{"id":47410,"date":"2025-04-23T23:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T03:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=47410"},"modified":"2025-04-23T23:37:44","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T03:37:44","slug":"hell-of-summer-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/23\/hell-of-summer-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Hell of Summer (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jason is ready for another summer as a sleepaway camp counselor. Too bad a killer is also prepared in Hell of a Summer, a shallow but fun slasher-satire.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jason (heh) is 24, a little innocent for his age, ready to return to the camp of his youth one more time, instead of taking adult steps to intern at a law firm. We all know people like Jason. Perhaps a little childlike into adulthood, jovial, and too nice. Friendly, even if everyone around is scoffing, obvious to his peers\u2019 disdain. On arrival, he and his collection of purposeful stereotypes find the camp heads missing (want to see Adam Palley die? Here\u2019s your chance), and a masked killer in their place.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s frustrating when a movie is so close to working. The ideas are present, interesting concepts are brought up, and the stage is set. For whatever reason, the filmmakers don’t take that extra step, only touch on something for a moment. Perhaps it\u2019s a lack of commitment, or the thought of the concept is enough to glide on. Maybe the inexperience of the creators, afraid to go further, while both Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk are established actors, this was their first feature behind the camera, and they obviously love horror (Wolfhard being an established horror presence from Stranger Things to Ghostbusters). But they are not as well-versed as their likely audience, leaving those familiar with the subgenre wanting more. Hell of a Summer could be a companion piece to Bodies Bodies Bodies, if executed better. That updated the Darkened Murder Mansion Mystery to Gen Z; Hell of a Summer could have been their Friday the 13th.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is fun to be had, even if the camp satire was better explored in The Final Girls. Heck, the later Sleepaway Camp and Friday the 13th films were basically self-parodies. Although not a camp slasher, the shadow of the self-awareness of genre conventions in Scream still looms. There are clever ideas, new perspectives on the subgenre and characters in these films, how they act, and what they do. For instance, Jason is forced to take a backseat for a while, and the why is fantastic. But in action, it\u2019s given platitudes. Explore it, dig in, use it! This concept, combined with the third act ideas and actions, could have been amazing. After a shaky first hour, it codifies itself in the final twenty-five minutes. And this stretch is the best of the film. If what is used here were carried into the set-up, a strong film could have emerged. As it runs through the final act, I see where it is going now, but what an odd way to do it. I wonder how much of the film was tinkered with in post-production. There are a multitude of obvious ADR lines, and the too many smash cuts could indicate the need to lose portions of scenes.<\/p>\n

It is often funny, with the glib one-liners and interaction of the purposely pile of stereotype characters: the popular mean girl, the gloating jock, melodramatic theater kid, semi-goth, aloof rich kid, his insecure best friend (the pair are played by the writer-directors), and annoying vegan hippie. There\u2019s also Wolfhard\u2019s love interest, but she doesn\u2019t even get the one-line character description outside of that. And they all hate Jason as a collection of total jerks. All except Claire, like Jason, she\u2019s a little out of the pack, has more too as a fellow odd person and romantic interest for Jason.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

They\u2019re mostly sketches, no more than a basic description. Even Jason Voorhees\u2019s victims had more to stand out.\u00a0 Co-writer Bryk gets the best lines and most of the character. When you\u2019re the writer, you can do that. He obstinately becomes the main character for a while when Jason is indisposed. Yes, he has more growth than the rather static Jason. New star Fred Hechinger brings his infectious energy to Jason, sliding over the writing. Unfortunately, the pair\u2019s level of comedy is little more than \u201chere\u2019s a person you find in these movies!\u201d On the other hand, they are explicitly there to be victims. They are comically mined well, with good performances to bring charm to the jerks, like in Bodies Bodies Bodies, by being self-righteous idiots who make the worst possible decisions at every turn. As a cast, they have amazing chemistry and bounce well off one another. It\u2019s how the group fumbles through the genre conventions that bring the best bits.<\/p>\n

For a slasher, it pulls back. Most of the kills are quick cutaways. Sometimes there’s an aftermath, but just as often only reactions. First few times, fine; build up to delivering. But this happens again and again. I could hear it in my audience, grumbling when a smash cut to something else for the fifth time. Wolfhard and Bryk use comic cutaways a ludicrous number of times as well. Done with skill, this sort of editing can hone the humor and move the story at a zippy pace (a recent example: The Residence is a masterclass of comic cuts); for Hell of a Summer, it\u2019s run to the ground.<\/p>\n

Overall, Hell of a Summer is a funny-enough camp-slasher horror-comedy (enough with the hyphens, me!). It\u2019s not deep with the parody, but it holds interest, even when often frustrating for the more horror-versed viewer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason is ready for another summer as a sleepaway camp counselor. Too bad a killer is also prepared in Hell of a Summer, a shallow but fun slasher-satire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,477],"class_list":["post-47410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47410","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\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47411,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47410\/revisions\/47411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}