Hell of a Summer (now streaming on Hulu) offers an impressive conglomeration of young talent in key positions in front and behind the camera: Stranger Things breakout Finn Wolfhard co-writes, -directs, -produces and -stars with Billy Bryk, with Fred Hechinger (whose 2024 was extraordinary thanks to beefy, entertaining roles in Thelma and Gladiator II) starring and producing. Their goal here is to merge the summer-camp comedy with the gory slasher flick, which is something that’s very much been done before, so maybe their greater goal is to help us remember these things, in case we’ve forgotten they exist, which we haven’t. So here’s hoping they can make one memorable enough to replace memories of the (far too many, to be honest) less-than-stellar films in the subgenre.
The Gist: Jason (Hechinger) positively drips with loser energy. He’s 24. His mom drives him to Camp Pineway for his sixth stint as a counselor. Don’t ask her why her son the law student didn’t take the internship at the law firm – he’s an adult and he can make his own decisions but she and you and I might debate the “adult” part of this sentence, and she reminds him, “$100 a week is hardly employment.” He’s a classic tryhard, a pollyanna-ish serial grinner with a child’s heart fueling the sad state of his maturity. The other counselors (more on them in a sec) kinda roll their eyes at him like he’s just something they have to deal with. When the camp’s owners don’t show, Jason assumes the role of “lead counselor” even though no such title exists. He’s jumped to the conclusion that John and Kathy would want him to take the responsibility that probably doesn’t need to be taken. Jason dwells in Nimrod City, pop. 1.
What Jason doesn’t know is that John and Kathy died in the cold open. They were played by Adam Pally and Rosebud Baker. A madman killer in a devil mask inserted John’s guitar neck down his throat until he permanently ceased breathing, and indelicately placed the blade of a rather large knife in the back of Kathy’s skull. So the counselors don’t realize that they’re about to be stalked and terrorized and prompted to scream and run and hide and squabble about what they should do next and possibly die in gruesome fashion. So it goes.
So Jason tries to organize activities for the counselors before the kid campers arrive, not that any of the counselors are interested in whatever dorky bullshit he comes up with. They want to drink and splash in the lake and possibly shtoink each other in their cabins. Claire (Abby Quinn) is most notable among them; Jason crushes on her, and she’s sweet and nice and reasonable where the others are annoying. Bobby (Bryk) and Chris (Wolfhard) just want to get laid. Demi (Paradis Saremi) is the hot high-maintenance girl with a mountain of designer luggage. Mike (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) is the hot guy. Miley (Julia Doyle) is the vegan new-age girl, Noelle (Julia LaLonde) is the goth with the ouija board; Ari (Daniel Gravelle), Shannon (Krista Nazaire) and Ezra (Matthew Finlan) sure seem doomed because they don’t have particularly distinctive traits, although one of them is a theater kid and another has a nut allergy, thus setting the stage for some ironic kills. Presumably we should be concerned for their well-being as they try not to be murdered, key word being “presumably.”
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Hell of a Summer essentially crossbreeds Wet Hot American Summer with a tamer version of Friday the 13th or Eli Roth’s jokey Thanksgiving.
Performance Worth Watching: Hechinger is fully committed to giving his goofy character some subtext, elevating him above caricature. Granted, the subtext is obviously this guy does not want to grow up, but at least it’s there.
Memorable Dialogue: Muttering behind Jason’s back:
“How many summers does a guy get to spend here?
“A lot, apparently.”
Sex and Skin: Tragically for a summer-camp slasher, none.
Our Take: Hell of a Summer inspires the question: When is a hangout movie simply aimless? Wolfhard and Bryk struggle to truly bring their filmmaking debut to life; it feels less like a labor of love and more like an excuse to goof around with some friends and occasionally film some stuff. Despite its significant talent and potential, and a central character with a compelling inner dynamic – there’s a point where Jason is suspected of being the killer, and it’s wholly plausible – the movie lacks comedic punch, and the horror-derived thrills, with only the occasional exception, pass by like so much flat middle-Illinois scenery.
They do contrive a couple of nasty kills, but the rest are lackluster, as if the directors weren’t quite sure how to execute them with the gory, shocking panache they require. Advice: If the makers of the Mission: Impossibles and John Wicks devise wild-’n-crazy action sequences as the foundation and build a story around and on top of them, horror movies should start with the creative kills and go from there. Maybe some of them do. But this one renders them an afterthought to all of Bryk and Wolfhard’s apparent favorite slasher tropes: lurker cams, an ’80s John Carpenter synth score, self-aware Screamisms, a couple of wannabe-whopper twists and all the usual plot hurdles for the inevitably dead teenagers, including sabotaged cars, stolen cellphones, snipped power lines, etc.
Writing- and performance-wise, the characters almost never transcend being varying shades of the grating moron, which could be funny if the comic timing and material is right. But the cast’s charisma is curiously muted, victims of some questionable editing and the screenplay’s structural inconsistencies. All of the characters are united against Jason’s gee-whiz tryhard childishness save for Claire, who comes off bland and disappointingly underwritten. With too many characters for an 88-minute lark, the film spreads its peanut butter pretty thin and, to mix metaphors, never really gets out of second gear. It quickly starts to feel like a slow roll uphill to a climax that fizzles instead of offering a satisfying punchline or dramatic release. For all its promise, Hell of a Summer lacks pep.
Our Call: More like Hell of a Bummer. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.