A Hell of a Summer (2025)
Directed by: Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard
Premise: Counselors arrive at a camp for the start of the summer season. A masked killer murders them one by one.
What Works: The single strength of A Hell of a Summer is its cast. Fred Hechinger is cast as the veteran counselor and he has a talent for playing pathetic but earnest characters. Abby Quinn is cast as the female lead who might become the love interest and the awkward interactions between Hechinger and Quinn are funny. Also notable are Julia Doyle as a New Age vegan activist and Pardis Saremi as a narcissistic social media influencer. The humor is the better part of the movie and the cast demonstrates a talent for comic timing.
What Doesn’t: This talented cast is largely wasted. Most of them have nothing to do. While they are all visually distinct, the characters are just types and everyone is exactly who they are initially presented to be. A Hell of a Summer is intended to be a tongue-in-cheek homage to the summer camp set slasher films of the 1980s such as Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, and The Burning. The problem is, it doesn’t seem like the filmmakers understood (and maybe didn’t even see) those films. A Hell of a Summer has little of what made those movies work and why they appealed to audiences. The best slasher films have a mounting sense of dread as the characters are gradually killed off. The movies often have an implicit and sometimes explicit sexual tone. A Hell of a Summer has none of that. It’s not scary or sexy nor does it have the organic or gory qualities usually associated with slasher films. The filmmakers don’t reimagine the material for a contemporary audience the way the Scream series has nor does A Hell of a Summer do anything creative with genre like The Final Girls and Happy Death Day. It’s a dull viewing experience. The pacing is sluggish. Just as the characters realize they are in peril the drama goes flat. There is no sense of rising tension or dread and the kill scenes are clumsy. A Hell of a Summer leans more into comedy than horror but the humor is hit or miss. It’s also very badly shot. Most of the movie takes place at night and these scenes are poorly lit; the actors and the action are sometimes indecipherable.
Bottom Line: A Hell of a Summer plays like an imitation of a 1980s slasher movie made by people who never actually saw any of those films. It’s not scary enough to be a horror film nor is it funny enough as a comedy.
Episode: #1034 (April 13, 2025)