In the spirit of celebrating the vibrancy and ambition of student filmmaking, Hell of a Summer (2023) was a suitable choice as the Friday spotlight screening of the Yale Student Film Festival. The film follows a crowd-pleasing ensemble of camp counselors in their late teens preparing for the arrival of the campers—while mysterious deaths gradually unfold. Directed by and starring young actors Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk—19 and 22, respectively, at the time of filming—the 88-minute horror comedy is a confident and impressive debut that shoots for the stars, albeit with uneven results.
The film’s premise, which Wolfhard and Bryk both independently conceived, is clever. In a virtual press roundtable I attended with other college journalists, Bryk stated that they had both written scripts about “a guy who didn’t get killed because he was so far down the kill list” before their collaboration. That character, Jason, is the film’s standout, an unemployed 24-year-old clinging to Camp Pineway’s former glory. Fred Hechinger plays Jason with great comedic and emotional commitment, allowing Jason’s arrested development to resonate with young audiences. His utter lack of coolness—the very thing that saves him—was an amusingly ironic narrative choice.
Another of the film’s strengths was its textured sense of place and rendering of the summer camp setting. From the walls of old posters and photographs to the display of vintage convertibles and motorbikes, Camp Pineway felt nostalgic and lived-in. “We want to give it a sense of camp history.” Wolfhard said. Though some ensemble characters felt a bit one-note, their playful energy in the summer camp was organic. The fun captured in the film clearly came from an authentic place behind the scenes: “The film set feels like summer camp.” Both of them echoed this sentiment.
Where Hell of a Summer faltered was in the way it shifted between genres. The best scenes emerged when the film finds comedy through satirizing horror conventions—including (spoiler alert:) the standout scene where a killer’s necrophilia is revealed right before stabbing, pushing absurdity to its limit. Yet elsewhere, the film fell back on overused tropes without subversion. Before any real kills took place, Wolfhard and Bryk oversaturated the film with fake jump scares: repetitive and uncanny killer POV shots, sudden loud score drops, and overly-telegraphed set-ups (like a peanut allergy plot point that lands with predictably fatal results). When the audience sees the Ouija board, then, one is unable to decide whether it is meant to be taken seriously or laughed at. Although the directors set out to let “one genre elevate the other,” the comedy clearly overshadows the horror.
Still, one can’t help but admire Wolfhard and Byrk’s accomplishment of delivering Hell of a Summer to theaters. Granted, they had privileged access to producers due to their acting careers (which they openly acknowledged in the interview), but making an independent feature is no easy feat. Filming in the summer of 2022 still in the aftermath of the pandemic, the duo faced great production challenges. To secure a location for the summer camp, they “cold-called YMCAs” and “looked at fishing lodges.” With few places available, they found the eventual location through a reverse image search found on Facebook that allowed them to reach out to the owners. “We surprised ourselves by the length we would go to get this made,” they underscored.
Hell of a Summer reads less as a tribute to Wolfhard and Bryk’s cinematic inspirations, Dazed And Confused (1993) and The Graduate (1967), but rather as an entertaining mash-up of the Scream franchise and Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022). Such is the nature of student filmmaking–the aspiration and effort matter the most. “Making a movie is like getting a tattoo–It’s not the movie I’ll make now, but it meant everything to me then, so it will mean something to me forever.” Bryk passionately responded to a young filmmaker asking for advice. “Just finish it, the next one will be better.”
