Director: Avalon Fast
Writer: Avalon Fast
Stars: Zola Grimmer, Alice Wordsworth, Cherry Moore
Synopsis: A story of impossible redemption, modern witchcraft, and duels that repeat themselves like cursed cycles.
A sleepaway camp movie is often, even when dealing with heavy issues, a typically fun film. It’s filled with romance, rivalry, and young people growing up. Though, there are a significant amount of sleepaway camp movies that also feature a psychotic killer on a rampage. If there was a way to mash up the life lessons of traditional camp films and the mayhem of slasher camp films, but make it subtle and far more introspective, then writer and director Avalon Fast has found it with her film, Camp.
Much of Camp is based around the deep traumas of point of view character Emily (Zola Grimmer). Within the first act we hear that Emily has committed vehicular manslaughter and we watch as her best friend dies from a drug overdose right in front of her. It’s a startling beginning, but while we see the death of Emily’s friend, we only hear the story of the car fatality from Emily while she’s at a party. This dichotomy of despair and detachment sets the stage for the film to follow.
Camp is like a gauzy haze. Emily is immediately integrated into a group of women counselors who seem like they are doing more than administering swim tests and teaching basket weaving. Once this relationship is established a sudden choppiness to the film follows. Co-editors Fast and Taylor Nodrick create a story that constantly shoves us off solid ground and into slowly sinking sand. It can work for some scenes or story beats, but ultimately this style and the story, that takes large narrative leaps without explanation, really alienates the audience.
Fast wants us to understand the vision, but won’t guide us. She just runs as fast as she can ahead and expects us to catch up. Too much of watching Camp is spent trying to catch up and really understand. We get that there is a pull for Emily to join this coven. We get that they’re young women finding their power through witchcraft. Yet, the neglect of the campers and the lack of any real supervision and the disappearance of all sense of reason with little preamble is far too illogical to fully comprehend. The film often looks like the wrong scenes were left on the cutting room floor because we get more pay off than setup, which makes it weaker overall.
What makes the film palatable are two very strong aspects. It’s the lush and otherworldly cinematography created by Eily Sprungman and director Fast and the lead performance of Zola Grimmer. Grimmer takes the difficult nature of the script and sells us on a three dimensional character. Through her interpretation of Emily we can see a clear arc of character even if the end is quite muddled in theme, story, and plot. Grimmer’s performance is fierce and alive. She has the power to grab your attention with her emotive face and keep us enticed as Emily finds herself in a confusing daze. It’s the kind of performance that lets you forget many of the film’s flaws.
Camp will not be for everyone. It will barely be for more than a handful of people. What it will be is transformative for the people who are able to put themselves inside of it. For those people that can bring their pains and needs to the theater, this film may very well be utterly transformative. For the rest of us, we should listen politely as that person expounds on how the film made them feel because the sad truth is most of us just won’t get it and hearing an impassioned interpretation is better than trying to understand it ourselves.
