HELL OF A SUMMER
Cast: Fred Hechinger, Finn Wolfhard, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Billy Bryk, Abby Quinn, Pardis Saremi, Adam Pally, Julia Doyle, Matthew Finlan, Krista Nazaire, Daniel Gravelle, and Rosebud Baker
Directors: Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard
ADRIANO
I'm glad I watched Hell of a Summer with a Midnight Madness crowd because it certainly helped my perception of the movie, especially because time has not treated this movie well. My initial viewing experience was a lot of fun. I laughed a lot, and I thought the slasher aspects were interesting at times. However, the film’s flaws…namely, the weak structure, the shallow Gen-Z commentary, and the way the movie reveals its mystery out of thin air…makes the rest of the movie tensionless, which, in hindsight, has overshadowed the fun I had.
ROBERT
Reimagining 80s camp slashers for today can be an exercise in nostalgia coasting, or it can be labeled as lame for “trying too hard,” but Hell of a Summer does an admirable job to toe a line that doesn’t feel like it is being tugged in either direction. Instead, it works to convey how kids today would consider the summer camp experience, and then hyperbolically upends it with gruesome murdering. The horror aspect is decent, but it shines in its comedy, especially the interplay of the counselors and the melding of smaller relationships into the larger group dynamic. This one? Not a cruel summer at all.
This film was reviewed by Adriano as part of Bitesize Breakdown's coverage of the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.