A Hell of a Summer is an Impressive Directorial Debut from Finn Wolfhard, the Child from It, Stranger Things and the new Ghostbusters

He's a frightmaster in the making!

Because I am a giant nerd, I went to a screening of I Want to Hold Your Hand, Robert Zemeckis’ wonderfully meanspirited dark comedy about Beatlemania, at Atlanta’s lovely Plaza theater. Eddie Deezen was in attendance.

After the film, they had an auction that included an original theatrical poster for the movie signed by Deezen.

It wasn’t until much later that my friend Benji informed me that Finn Wolfhard, the young star of It, Stranger Things, and those godawful new Ghostbusters movies, had won the auction.

Call me a traditionalist, but for me, the Ghostbusters are, and always will be, Larry Storch, Forrest Tucker, and a guy in a gorilla suit. I will always consider those comedy icons the real Ghostbusters. That’s confusing because, in the 1980s, the cartoon spin-off of the Ghostbusters motion picture called itself The Real Ghostbusters to delineate it from its opportunistic animated rival.

Wolfhard was a real one for that. He’s not one of these fake geeks you see running around pretending to have incredibly dorky taste in pop culture for credibility and clout and to impress the ladies.

The popular, prolific thespian not only went a screening of I Want to Hold Your Hand when he could have been using drugs, having casual sex or counting his money; he was an enthusiastic participant.

These days, kids don’t know about Eddie Deezen, or they know him primarily for his signature line of legumes, Deez’ Nuts. But Wolfhard has a deep love and understanding for the pop culture of the past.

That appreciation for horror history informs every loving frame of 2023’s A Hell of a Summer, which marks the actor’s feature-length writing, producing, and directing debut. The ambitious actor/filmmaker co-wrote and co-directed with Billy Bryk and played Chris, a counselor who heads into the woods with his pals for a Counselor’s Weekend that takes an unfortunate turn.

Bryk also plays Bobby, a vain teenager so narcissistic that when the most attractive members of the group begin getting slaughtered, his primary emotion seems to be frustration that the killer, or killers, did not consider him handsome enough to murder quickly.

It’s a clever running gag in a slasher movie that distinguishes itself in no small part through dialogue and characterization. It’s the rare horror movie whose strengths are acting and relationships rather than spectacular and gruesome kills.

The horny, doomed characters aren’t typical slasher bait. Bryk and Wolfhard have figured out that it’s scarier and more compelling when audiences like and care about the sexually adventurous teens being brutally murdered by a mystery killer.

Hell of a Summer is unique in that it’s a teen summer camp slasher movie co-written and co-directed by a prodigy who was barely out of his teens when he co-wrote, co-directed, produced, and co-starred in this.

This is an unusually authentic depiction of teen life because it was co-created by someone for whom the teen years represent a very recent memory.

Fred Hechinger brings a blinkered sweetness to the role of Jason, a twenty-four-year-old who everyone agrees is way too old to hang around a summer camp, even as
a counselor.

Jason is a weirdly forgettable fixture of Camp Janeway. When the camp’s owners are absent, Jason runs things, much to the annoyance of the assembled counselors.

Hell of a Summer has such an 80s vibe that, if it were not for the presence of cell phones, it would be easy to mistake it for a product of the Reagan decade.

The writer-directors-stars make a point of having Jason take away everyone’s phones to enhance the retro feel. Being without our iPhones for an extended period is truly a contemporary horror.

Hell of a Summer follows a group of counselors on a night in the woods that quickly turns deadly when a maniac (or maniacs) in an old-time devil’s mask begins savagely murdering the counselors.

Composer Jay McCarrol’s icy electronic score favorably recalls the iconic scores of John Carpenter. A Hell of a Summer resurrects the horny fatalism of 1980s summer camp slashers without feeling overly derivative or winking too hard.

A Hell of a Summer strikes a nice balance between horror and comedy. The humor here is surprisingly character-based because the film is far more invested in its characters and their rich inner lives than slasher movies where the horny, weed-loving teens are just corpses who haven’t been murdered yet.

Like many of the low-budget slashers to which the film pays reverent homage, A Hell of a Summer is a mystery, albeit one with a disappointingly pat conclusion.

A Hell of a Summer stumbles at the end, but it’s an overachieving little sleeper. It would be an impressive debut from a filmmaker of any age, but it is particularly noteworthy coming from a moonlighting fixture of fright on big and small screens who is essentially a child himself.

Incidentally, A Hell of a Summer did not win the poll this weekend, but I’m a horror buff, so I decided to see it at ten o’clock in an empty theater, in addition to The Minecraft Movie, the “winner” of the poll. I love going to movies by myself. Thank y’all for allowing me to re-engage with one of my great passions for this newsletter.

I will see A Minecraft Movie with my son in 3-D tomorrow or Sunday.

I try to go into every movie with an open mind but holy shit does that movie look abysmal. My boy and I have been haunted by that movie’s trailer for months, not unlike how Red One and Snow White loudly broadcast their innate shittiness with unqiuely unpromising trailers.

Y’all enjoy it more when I eviscerate terrible movies than when I show modest love for a modest little winner like this.

My Snow White zero-star pan went semi-viral, attracting a flood of new free subscribers and a trickle of paid subscribers.

I’ve been doing more work than necessary here because I want people to become paid subscribers. I labor under the poignant delusion that the more I work, the more successful this newsletter will become. It’s remarkable that I feel optimism of any kind these days, but it’s been nice watching this site grow rather than contract.

So, get on board. It will be a hell of a summer here at Nathan Rabin’s Bad Ideas. That’s the Nathan Rabin promise!

Three and a half out of Five Stars