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So this movie picks up where the greatness of Sleepaway Camp left off. That is to say, the original and its sequels made money so the creator of the original decided it was time to fully cash in on the lucky “vane” of gold he struck in the 80s and do a proper sequel to his “masterpiece”.
Where the original works off of classic 80s charm and mild child abuse in a hilarious “Bad News Bears” demeanor, this movie is just fucking flagrant in its over the top child damaging antics. Though the comedic 80s routine is replaced with a repulsive animal abusive, demeaning presence no happy-go-lucky character or attitude is placed in it's empty presence. Long gone are the care free days of the 80s, and I don’t know if the film-makers know, but in the 2010s it’s not proper to torture animals and expect a sympathetic tone. While the audience is supposed to associate this with the antagonists, we are lead to believe that the entire world are the antagonists in this picture the one lone “sane” individual is the weird kid in school that we the audiencewere only friends with because we felt bad for them.
The film focuses on the character of Alan, who represents that awkward kid we all knew in high school that we felt bad for and included him in our group of friends to try to make feel better. This film instead chooses to torment this character at every occasion and treat him as the most likely candidate for “shooting up a school” or as this movie portrays, “slaughtering jerk campers”. I can feel myself using fake quote marker at every instance in this movie, but I feel it’s necessary as this film does not represent real people or even real representations of people, but instead it represents dramatic exploitations of human stereotypes that don’t really exist in the real world. This would be considered normal in the slasher sub-genre, but never have you experienced more pitiful representations of the normal characters. Where this film fails is not in the realm of the imaginary, but in the realm of reality where these falsehoods do not exist.
Classic scenes like the water killing the chef are turned into mere homages with sub-par replacements that include terrible CGI and worthless characters. The pathetic CGI “hose in the mouth” kill is a prime example of this garbage being propagated onto the poor unsuspecting horror public. I wish I could mention others, but there’s barely any killing in this pathetic example of a horror film. Instead of clever camera shots concealing the killer, a hooded figure is placed in the center of the screen in a pathetic attempt at anonymity. Also, I just wanted to say that the 30 minute “dick pulling” scene was way over length and not tension filled at all. Though reading back on that sentence it sounds intriguing, I can promise you it’s not.
The original characters are presented in this as a pure distraction for the die-hard fans such as myself like “Ronnie” and “Richie”. While Ronnie reprises his role as a concerned councillor, the rest of the references are constant grabs to times past that garnered both scares and laughs.
In the end, what bothers me the most is that writer Robert Hiltzik made all of the Sleepaway Camp films including the campy 80s sequels. Though apparently those proved to be not as profitable as he had hoped and he decided to throw together this shit storm and classify it as a film. The other two sequels at least had charm and a spirit of their own while diversifying from the original. This piece of trash is just schlock and deserves no place amongst the originals for anything other than being just a modern day cash in and a poor representation of the genre. Honestly stick to the three originals and have a good time with them...this one is a waste of time.
2/10
Spoiler...Spoiler:
As a final note the after-credits scene (while it has some funny practical effects) is especially annoying since it replays the entire credit scroll..a big no-no in the world of not getting film patrons to hate you.