Hell of a Summer Review

At first, the offer of Hell of a Summer is very recognizable. An unknown and unseen killer slowly picks off a bunch of kids at a summer camp while their friends obliviously go about activities nearby. There are campfires, tall tales, tiny cabins, lame ice breakers, and awkward hook-ups. There’s the initial moment when they discover the first body and freak out, unsure how to protect themselves. Panic drives them to accuse one of their friends of being the killer, despite a lack of clues and the audience’s knowledge of their innocence. But the killing continues.

Writers (as well as co-directors and key supporting actors) Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk are using this familiar formula as a platform to expand their careers while also playing with it a bit. For example, the campers have yet to arrive: all the characters are college-aged counselors looking for something to keep them busy over the summer. None have skills or interests that make them well-suited to investigating or surviving a killer. Most are written as unique constructions, a refreshing concoction of the usual tropes with a Gen Z flair, which makes for some fun dynamics between them.

Those interactions serve the comedy well, which is crucial in a film where the horror is a backdrop for kids being kids. It has no aspirations to be scary in any meaningful way, although there are a handful of gruesome kills. The situation causes them to pair off, giving us a variety of rhythms. They bear their souls to each other, they lash out, and they show us how cowardly they truly are.

All of which we experience through the eyes of Jason (Fred Hechinger). By far the oldest counselor at twenty-four, he’s a loser, albeit lovable, optimistic, endlessly cheerful, and friendly to a fault. His naivete would make him the perfect protagonist in another horror film, as his sunny disposition would prove to be an asset. Here, it neither helps nor hurts him, it’s just a fact of his personality. One that makes him the butt of many jokes from both his fellow counselors and the filmmakers. His uptight demeanor is a delightful contrast with his party-focused peers.

However, once the plot gets moving, the characters flatten out, and no tension ever materializes. They stay distinct largely through diverting into bits at every opportunity, which gets tiresome after a spell. The movie knows it needs a shot in the arm, so we leave Jason’s side more and more as the story progresses. He’s still the central figure, but Chris and Bobby (Wolfhard and Bryk) begin taking up more space, weaponizing their bottomless chemistry. The antagonistic relationship between Chris’ hookup Shannon (Krista Nazaire) and Bobby highlights it even more. The trio’s rapport completely overshadows what should be Jason’s heartwarming relationship with Claire (Abby Quinn), whose crush on him goes unnoticed. The actors are doing a great job, but the script calls for them to be awkwardly adorable, and they are. Which is then effortlessly and inadvertently drowned out by everyone else’s outsized performance.

Additionally, it leaves little room for the characters to grow, which is especially egregious in the case of Jason. The frequency of derisive comments concerning his continued presence at camp sets him up to either prove them all wrong or confront why he clings so tightly to this environment. Yet there’s not even a feint towards such considerations. I wouldn’t expect the other characters to engage in self-reflection, as they’re younger and less fully realized. But everything about Jason is calling out for him to experience a come-to-Jesus moment. So when he doesn’t, it emphasizes the lack of depth of all the characters. They exist solely on the page.

As for the filmmaking, it’s not very showy, but it is effective. The crew does a great job contrasting the teen comedy feel of the daytime to the (mild) creepiness of the woods at night. There are a few neat shots where the action takes place in silhouette. My favorite sequence is a clever bit of editing early on. As Jason chops wood, each downswing cuts to the first victim’s blood spraying against the wall, as if Jason is killing them. The shot doesn’t really mean anything, as it’s telling us what we already knew. But it sure looks good.

And therein lies the rub. For all its fun and sharp humor, the story never crystallizes into anything substantial. It doesn’t have to be an incisive, Get Out style commentary, or even something as blunt and stylish as The Substance. There’s something to be said for an unimportant good time, for sure. I was just hoping for some character arcs to latch on to, or an ending to root for aside from “the good guys win.” Apart from a few new relationships, everyone stays who they were to start the day. Making a movie like that work is a difficult feat, and unsurprisingly proves out of reach for two first-time feature directors. It’s a valiant effort, and the performances save it from total disaster, but there’s just not enough here to recommend.