This WWI Dark Fantasy Novel Is Like A One-Take Movie In Book Form

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The one-take, or a scene without any (apparent) camera cuts, has become the go-to filmmaking bravado move. There's almost nothing that more purposefully shows a director exercising control of their camera. It's hard not to regard one-takes as a blatant "look at me!" move, but the best one-take scenes in movies also show why so many filmmakers attempt them. Indeed, have you ever forgotten the thrill of when you first saw the tracking shot through the Copacabana restaurant in "Goodfellas?"

What's the next step to impress after a one-take? Staging and editing whole movies as if they're shot in a single take. One of the famous early examples is Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 experiment "Rope," though camera technology limitations forced some pretty obvious editing tricks. But as camera tech has advanced, we've gotten more one-take movies. See: Sam Mendes' "1917," which follows two young soldiers in World War I sent to deliver an urgent message, all presented in one (almost) continuous shot.

What you may not know is there's a book that captures almost the same feeling as watching "1917" — Daniel Kraus' "Angel Down," a WWI book written as one unbroken sentence. Now, the book is divided into chapters and has paragraph breaks, so it isn't borderline incomprehensible like an unformatted run-on sentence might end up being. But every paragraph begins with a lowercase "and" and concludes with a comma. 

Kraus tips his hand at the end of Chapter 1, writing that the battlefields and carnage of the Great War are like "a sentence in a book careening without periods, gasping with too many commas, a sentence that, once begun, can't ever be stopped, a sentence doomed to loop back on itself to form a terrible black wheel that, sooner or later, will drag each and every person to their grave[.]" 

Daniel Kraus also authored "Whalefall," a survival thriller book (and now movie) about a scuba diver swallowed by a sperm whale. Between that and "Angel Down," you can't say Kraus' books lack inspired hooks. But while the unbroken sentence that is "Angel Down" makes for splashy marketing, it's not just a gimmick. The run-on sentence ultimately reveals itself as a reflection of the ouroboros of human conflict across history. It also echoes the unrelenting battlefield stress of the book's characters.

War puts you in a state of heightened and unceasing anxiety. Your fight or flight response is in constant effect, not only at key moments. "Angel Down" captures that even better than the unbroken one-take of "1917." Reading "Angel Down," you're not a distanced voyeur like you are watching a movie. You're directly put inside lead Cyril Bagger's head as he processes violence and death all around him with the scattershot, unceasing rhythm you'd expect from a soldier. 

But that's not even getting into the other twist of "Angel Down" that sets it apart from a typical war novel. On the battlefield, Cyril and four other soldiers are sent to investigate an unusual shrieking sound, and they find a young woman they come to recognize as a Biblical angel. Most of the soldiers covet her and her ability to deliver wishes (including reviving the dead). That same covetousness destroys each of them — but Cyril, a cynic and a conman, grows more selfless.

While the book's leads ("heroes" is too strong) are American, it doesn't elide the terrible parts of U.S. history, either. One of the five soldiers, Ben Veck, is Black and desires apocalyptic revenge for how the country he's fighting for simultaneously won't recognize him as equally human.

"Angel Down" attracted substantial acclaim, even winning the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. So, it's little surprise that Imagine Entertainment (a production company for the "Whalefall" film) moved quickly to preemptively get an "Angel Down" film made. As reported by Deadline in January 2026, an "Angel Down" movie is being developed, and Daniel Kraus himself is writing the script.

Whereas "Whalefall" had been considered unfilmable due to its premise, "Angel Down" demands a movie adaptation. It's a propulsive, cinematic story, and the success of "1917" alone shows how an adaptation could be made. (That said, it's currently unknown if the "Angel Down" film will itself be shot as a oner.)

Kraus has previously worked with Guillermo del Toro. They co-authored the novel "Trollhunters" (which del Toro made into an animated series) and a novelization of del Toro's film "The Shape of Water." If Kraus could call in that connection, del Toro would be a strong fit to direct "Angel Down."

Like del Toro's films, Kraus' novel deals in Catholic themes. In "Angel Down," Cyril Bagger carries a leather-bound bible from his disapproving father, and the angel shows him a great and terrible vision of future wars in a fantasized church. The angel also tempts the soldiers with their desires, like Satan appearing before Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. (The other book Cyril carries, "Son of Tarzan," seemingly underlines how little separates humanity from different animals.)

Like in del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth," the fantastical parts of "Angel One" are probably real but they're ambiguous enough to test and weed out the nonbelievers. And even without those elements, "Angel One" is a harrowing depiction of how WWI rotted people's bodies, souls, and possibly the world itself, and its horrifying visuals deserve the silver screen.