FrightFest review – Marshmallow

FrightFest review – Marshmallow

I was generally charmed by Hell of a Summer, a recent low-budget pastiche of the 1980s ‘summer camp slaughter’ slasher film … and, yes, there were a bunch of the things, not just in the Friday the 13^th series … Sleepaway Camp, The Burning, Madman, Campsite Massacre, etc.  For about an hour, Marshmallow seems to be hitting the same beats with about the same doggy likeability – then it pivots into its own, more original thing and comes up with twists and surprises it’s best viewers don’t anticipate.  The neatest thing in Andy Greskoviak’s screenplay is that it seeds the first half of the film with elements which make savvy horror viewers feel a bit superior – both in seeing where the plot is going and in moments where your instinct is to presume the script is fudging implausibilities to keep the story going … only for well-seeded plot developments to wipe away all your cavils about how ‘they wouldn’t do that’ or ‘no summer camp would really be run that way’ as the big reveal incidentally clears up mysteries thrown up along the way.  Bravo.  It takes gall to pretend to be sloppy while cunningly knowing all along that this will make sense, and then using that to springboard a few extra surprises.

Director Daniel DelPurgatorio stages the misty suspense scenes effectively, as the camp is stalked by a boogeyman (‘the Doctor’) of local legend who may be more than one surgically-garbed, lightbulb-headed, cattle-prod-wielding child-taker intent on gruesome experiments.  But the film is also good with its young cast – Kue Lawrence, Kai Cech, Max Malas, Winston Vengapally and Jordyn Raya James all play distinctive versions of the archetypal camp movie kids, and are stretched more than expected when their characters are asked to do more than run screaming from a slasher and delve into their own individual traumas.  Hero kid Morgan (Lawrence) has a terror of water after a near-drowning incident and being thrown in the lake by an asshole bully (Sutton Johnston) doesn’t help, but even amid the escalating terror and a crisis which throws the whole camp into siege mode there’s time to establish that – as his family promised him when he was being sent away for the summer against his wishes – he genuinely makes friends and even against all odds gets the benefit of the experience (I was kind of reminded of ‘Hello Muddah Hello Faddah’ – for generations of British kids, the only idea we had of American camp).  The counsillors all have a Friday the 13^th victim vibe going on – horny jock, bothered brain, empathetic black guy, stoner – and Paul Soter is very subtle as the camp director who talks about not giving up on any kid.

Here’s the FrightFest listing.