Summer Camp tells the story of a group of camp counselors (Andres Velonconso, Diego Boneta, Jocelin Donahue and Maiara Walsh) preparing for the arrival of kids at a very remote camp in the Spanish wilderness. And because they’re young people alone in a place, they take the opportunity to party a bit and maybe hook up before the kids arrive. But their reveries are interrupted when a mysterious affliction causes some of them to become violent. The remaining counselors are soon fighting for their lives, all the while trying to figure out what caused this strange outbreak.
The film mashes up a couple of different genres of horror film. It starts out slowly, mostly establishing the fact that these kids are out there all alone in the middle of nowhere. It appears to be setting up what appears to be a pretty standard slasher film. But then the story transitions into something else, its slasher turning out to be the kids themselves, turned violent by some mysterious means. The movie then adds a couple of new wrinkles to the 28 Days Later setup, adding a measure of drama to the proceedings through a pretty simple idea with plenty of narrative potential.
Unfortunately, the film doesn’t really get there. It doesn’t really capitalize on the drama inherent in the twist that it set up. Without giving too much away, the film doesn’t really give the characters enough time to really consider what it is that they’ve done. And in spite of its lethargic, scene-setting first act, the film doesn’t really establish these characters well enough to make their later actions matter. The relationships hinted at in the opening sequences hardly matter as the film becomes consumed by its empty stabs at violence.
The film is sufficiently gory. It’s able to put together a couple of genuinely disturbing moments of grievous bodily harm. But too much of this film is obscured by the shooting style. This isn’t a found footage film, but it is shot with a shaky camera style anyway. It’s fine in the earlier sequences, the camera even managing at times to really capture the beauty of the surroundings. But when the action starts, all it does is get in the way. Everything is too dark and too shaky. It becomes pretty difficult to keep track of what exactly is going on.
It’s all part of a package that just keeps falling short of the potential. It’s just one of those low budget films that can’t quite hide its technical and financial limitations. Every now and then, a crack just shows in this seemingly professional façade, revealing the severe deficiencies underneath. The acting carries on in the same way. This cast of attractive young actors really struggles with some of the line deliveries. To be completely fair, the script just doesn’t give them a lot to work with. These characters are ciphers from start to finish, only given the rare shred of personality.
Summer Camp has some good ideas in it. The wrinkle it adds to the virus-that-turns-people-violent stock story is actually pretty interesting. A stronger storyteller would be able to extract incredible drama from the same premise. But this film doesn’t have nearly enough ambition or technical skill to pull that trick off. It is content with running around in the dark, and producing subpar, hard-to-see thrills. It is easy enough to imagine the kind of stories that could be told, and that makes it all the more disappointing that this movie seems so averse to letting those better stories play out.
My Rating:
