Director: Billy Bryk, Finn Wolfhard
Writer: Billy Bryk, Finn Wolfhard
Stars: Fred Hechinger, Finn Wolfhard, D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai
Synopsis: The counselors of a summer camp are terrorized by a masked killer.
Finn Wolfhard and Billy Byrk, of Stranger Things and Ghostbusters fame, coming together to direct a modern day tribute to the slasher classics of old was not on anyone’s horror bingo card for the new year. It being good – really good, in fact – may be an even greater surprise. At only 22 and 25 years of age, respectively, the directing (and writing, and producing) duo set out to do something that many much older, more experienced filmmakers have failed to do: replicate the magic of a bygone era of horror movies that still find a way to stand out today.
While Hell of a Summer may spend more time winking and nodding in reference to films from 40 years ago than it does worrying about its own singular merits, somehow, it works. From the very beginning, the filmmakers’ love for films like Halloween and The Thing (both of which have been mentioned as direct influences) are wonderfully evident. Whether it be in the destructive, eerie symphony laid under the whole thing or through impressive practical effects around every turn, anyone who has a passion for the 80s/90s era of horror movies, particularly slashers, will have a hard time not falling in love with this one.
The film, in an old fashioned, simplistically follows a group of stranded summer campers who get caught up in a murderous scheme plotted by one (some?) of their peers. You’ve got the expected douchebags, preppy girls, socially unaware camper, oddball side character who nobody seems to understand; truly, every caricature is accounted for. While that may sound distracting, or even cheap at first, when seen through the lens of early twenty-somethings humor, everything becomes infinitely more compelling.
Wolfhard and Byrk tap into some surprisingly up-to-date pop culture references (given the genre’s recent trends in the opposite direction) and reverent dialogue in the same swoop, allowing their characters to grow on the audience by way of making them laugh. Hell of a Summer is relentlessly funny, oftentimes preferring that tone to the more subdued scary one that peeks through the cracks on relevant occasions. The comedic highlight of the film is Fred Hechinger’s Jason, the aforementioned unaware camper who shines because he sticks out as so far removed from the rest of the film.
Hechinger also produced the movie, working on the film in the earliest stages with Wolfhard and Byrk and lending his creative sensibilities to both his character specifically and the project as a whole. Just as he was in Gladiator 2, he’s perfectly awkward and, though in an exaggerated way, terribly relatable. The actor has really begun to thrive in that sort of niche, and if this role is any indication, it won’t be the last time we see him operate in it.
Where Hell of a Summer loses a little traction is towards its third act, when it attempts a reveal incredibly common in modern slashers and, in the manner in which most of the newer efforts do, fails to retain the dramatic impact in the tension leading up to the twist. The thought is there, as is the narrative purpose, but there’s just something so deflating about being able to track a film’s twist all the way up to its climax. In that way, Hell of a Summer is a hell of a bummer.
But this is still a really impressive, genre-faithful debut from two filmmakers who clearly have something to say on this scene. In a Q&A following a screening of the film, Wolfhard and Byrk hinted at a future collaboration on the horizon and, for horror fans, that should be a really exciting prospect. Hell of a Summer is exactly what it needs to be; little more, and absolutely no less.
