This silly but pleasingly jolly horror film offers an update on that perennial staple of the genre: the summer camp beset by a supernatural malignancy. And much like a campfire tale tailor-made to terrify impressionable listeners, this has a streak of self-referentiality that makes it feel ludic as well as lurid. After a 1940s-set prologue that’s explained later, the story settles into the 1980s, a time when this sort of summer-fun-and-slashing package with a large ensemble cast was all the rage (see Sleepaway Camp, The Burning, and of course the Friday the 13th series).
It’s the last day of the season at Camp Briarbrook, and the assorted kids get ready to head home after one last performance-assembly in the mess hall. The camp counsellors, who predictably span the spectrum from theatre nerds and dweebs to glossy teen beauties ripe for terrorising, are also psyched to spend the night partying once the kids are gone. The camp’s owners – paterfamilias Gilbert McCalister (William Sadler), his daughter (Cara Buono, Dr Miller in Mad Men), and her two sons Shawn (Tyler Elliot Burker) and Peter (Spencer List) – look on indulgently, little realising that by the end half of them will be murdered or at least traumatised one way or another. Is the mayhem caused by the undead spirit of camp nurse Agatha (Madeleine Dauer), who bears a grudge for things Gilbert did in the 1940s? Or is there a more quotidian explanation like bears, a hornets’ nest or UFOs?
Writer-director-editor Erik Bloomquist gamely takes the role of Danny, a lovelorn counsellor besotted with Kellie (Emily Keefe), and as anyone who’s ever seen a summer camp horror movie knows desire is always a deadly emotion in these films. Bloomquist gets great performances from the younger element of the cast, who are clearly having the most fun ever marauding wantonly in the third act as if someone spiked the lemonade with every E number and sugar product known to humanity. But finger snaps are especially due to Dan Leahy who plays counsellor Ben, an out-and-proud theatre geek who can both quip like a queen and scream with terror convincingly, the full thespian range required by the material.
• She Came from the Woods is released on 26 June on digital platforms.
