LOS ANGELES, April 4 (UPI) -- Hell of a Summer, in theaters Friday, is a fun summer camp slasher movie. Writer/directors Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk are playing in a well-tread sandbox, but have more fun with the genre than the last two Scream movies.
The film opens with Camp Pineway owners John (Adam Pally) and Kathy (Rosebud Baker) being killed the night before their counselors arrive. Fred Hechinger plays Jason, a camper-turned-counselor now returning at age 24.
The other counselors are each introduced to the audience as they arrive. Some of the personas overlap, like Bobby (Bryk) and Ari (Daniel Gravelle), who are both aggressive with bravado, though Ari's thing is he's an aspiring filmmaker.
Miley (Julia Doyle) and Noelle (Julia Lalonde) are both hippie girls, but Miley is a vegan and Noelle is more spiritual. Noelle isn't introduced as directly as other characters and doesn't speak until the murders resume that night.
The incoming counselors also pair up romantically, including Bobby's best friend Chris (Wolfhard), who hooks up with Shannon (Krista Nazaire). Social media influencer Demi (Pardis Saremi) and the popular Mike (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) are an item, while Bobby pines for Demi.
Meanwhile, Jason is oblivious to the interest of longtime camp friend Claire (Abby Quinn). He makes jokes so awkward they wouldn't even pass as dad jokes but the appropriate indifference of the other campers is funny.
The plotting may be shaggy, but the film is professionally put together. It is Wolfhard and Bryk's debut feature as filmmakers, but they bring the experience of working on sets as actors -- Wolfhard on Stranger Things and the It films, Bryk in Wynonna Earp and Saturday Night.
Efficient editing establishes the killer has stolen all the cell phones with quick cuts and humor. The camera pans between rooms of a cabin set, having built or adapted the set to accommodate such fluid motion between walls.
The kills range from absurdly impossible to basic to situationally clever. Even when the murder is a simple stabbing, the victim says a line that makes it funny.
One kill takes advantage of the victim's peanut allergy. The buildup with a can of peanut butter is actually masterful. The counselors speculate that they are being killed in order of attractiveness, so some survivors take it personally that they haven't been murdered yet.
Bryk and Wolfhard also employ several misdirects to keep viewers off guard, including a Ouija board scene that is funny because the killers are human, not supernatural. The characters try to contact the victims for clues, allowing Wolfhard and Bryk to employ a trope of a different subgenre of horror in the slasher film.
There isn't much new to say about slasher movies after six Screams, five Scary Movies and The Final Girls, let alone Student Bodies and The Slumber Party Massacre in the '80s. Yet that has not ruined the fun of new slasher movies that play it straight either. Hell of a Summer has enough clever kills and endearingly self-destructive characters to do the genre proud.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
