best to pick on the kid below you on the social order, or the bullying target may move to you. But, this bullying of Newton made him surprisingly emotionally tough. Conversely, when the power dynamics shift, Kent is ill-prepared to be knocked down a peg. Reality check 3: Your buddies can be assholes too.
The Troop Story Mechanics
The Troop is told through a mix of extratextual commentary preceding the chapters, through news clips, interviews, journals, and psychologist sessions, and the active story narrative. Often, the external pieces foreshadow what is to come. It is usually suggestive, setting the table with dreadful knowledge. But on occasion, a piece of information will punch through and serve as a five-alarm fire bell.
The most dreadful excerpt comes from a science journal where the scientists test out the mutant worm on a chimpanzee and give a minute-by-minute description in grueling detail. This portends the horrors to come for the troop. It is a masterful way of foreshadowing. The psychological and diary journals reveal the psychological and emotional makeup of each of the boys. You then get a deeper connection to the characters as they enter their trials of will.
I appreciate that Cutter does not tip his hat as to who is going to survive, at least for most of the book. An exception would be that Tim is doomed from the start. Narratively the story needs the absence of an adult figure in order to establish the interpersonal power dynamics amongst the boys.
Final Thoughts for The Troop:
The Troop moved me. It isn’t the most original though, but it was really effective. The delivery method and the plausibility of the story stuck the landing for me. This is a very well-crafted novel. The characters did feel a bit too carefully crafted to deliver the plot for Cutter. The boys were broad archetypes, but you cared for them. Eric’s rule #1: Do I care about the protagonists? Yes. I rooted hard for these kids… most of them… to make it off the island.
This novel won the James Herbert Award for Horror Writing in 2015. It also appears in the essential reading list in 100 Books to Read Before You’re Murdered. It is not surprising to learn that a book that is this cinematic in its presentation has been picked up for its movie rights. James Wan secured the rights to the film in 2019 and named E.L. Katz to be the director. A strong trigger warning to those of you who have difficulty with violence against children. Also, this is a novel that has extremely graphic body horror that describes in detail the physical and emotional destruction of people and animals. In conclusion, I recommend The Troop for readers with a strong stomach
ISBN 9781476717715