Directed By Billy Byrk and Finn Wolfhard

Starring – Fred Hechinger, Finn Wolfhard, D’Pharoach Woon-A-Tai

The Plot – Follows 24-year-old camp counselor Jason Hochberg (Hechinger), who arrives at Camp Pineway thinking his biggest problem is that he feels out of touch with his teenage co-workers. What he doesn’t know is that a masked killer is lurking on the campgrounds, brutally picking counselors off one by one.

Rated R for horror violence, adult language throughout, and some sexual references

HELL OF A SUMMER – Official Redband Trailer – In Theaters April 4

POSITIVES

In the feature length directorial debut of Byrk and Wolfhard, the dynamic duo have done their thorough homework on the tropes and history of all things slasher horror, with everything from the awkwardness of summertime escapism, to the bizarreness of its dialogue, to even the shallow materialism of its characters mimicking a campy enveloping that at least makes their film fun, even if not even remotely scary. For first time filmmakers, I found the comedic material to unravel a comfortably confident consistency, especially with some sight gags in conjunction with the movie’s spontaneous editing techniques that transition an endearing irony in payoffs to previous scenes that alluded to an emphasized impact or promise from its characters, with the following shot usually meant to degrade their opinions and feelings in some self-deprecating manner. It isn’t the funniest film that I’ve seen this year, but I love that the material says more about the recklessness and ignorance of its characters than hours of exposition alongside them ever vividly could, and while I certainly couldn’t relate to any of these figures surrounding this camp’s untimely bloodbath, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a blast watching them continuously evade the threatening advances of this killer, specifically bringing forth a duo of buzzworthy performances from Hechinger and Byrk, which kept me faithfully invested throughout an effortlessly entertaining 82-minute run time. This sounds like a backhanded compliment, but Hechinger revels in the pathetic and perilous designs of his character, specifically during initialized awkward interactions with his cohorts, where some of them are annoyed by the constant planning and supervisor side of his newfound supervisor supremacy at the camp, while others forget him from years past entirely, and it certainly earns some much needed empathy for the character that others aren’t exactly privy to, all the while eliciting an eager anxiousness that almost immediately conveys speculation to the audience on whether this aging adult and his five years working for the camp are responsible for something sinister lurking just beneath the surface. Byrk might be solid as a director, but his real impact is felt most while embodying this superficial douchebag of a bromance duo (With Wolfhard), and between razor sharp comedic timing with subtle energy eliciting these ridiculous responses, and an unforeseen resilience factor that showcases a redeeming grit for the character, Byrk doesn’t just give away his best material to anyone, instead opting to articulate the walking embodiment of teenage horniness, but without anything that feels even remotely threatening or even accidentally consequential. Beyond a duo of solid performances and detailed direction from Byrk and Wolfhard, I found the movie’s scintillating score from Jay McCarrol to echo those persistently unnerving themes of the 80’s, with an underlining of synth and electronic instrumentals that feel like they could’ve effortlessly been lifted from slashers like “Maniac” or “April Fools Day”. McCarrol’s evolving trance in meticulously measured volume mixing helps to keep the intensity of the action in the depths of the physical conflicts on-screen without overtly influencing them, and though they’re executed in a film that I’m convinced doesn’t entirely appreciate them, as a result of the overly comedic dominance that transpires on-screen and in the script, I do think that they outline a dread and isolation factor to atmospheric ambiance that at least preheats the oven of the movie’s tension, which is all the less surprising when you consider that he’s the same composer who scored so much building anxiety and claustrophobia inside of 2023’s “Blackberry”.

NEGATIVES

The best kind of horror comedies have a fine balance of each, and though Wolfhard and Byrk are great at conjuring personalities within the depths of their characters, they struggle quite a bit towards the defining motions of horror that could’ve taken this movie to a whole other level. Part of the problem definitely stems from the underdeveloped and unappealing execution of their direction during these dark moments, with little in the way of prolonged tension or suspense in the struggle of a conflict between two characters, but the variety of obscured depictions during kill sequences are most restrictive, feeling not only abruptly executed, giving us little time to bask in the brutality of the killer, but also underwhelming in terms of satisfying pay-off’s to some characters who I downright couldn’t wait to see bite the big one. To be completely fair, there is one really good kill in the movie, which makes me think that the duo spent their budget on this lone sequence, especially considering everything else is enacted in shadow-play or quick-cut editing, and considering the film is surprisingly R-rated, this is among the most watered down R-rated horror movies that I can remember in recent memory, giving the horror hounds in the audience so very little of the coveted carnage candy that so many of us define these movies entirely on, all the while making the killer feel as bland and uninspiring as the variety of those aforementioned slashers, which made them feel interchangeable. Speaking of the killer, I found the ongoing mystery of the killer’s identity and motivation to be entirely flat and disappointing, taking this big reveal the way of what I feel is the worst possible direction in terms of compelling twists that sucked all of the energy and anticipation out of the movie’s climactic third act. While on one hand you can applaud the movie for pulling one over me, in terms of unpredictability, but it never crossed my mind for a second that it could go this way because I found it the most dully uninteresting of everyone in the group, and while I did have my theories on who it could be, based on the rules of horror logic, where one character’s disappearance and lack of attack attempts towards them usually establishes them as a killer, the script’s ambitious attempt to break tradition with one of the more flatly registered reveals in recent memory, failed to replace it with anything cunning or deconstructive, where my limited but effective time alongside them never made them any more fascinating or irreplaceable to the movie’s foundation. Finally, while I certainly wouldn’t watch “Hell of a Summer” for technical achievements in filmmaking, I can say regretfully that I was a bit disappointed with the way Byrk, Wolfhard and cinematographer Kristofer Bonnell shot this film, with a complete lack of anything that imbedded style or uniqueness to their presentation. One montage sequence inside of the cast swimming in the water comes close, with immersive photography of the camera weaving in and around the water, alongside them, but everything else is so blandly conventional in terms of framing and ambitious choreography for the way the camera moves during confrontational sequences, and the result makes it feel like literally anyone could’ve shot this film, which is especially troubling considering more up-and-coming and innovative filmmakers are gracing horror than perhaps ever before.

OVERALL
“Hell of a Summer” isn’t quite the next big thing in terms of horror comedy hybrids, but it is an exceptionally funny and thoroughly fun engagement that puts the camp back in campy, thanks in part to the committed performances from its young and eclectic ensemble. While the horror doesn’t measure as effectively as its comedic counterpart, with an uncompelling afterthought of a big reveal, Byrk and Wolfhard make every minute count inside of their light-but-impactful feature length debut, and while artistry is an evidential casualty of the duo’s inexperience, their faithful detailing in emulating 80’s slashers cuts the deepest insight towards their unlimited future potential, serving as the first of many evolving steps for the duo that will see their careers going to hell and back.

My Grade: 6.5 or C