Hell of a Summer

Not nearly as funny or scary as it thinks it is, HELL OF A SUMMER is a disappointing writing/directing debut by Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk.

Trying to slash a bloody fine line between a comedy & an homage to the early Friday the 13th films (you know, the ones before Jason ended up in space or battling Freddy Krueger), it manages to deliver middling results on both sides of the knife.

Wolfhard (It, Ghostbusters: Afterlife) is a charming, winning actor and he's fun as Chris, a naive camp counselor at Camp Pineway. He's come back with his best friend Bobby (Bryk) to kickoff the summer.

The oldest Camp Counselor is Jason, whose mother drops him off, assailing him that $150 a week does not constitute a real job. Fred Hechinger (Kraven the Hunter) is the best part of the movie as a man child still living in the past and pining for a girl. Any girl really. He's funny as the old man in the room ("I'm only 24!!") and plays terrified with hilarious results.

D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs) is well cast as Mike, whose relationship with the pampered, wanna be influencer Demi (Pardis Saremi) seems inevitable. Matthew Finlan steals every scene he's in as Ezra, the theater kid in the counselor room that seems to have strolled in from a better, funnier movie. His comic timing demands more screen time.

There are moments that Wolfhard & Bryk nail. Bryk is perfectly cast as the self doubting hero/80's style jock and he's likable as hell.

The camp atmosphere seems like a perfect fit, but they never really establish the layout of the camp, rendering their later escapes nonsensical as you never have any sense of where they are at.

The tone shifts are wild and some of the editing around the killings is bizarre. At one point, it seems like they had to release some of the cast at the end of the day, so they just killed a bunch of them in fast succession.

Most of the 80's fun in the slasher genre was the slow tracking shots of the jocks, nerds or cheerleaders doing going about their business as Jason or the killer d'jour lurked in the shadows. Music builds, something jumps out and we all laugh and scream. They never get the rhythm right here, especially in the killer reveal and a lackluster conclusion.

Save one gruesome axe to the head, it's never really very scary.

Left with a few decent laughs and a pile of of dead opportunities, HELL OF A SUMMER can't slash more than a paper cut on its way to a C-.

Apparently, Camp Pineway is where originality comes to die.

R-rated trailer below.