John (Adam Pally) and Kathy (Rosebud Baker) start off Hell of a Summer (2023) with a fireside guitar session, which as we all know is just asking for trouble. They’re the owners of a summer camp called Camp Pineway, but they live there permanently – their photos are all over the refrigerator. Anyway, we see them for just long enough to establish that this film is going to be a fairly humorous slasher homage, and it gets things going quite quickly in this respect as the inevitable masked killer stalks out of the trees and dispatches them both.
This is unknown to the new camp counsellors (weird title for that job, by the way) who are about to arrive for this year’s season, just ahead of the happy campers themselves. Returning staff member Jason (Fred Hechinger) is returning for yet another year – much to the chagrin of his mother, who feels that a grown man with a beard should be doing something other than leading camp activities for kids at $100 a week. But Jason has that whole ‘arrested development’ thing down to a fine art; he behaves like a far younger person, which doesn’t go unnoticed by the other counsellors, old and new. They each have their own issues, though. Hey, one has even brought a copy of his horror screenplay to camp with him (directors and writers Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard also number amongst the new staff intake).
Of course, Jason can’t find the camp owners because they’re already dead, but he sees this as part of a ‘test’ to see if he is ready to take on more responsibilities at Camp Pineway. That’s his take on it, anyway. The others settle in, getting to know one another, venting various teenage angst and so on: it’s here that the film starts to feel rather protracted, in a way which the much pacier opening scenes did not suggest was coming. What makes it worse is that there feels like a limited payoff; for all of the intrapersonal relationship stuff, it still feels tough to remember much about those relationships, or even most of the character names. This is an issue in a film which (wisely, mind you) will be rolling its credits by the ninety-minute mark. Knowing the type of film we will be getting, you do have to expect a bit of treading water before we get anywhere; however, thirty minutes of this allotted runtime turns out to be the ‘getting to know you’ part of the film, which reveals that there are big pacing issues here and potentially ahead.
But worse than that – in a slasher, you expect a fair amount of slashing. Scrimp on the slashing, and slasher fans (who adore a carefully-designed murder set piece) will turn against the film in their droves. Disappointingly, most of the kill scenes happen offscreen in Hell of a Summer, despite some skilled use of various slasher-friendly set-ups: the possible killer’s eye view; the false reveals; the cutaways. These are in there, and they’re all handled fairly well. It’s clear that the directors, both of whom were incredibly young when they pitched and then made this film, have skills, but they retreated – whether from budgeting issues or some other uncertainties – from going all out here, and the film feels lacklustre as a result. The script does a reasonable job at establishing Jason as the kind of hero of the piece, showing him to be mentally stuck at a point in time when he felt happiest and most secure. There are also some moments of deprecating humour which work quite well, usually at Jason’s expense, but Hechinger – who has had a really diverse acting career to date – is able to carry these. We just needed something more seismic to justify the set up.
The ‘summer camp’ thing isn’t really a feature of British life, so it always feels a little like playing cultural catch-up (and it’s probably significant that most British audiences know everything they know about summer camp from retro horror cinema). In any case, Hell of a Summer does do some work on updating the long-established trope of the camp under attack by introducing some more up-to-date attendees and having it all happen to them, in the here and now; you’ve probably guessed it, but there are a few influencer types and some spiritual, vegan types thrown into the mix. These kids hand over their phones way more easily than you would ever expect, but the film’s premise does feel like it’s been amended somewhat (even if some of the film’s thinnest jokes are at the expense of the film’s lone vegan character, which makes things feel dated all over again). The cast are okay, though, and do their best with what they are given; the production values here are solid, and despite filming on digital, the film is able to generate something reminiscent of the classics of the genre with some nicely atmospheric shots.
Perhaps the problem here is that Hell of a Summer is more of an homage to homages, than it is a fresh, bold slasher flick. It’s an intriguing choice altogether to go for this genre – one which feels like it was retro for a long time before the directors were born – but then to omit many of its most noteworthy aspects. After all, it’s entirely possible to plump for this kind of homage and still deliver something gritty, novel and nasty on a minimal budget (such as in Summer of ’84, to name but one). Still, for all the film’s issues, Bryk and Wolfhard potentially have a long career in filmmaking ahead if they want one and without doubt, they will have learned a lot from this experience, so if they decide to go for directing rather than purely acting, then who knows what’s in store? I would still be curious about their future projects. There’s something to build on here.
Hell of a Summer (2023) is available to stream at the usual platforms.