Camp Pleasant Lake review.
A great central concept…fighting for a place in the crowd. In theaters and on VOD February 27th.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Camp Pleasant Lake
Directed by Thomas Walton
Written by Thomas Walton
Starring Jonathan Lipnicki, Michael Paré, Bonnie Aarons, Andrew Divoff, Roberto LaSardo, Kelly Lynn Reiter and Mike Ferguson
Camp Pleasant Lake Review
At the center of Camp Pleasant Lake lies a fantastic idea. It stands like a bright beacon in the middle of a field. Unfortunately, the movie layers in obstruction after obstruction…blocking that light from view. A concept can get you far. But it has to be allowed to shine through.
Camp Pleasant Lake is, unsurprisingly, a summer camp slasher movie. What is surprising, however, is the thought that has gone into finding a new way to present it. This is not a standard teen camp slasher story. Instead, Camp Echo Lake is an adult horror camp. That is to say…people pay a lot of money to watch a faux masked killer carve his way through faux camp counselors. Events twenty years earlier have made the site a legendary one…especially to bloodthirsty horror fans.
That backstory gets a lot of play in Camp Pleasant Lake. Nearly the entire first act of the movie is told in flashback. Not to be like one of the impatient camp attendees…but where is the blood? Instead of getting down to business (aside from an opening scene that lays out a lot of lore) the story spends a long time dealing with the marital issues of characters that are not going to factor into anything past the first act. There are positives and negatives to the choice. On the one hand, aspects of the backstory will pay off eventually. On the other, the first act completely negates the need to present the masked killer as a whodunnit. You’ll know who is doing this. You’ll almost certainly be able to see the twist coming a mile away.
That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Slasher movies don’t have to be mysteries. We never wonder who is behind Michael Myers mask. Freddy Krueger isn’t hiding until a story twist happens. The idea of masking identity in Camp Pleasant Lake stands directly at odds with the story’s desire to provide a detailed motive in act 1. The shock would have been any reveal other than what ends up happening.
It’s part of a running problem that plagues Camp Pleasant Lake. There are far too many characters. The family involved in the first act backstory. A deranged family responsible for their demise. A slew of hired hands to play expendable counselors for the camp. An even bigger slew of paying customers. A reporter. The couple who owns the camp. Two special effects professionals. And a masked killer. Everyone gets their moment to speak (and, likely, die) …too many to care about almost any of them.
That’s not to say that Camp Pleasant Lake doesn’t have an interesting way to use them. It does. The opening scene of the movie involves the deaths of the two special effects guys…which means the camp is now being run by a masked killer and nothing is fake. But no one at the camp knows that. People are supposed to turn up dead…to be murdered in front of them. This is what they paid for. It allows the movie to do things out in the open to applause instead of horror. When a counselor goes missing…well that’s a part of the plan. Someone next to you has their throat slashed? An interactive experience!
We get some fun scenes with a rampage in broad daylight where victims literally line up to be next. The hired “counselors” tie into the camp’s backstory. It allows for a fine revenge story. Which, again, makes the idea of doing a killer reveal late in the movie a bit silly. The performances in Camp Pleasant Lake range from good to…not so good. Jonathan Lipnicki steals his scenes as an odd camper who creeps out everyone around him. He appears to be having a blast. The whole cast does, to be honest. There’s something to be said about that. But the sheer number of people sitting around waiting to get to their next line overwhelms that too.
What the movie can’t offer in strong effects it tries to make up for in body count. It must be one of the higher ones in recent memory. A literal busload of people come to the camp and don’t make it back out. When you consider the first half hour is mostly spent in flashback…that is a lot of kills per minute. The result is some fun moments…but not a lot of connection to the people being offed.
The central idea behind Camp Pleasant Lake is a great one…when it can find its way through the mass of other ideas the movie insists on presenting.
Scare Value
The story of Camp Pleasant Lake is one of concept vs. execution. Unfortunately, the latter wins out too often. There is a fundamentally great idea at the core. When the movie is able to take advantage of it…the movie hits some nice highs. There is also a fun performance by Jonathan Lipnicki. In the end, however, it’s trying to serve too many masters. A whodunnit that can only have the answer it does after an entire act is devoted to a flashback. A high body count without the suspense or effects needed to make them memorable. The sprawling cast of varying ability distracts more often than they deliver. There are things to like here. Before you can fully enjoy them, Camp Pleasant Lake is already on to the next thing.
2/5
Camp Pleasant Lake Link
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