{"id":42931,"date":"2024-02-24T01:02:50","date_gmt":"2024-02-24T06:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=42931"},"modified":"2024-02-27T01:22:16","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T06:22:16","slug":"camp-pleasant-lake-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/24\/camp-pleasant-lake-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Camp Pleasant Lake (2024)\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A new attraction is set up on an old campsite where a young girl disappeared years ago. To test their luck, they make their new attraction a horror camp where people pay to be scared under the theme of a slasher killer coming after them.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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While there are camps like this out there and they are rife a good horror film, but this one isn\u2019t it. Here, the base idea is there, but the film goes for the obvious throughout with the exception of a couple of scenes. The story here mixes hillbillies with a slasher-revenge story and just goes almost exactly as expected. The writing here is generic, it\u2019s not bad, but it\u2019s not good either, the script has a few good ideas, but none of them exactly well-developed. In terms of slasher fare, generic is something we see a lot of, so can\u2019t full on blame the writing team, or rather writer-director Thomas Walton. There is an interest in slasher films here, clearly, and a few good ideas, but it\u2019s just not original enough to be remembered 48 hours post watching. As for the direction, it doesn\u2019t really have anything that stands out, nothing really special about it. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then comes the cast and her most will come for the horror legends such as Andrew Divoff who barely gets any screen time, Bonnie Aarons who has a limited character, and Michael Pare who seems bored for most of his scenes. A few people do their best to elevate the film and the performances by Robert LaSardo, Michael Ferguson, Devanny Pinn (spoiler: the woman <\/span>knows <\/span><\/i>how to die on screen), and Jonathan Lipnicki save more than one scene here, you could say they salvage the movie. The rest of the cast seems to be a mix of actual actors and crowdfunding supporters who bought a part. They come off about as emotionally varied as a Harlequin novel cover model. Some are a little better than that and some are so bad, it makes you want to shut the film off. Oh, and the couple in the opening sequence? Nails on the chalkboard, but it\u2019s hard to tell if they are being directed to be this way, if their characters are meant to be this way, or if they, themselves, opted to go that route with their performances. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, when it comes to the kills, and that is what most people will put this film on for, they\u2019re not all that bad. Not entirely original, sure, but they are decently entertaining and fairly bloody, with the very last kill being the best of the bunch. Honestly, the kills here and a few cast members are what save the film from the bottom of the barrel and makes it worth watching. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Camp Pleasant Lake is not a bad film exactly, it\u2019s more like a cautionary tale for those selling too many parts in their crowdfunding campaign that it can backfire and give a film with so many inexperienced actors that the performances as a whole suffer and so does the story. The story here is predictable, but it\u2019s not unwatchable. The film is decently good for something that is super low budget, but one can\u2019t help but thing of the what-ifs here. What is the script was stronger? What if the directed had paid more attention to the performances? What if actors who usually are fantastic were given better roles? What if there weren\u2019t so many potential victims that the cast could have been smaller and required less non-actors? This is not a slight on crowdfunding as a whole, but it\u2019s a warning to show how too many inexperienced people without a strong captain can\u2019t really save a ship from getting lost and sinking, no matter what a small part of the team does to keep it afloat. Oddly enough, the film is decently entertaining, even with all these issues and a predictable reveal. It\u2019s low rank slasher entertainment but can easily be put in the background as low attention entertainment. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new attraction is set up on an old campsite where a young girl disappeared years ago. To test their luck, they make their new attraction a horror camp where people pay to be scared under the theme of a slasher killer coming after them.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[477,950],"class_list":["post-42931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-horror","tag-slasher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42932,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42931\/revisions\/42932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}