Abby Quinn, Adam Pally, Billy Bryk, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Daniel Gravelle, film festivals, Finn Wolfhard, Fred Hechinger, Hell of a Summer, horror, Julia Doyle, Julia Lalonde, Krista Nazair, Matthew Finlan, movies, Pardis Saremi, reviews, Rosebud Baker, Susan Coyne, TIFF, Toronto International Film Festival
April 2, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror film “Hell of a Summer” features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American and one Indigenous person) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: Counselors at a summer camp experience a deadly rampage by masked serial killer.
Culture Audience: “Hell of a Summer” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching slasher films that rip off all of their ideas from better slasher films.
The derivative and dull horror movie “Hell of a Summer” wants be like 1996’s original “Scream” movie and 1980’s summer-camp horror flick “Friday the 13th.” “Hell of a Summer” is woefully inferior to both films and has comedy and scares that are unimpressive. “Hell of a Summer” has a talented cast but ultimately falls short of being an entertaining horror movie because of the weak screenplay that doesn’t have enough originality or wit.
Written and directed by Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard, “Hell of a Summer” is their feature-film directorial debut. Bryk and Wolfhard, who are better known as actors, also co-star in “Hell of a Summer,” which had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. “Hell of a Summer” takes place in an unnamed U.S. city, but the movie was actually filmed in the Canadian province of Ontario.
It would be an understatement to say that “Hell of a Summer” is riddled with horror movie clichés. All of the movie’s plot aspects have been copied from other movies. The location (a remote area in the woods) and many of the characters are also just lazy collections of stereotypes.
“Hell of Summer” borrows so heavily from “Scream” (masked killer slays young people who talk in self-referencing quips, with a surprise reveal toward the end) and “Friday the 13th” (masked killer slays counselors at an isolated summer camp), it’s like a mashup of both movies but very watered down, without anything to make any ideas in “Hell of a Summer” truly creative and unique. It’s like if someone tried to mix chocolate syrup and milk together and sold it as chocolate milk, but it ends up tasting like stale water.
“Hell of a Summer” is a checklist of body counts until it’s revealed who’s responsible for the murderous mayhem. What makes the original “Scream” a classic horror film is that the characters were memorable, and much of the dialogue was genuinely entertaining. “Friday the 13th” was not a great horror movie, but it had a great villain, which is the reason why “Friday the 13th” (just like “Scream”) became a long-running successful horror franchise. “Hell of a Summer” doesn’t go beyond having hollow characters and a lot of boring dialogue.
“Hell of a Summer” begins by showing the murders of John (played by Adam Pally) and Kathy (played by Rosebud Baker), the spouses who own Camp Pineway, which is getting ready to host its annual summer camp. John and Kathy are sitting around a campfire. Kathy asks John to perform the song “Pineway,” which he sings while playing an acoustic guitar
Kathy temporarily leaves the campfire area to get some beer nearby. She comes back to the campfire to find John impaled with the guitar neck. A terrified Kathy runs away to her car, but a killer wearing a devil’s mask is hiding in the back seat and murders Kathy from behind with a knife.
And so begins the body counts in “Hell of a Summer,” which assembles a group of mostly annoying people in their 20s to be the next potential victims. All of these other characters are the camp counselors. They have arrived early for orientation sessions before the summer camp attendees are expected to be there.
The movie’s protagonist is a cheerful dork named Jason Hochberg (played by Fred Hechinger), a 24-year-old who has been a Camp Pineway counselor for the past six years. Near the beginning of the film, after Kathy and John have been murdered, Jason is shown getting a car ride to the camp, with his mother Maggie Hochberg (played by Susan Coyne) driving the car. Maggie wants Jason to become a lawyer, and she expresses disappointment that Jason has chosen to spend his summer being a Camp Pineway counselor again instead of doing an internship that he rejected.
Maggie also disapproves of the low salary that Jason gets as a Camp Pineway counselor: “One hundred dollars a week is not employment,” she says. Jason comments to Maggie about Camp Pinaway: “I have my whole life to be a lawyer, but how many summers do I get to spend here?” Maggie replies, “A lot, apparently.” This is the type of mundane dialogue that the movie wants to pass off as comedy-worthy.
The other counselors at the camp are:
- Claire (played by Abby Quinn), who is smart, sarcastic and the obvious potential love interest for Jason.
- Christian, nicknamed Chris (played by Wolfhard) is a nerdy goofball.
- Bobby (played by Bryk) is Chris’ easygoing best friend who might or might not be secretly in love with Chris.
- Shannon (played by Krista Nazair) is a self-absorbed diva who rejects the advances of any of the men who show a romantic interest in her.
- Demi (played by Pardis Saremi) is an even more self-absorbed diva, and she wants to document her camp activities on social media.
- Mike (played by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) is a vain and arrogant self-described ladies’ man.
- Ezra (played by Matthew Finlan) is a flamboyant “drama queen” who wants to stage a “political re-imagining” play of “Pinocchio” at the camp.
- Ari (played by Daniel Gravelle) is an aspiring screenwriter.
- Miley (played by Julia Doyle) is a generic young adult with a forgettable personality, which means she won’t last long in this slasher flick.
- Noelle (played by Julia Lalonde) is a moody loner who has a fascination with mysticism and the occult.
When the counselors arrive, some are concerned that they don’t see John and Kathy. However, Jason finds a note from John and Kathy saying that John and Kathy had to temporarily leave to take care of a minor emergency. Jason doesn’t know it at the time, but that note was not written by John and Kathy.
One by one, certain people in this group of camp counselors get murdered by someone wearing a devil’s mask. After the first murdered body is discovered, the remaining counselors panic and try to leave, but they find out that they can’t use their cars, which have all been disabled. The camp counselors also find out that all of their phones were stolen, which is the least believable part of the movie, because most people in real life keep their phones nearby so that the phones are close enough to reach.
“Hell of a Summer” tries to pad out its very thin and flimsy plot with tedious storylines about potential hookups and unrequited crushes. Jason has a crush on Demi. Ari and Chris have a crush on Shannon. Claire has an obvious crush on Jason, even though she says she has a boyfriend. And then the inevitable happens when the people in the group start to suspect each other of being the killer. One person in particular is repeatedly accused of being the prime suspect.
All of the technical aspects of “Hell of a Summer” (directing editing, cinematography, etc.) are very mediocre. And although the cast members, particularly Hechinger, try to do their best to convince viewers that “Hell of a Summer” is a clever horror comedy, they can’t overcome the inane dialogue and unrealistic scenarios that pollute this dreadful dud. “Hell of a Summer” has a few quirky moments, but this horror comedy ripoff is more likely to elicit yawns instead of laughs.
Neon will release “Hell of a Summer” in U.S. cinemas on April 4, 2025.