THE STORY – Camp counselor Jason Hochberg thinks his biggest problem is feeling out of touch with his teenage co-workers. What he doesn’t know is that a mysterious masked killer is lurking on the campgrounds, brutally picking off victims one by one.
THE CAST – Finn Wolfhard, Billy Bryk, Abby Quinn, Fred Hechinger & D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai
THE TEAM – Finn Wolfhard & Billy Bryk (Directors/Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 88 Minutes
It’s incredibly easy to be cynical about “Hell of a Summer,” the debut film from actors Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk. Of course, the two friends and co-stars of the nostalgia-baiting “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” (one of whom is the breakout star of the blockbuster Netflix series “Stranger Things“) would team up to make a throwback slasher set at a summer camp, and of course it would premiere at a big populist film festival like TIFF, and of course a hip indie studio like Neon would pick it up. Sure, the two young twenty-somethings had far more access than most to get their first film financed, not to mention a far larger platform than most to launch it. But, as it turns out, they’ve got the goods. “Hell of a Summer” is one hell of a debut, an incredibly funny horror-comedy with a killer cast and a sense of playfulness that perfectly encapsulates the teenage summer camp vibe.
Jason (Fred Hechinger), a 24-year-old, relentlessly upbeat “six-year veteran” counselor at Camp Pineway, wasn’t supposed to be at camp again this year, and the other surly teenage counselors won’t let him forget it. When the camp owners are nowhere to be found on the first day of counselor prep, Jason becomes convinced that they’re considering hiring him to work for the camp full-time and takes it upon himself to lead the group just like they would. They did specifically ask him to come back this year, after all. However, they’re not merely missing in action; they’re dead, and the same devil-masked fiend who killed them is now coming after the rest of the counselors. Can Jason convince his younger, cooler co-workers that he’s not the killer and ensure the campers can still have a great summer?
Bryk and Wofhard clearly had fun making “Hell of a Summer,” and it shows in their hilariously quotable script and obvious but not eye-roll-inducing references to slasher films of yore. It’s as basic a “Friday the 13th” riff as they come, with a group of horny summer camp counselors slowly getting picked off one by one as they make increasingly stupid decisions. It never leans too far into either the sex or the scariness, which makes the film feel toothless as horror, even though the kills are bloody and brutal. While there’s nothing here that’s particularly creative or fresh, the humor that surrounds the kills bears the imprint of Bryk and Wolfhard’s sense of humor. They’ve learned good joke structure from the best, and the tossed-off one-liners hit the bullseye far more often than not in the hands of the talented young cast, led by the appealingly guileless Hechinger.
Much more than the humor itself, what elevates “Hell of a Summer” is how playful it is. The film’s first act establishes the archetypal characters swiftly: There’s pretty, popular mean girl Demi (Pardis Saremi), bad boy Mike (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai), wannabe filmmaker Ari (Daniel Gravelle), hardcore vegan Miley (Julia Doyle), theater kid Ezra (Matthew Finlan), goth Noelle (Julia Lalonde), awkward quiet girl Claire (Abby Quinn), and best friends Chris and Bobby (Wolfhard and Bryk, respectively) and the object of their mutual affection, Shannon (Krista Nazaire). The loose, natural atmosphere the cast cultivates in their first few scenes together gets undercut by some viciously sharp scene transitions that prepare the audience for the horror games to come and serve as its own kind of visual humor. Even when the carnage starts, the good vibes never fully go away since the cast members do such a great job of believably ratcheting up the panic and terror. The screenplay also has great fun flipping the script on slasher tropes by injecting them with a thoroughly modern sensibility. Several of the male cast members even get their own “scream queen” moment, which they all meet spectacularly (Hechinger most memorably).
Even when the technical elements of the film get away from them, most notably the nighttime cinematography, which is so dark it’s difficult to see some scenes clearly, Bryk and Wolfhard bring such playful energy to the film that it’s still fun to watch. Sure, it often feels like a group of friends got together one weekend and made a movie for the hell of it, but it’s neither insular, amateurish nor overly referential in the way many first features can be. The laugh lines are perfectly placed for maximum enjoyment, the kills are staged well even if they’re not particularly scary, and the performers fill their characters with personality even if they’re a bit one-note. The character arcs feel a bit too flat, even for a throwback slasher movie, but poorly developed characters are half the fun of a good slasher. “Hell of a Summer” may not be a great slasher, but it is a good one. If Bryk and Wolfhard can make something this effortlessly enjoyable on their first try, then the sky’s the limit for their filmmaking careers.
