‘If she were any quieter, she’d be dead!‘
Until a few hours ago, Sleepaway Camp was probably the most iconic horror film that I hadn’t already seen and now that the credits have rolled… I don’t know where to start. This is a film that has developed huge notoriety for its mixture of a young teenage cast, extreme violence and a genuinely shocking and disturbing ending. I still don’t know what to make of it…
Following a traumatic boating accident, Angela (Felissa Rose) struggles to communicate with her peers and becomes reclusive and withdrawn. When sent away to summer camp with her cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tierston) people start dying in mysterious circumstances.
First off, I’ve you’ve never seen Sleepaway Camp and you plan on doing so in the future, stop reading this and go and watch it because I am going to be spoiling the fuck out of this movie. It’s impossible to write about this film and not address the conclusion. More on that later.
That out of the way let’s dive in. Writer-director Robert Hiltzik has on the one hand created a run-of-the-mill slasher movie that follows in the footsteps of Friday the 13th and Psycho. What elevates Sleepaway Camp is how bizarre it is. Desiree Gould delivers a performance as Angela’s Aunt Martha that is so odd that I was thinking about it for hours afterwards. A young camp counsellor pursues a date with a man older enough to be her grandfather. This is never explained. In the third act, a cop appears sporting what is so clearly a fake moustache that I laughed out loud. There really is a lot to unpack.
***BIG SPOILERS AHOY***
And the ending… Wowee. Putting aside the fact that it could definitely be perceived as being problematic now, the reveal that ‘Angela’ has actually been a boy the whole time is so shocking, so memorable and so visually striking that it has to go down as one of the most successful twist endings in any horror film ever. Truly astounding.
Sleepaway Camp is a perfect example of why people love horror films. It’s not well-acted. It’s derivative. The cinematography is workmanlike. But it is also utterly absorbing from start to finish and surprisingly creepy by the end. I loved it.