Summer Camp (2015) Reviews

• Wow! It worked!

  gothic-fiction2016-08-15

  You need to see around 10 minutes of this movie to realize it's everything you've seen before 1000 times. All the moves, the reactions, the plot, the actors and so on. But look what happens if you pass 25 minutes: it gets better! It gets somewhat different, and you start to actually enjoy it. To connect with the characters a little, to feel the tension around, even to start to wonder. Rarely have I seen something that starts out from bottom and ends up nicely indeed. I will recommend it as I do consider it better than many such productions. It was a pleasant surprise and I'm glad I found this one. You just have to make it through the first 25-30 minutes. But it will all be worth it. Cheers!

• Got to admit, It starts off stupid but ends brilliant.

  subxerogravity2016-03-19

  It seems like just another slasher stereotype: a group of young attractive camp Counselors, alone in the woods trying to get to know each other before the kids come. This time around however, a strange outbreak turns anyone exposed into a raging murderer for a small period of time. It eventually wears off, but do to the nature of how it spreads, anyone at anytime can become the slasher and as easily not become the slasher. It makes for a very suspenseful film not knowing who was going to be the slasher or the victim at any given time, and it was very impressive that they kept this up with so limited resources for 83mins. It's starts off slow and very corny. The movie is filled with a lot of OMG and WTF moments that are very slasher campy, but as the mystery of the outbreak begins to unravel the camp turns form bad to really good. Summer Camp seems to go for one big punch line instead of a few good kills, which turned into a smart tactic that makes this cleaver film work. It's the type of Horror film all slasher fans should check out.

• Shaky Camera Nonsense...

  RMS19492016-07-14

  How many more of these ridiculous "shaky camera" thriller and horror movies must we endure...??? Exactly when in Movie making classes were these people taught that shaking the camera all over the place somehow enhances your movie..Well guess what, It doesn't !! It makes it look silly, cheap, nauseating and at the very least nearly impossible for some to even follow what you are even attempting to show on screen... Personally,, I'm going to start to boycott any movie that their trailer or info shows this pathetic attempt to cover up the fact that they can NOT coordinate even a basic action scene without this ugly practice.. Anyway the story was became all too familiar even with a twist like ending..just mundane, nothing that has not been seen before in zombie horror,,but, again,the filming technique stopped me from following it at close as I do most films..

• Camp Fever

  thesar-22016-08-23

  Holy crap, talk about judging a book by its title. I went into this movie 100% cold. I knew nothing about it other than the title and I thought I knew it all. I hadn't watched a trailer, read a blurb or even seen a poster. What I thought I read into the name was going to be a cheap, independent take on the killer stalking camp counselors subgenre, à la Friday the 13th…a personal favorite of mine: the slasher flick. Before I go further, it's best you do the same as me. SEE IT before you read anything about it. Go in as cold as I did. Heck, I just now stopped this review and watched the official trailer. Boy! did that ruin a ton of surprises and twists. Not everything, but you know what kind of movie this is and it was fun to learn on your own from the beginning. Suffice to say, I hesitate to NOT give this a perfect rating. It was absolutely one of the most effective, scary, original, tight and inventive horror movies I've seen in probably a good couple of years. I loved the rules it came up with, the acting was believable and the pacing and continuous flow was near perfect. It didn't settle on just one direction; it kept reinventing itself. It gives some damn good red herrings in the opening, which I loved and it does enough foreshadowing to enjoy the inevitable scenes, even if they're predictable. I was shocked about both my experience going in cold and expecting so little as I was when I enjoyed the movie itself. I do like a lot of horror films and 50/50 independent films, but every once in a while an independent horror flick just blows me and my expectations out of the water. Definitely see this movie. *** Final thoughts: If you're reading this on IMDb, most likely you've seen at very least the poster. Shame. Even that gives too much away. Luckily, I found the perfect, nondescript, albeit official poster to share with my review on Facebook. Hopefully, you'll take my warning (don't read/see anything about this before viewing it whole) and just see it. And have fun. It's Summer Camp, after all. Right?

• Summer Camp

  Argemaluco2016-08-01

  A horror film co-produced by Televisa and distributed by Filmax? Sounds as a perfect recipe for disaster. And even though the result isn't very satisfactory, Summer Camp includes one or two original details which make this bland and forgettable movie at least worthy of a slight recommendation. The first 20 minutes of Summer Camp introduce the insipid characters and explain the "logic" of the screenplay. The producers surely though (rightfully so) that nobody would swallow a decrepit mansion as a childish "summer camp", so co-screenwriters Alberto Marini (who was also the director) and Danielle Schleif had to invent multiple dialogues to justify the incompatibility between location and premise. Besides, the actors aren't able to display the slightest credibility in their already generic characters, while the screenplay makes too many turns to inflate the short running time, and the camera has the irritating custom to frantically move during the "horror" moments in order to simulate tension the material isn't able to generate. What is more, the convulsive camera distracts us from the lack of special effects. There aren't instances of gore which would have helped the experience; even though it got rated R, Summer Camp feels close to PG-13, so it doesn't have much to offer on the visceral level. On the positive side, I liked the fact that Summer Camp plays with our expectations during the beginning, suggesting various thematic alternatives which generate a certain suspense; for a while, we don't know whether this will be a slasher film (there's a mysterious man spying from the woods with a knife), or of ghosts (the isolated mansion suggests spirits in every somber room) or of satanic possession (a dog shows clear signs of demonic influence... or it might be rage). Besides, we have an interesting twist which adds deepness to a popular cliché of contemporary horror; unfortunately, it comes too late, and it's not fully exploited in order to completely compensate the monotonous development of the movie. After all, Summer Camp didn't end up being the disaster I was expecting due to its fleeting moments of ingenuity, but it didn't leave me very satisfied either. At least, it didn't bore me and I don't regret having watched it, so, as I previously said, I think I can give it a slight recommendation.