Ever since his breakout role in Stranger Things Finn Wolfhard has been on a role with some great films including both the IT and Ghostbusters films. Now he is teaming up with Billy Bryk to make their feature film directing debut with Hell of a Summer. They are also doing double duty starring in the film alongside Fred Hechinger, Abby Quinn, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Pardis Saremi, Rosebud Bakeri, and Adam Pally. Could this comedy slasher bring the blood and fun or is it not worth sitting by the campfire?

 

Hell of a Summer follows 24-year-old camp counselor Jason Hochberg (Hechinger), who arrives at Camp Pineway thinking his biggest problem is that he feels out of touch with his teenage co-workers. What he doesn’t know is that a masked killer is lurking on the campgrounds, brutally picking counselors off one by one.

 

There is nothing better than a summer camp slasher flick, so I was stoked to see what were bringing to the table with this one. Initially it seemed like it had a good vibe to the whole thing with a lighthearted tone but familiar to the genre itself. I was just waiting for the fun violence to begin, it kind of falls flat.

 

The first few initial kills are so dark that they are hard to see and mostly off camera. One of the things that helps these kinds of films work is the quality of the kills and outside of a few in the final act they just aren’t here. They could have been fine to set the tone, especially on a lower budget as with here, but its not a strong enough story to deliver.

 

I applaud the effort and attempt to homage the genre, but it’s so uneven trying to decide if it’s a comedy or a horror film without finding a way to make them work together. As a whole I didn’t like or care about any of the characters that would have still worked had they had some fun gruesome deaths to satisfy. In