Glamping review
Glamping eventually finds something to say…it’s just way too late to save itself.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Glamping
Directed by Nikki Koss
Written by Alexa Garster
Starring Rosemary Idisi, Joseph Purcell, Geffen Aviva, Chris Angelis, Angelique Chapman, Annie Grant, David Hernandez and Isabella Ward
Glamping Review
In a Spooky Season that has felt a bit light on options…Tubi has tried to step up with a strong number of new titles. Over the last month the ad supported streamer has released Takeout, Match, R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead and now, Glamping. Notice I didn’t refer to it as a number of strong titles. None of these movies are must-see. There’s no gamechanger in the group. What there is, however, is a commitment to delivering something. Much more so than premium streaming services have bothered to provide.
There are a couple of decent options in Tubi’s catalog. Pumpkinhead is a perfectly fine family horror film. Takeout stretches its premise too far but has some fun with it. I didn’t see Match so…I’ll just assume it exists somewhere in that middle to low tier most Tubi Originals end up in. Which brings us to Glamping. A promising premise for the Spooky Season that…doesn’t end up being that at all. That doesn’t mean it’s completely without value, however. Just…mostly without value.
Influencer Olivia (Rosemary Idisi) has hit a rough patch. She is passed over for a promotion at work…and lost half her followers after a horrible accident. The bad publicity ends up costing her the job completely. She heads off to a big cabin in the woods with her boyfriend and their friends to try and get a break from it all. Then a masked killer arrives to make sure that won’t go her way either.
The best word to describe Glamping is “eventually”. Everything that happens in it takes a while to happen. While that plot summary may sound like a standard cabin in the woods slasher premise…it isn’t one in practice. In fact, a full hour of Glamping’s sub 90 minute run time isn’t a horror movie at all. Sure…there are a couple of portents of evil that the group willfully ignores…but Glamping is just a standard, not very compelling, drama most of the time. Eventually…something happens.
Which is what makes Glamping more interesting than it is good. It’s not good…don’t mistake me. It’s a pretty bad influencer drama with decent performances and surprisingly watchable characters. But, eventually, it does do something interesting. Too late to save the movie…but interesting enough to take away any regret of having invested your time into it.
Let’s focus on the first hour for a minute. My goodness. You’ve rarely seen a movie with a horror label with as little suspense and tension as Glamping rolls out there. And it’s a choice. It’s not trying to be scary and failing. It’s trying to convince you it isn’t a horror movie and succeeding. Glamping doesn’t even reveal that there is a slasher aspect to the movie until that first hour passes by. The story wants you to be invested in the character relationships…and it succeeds about as far as being locked in a room where the tv isn’t working so what else do you have to do? I get what it’s going for. If you didn’t know that Glamping was a horror movie before you hit play…it might even work for you a little bit. Most of us will spend that hour wondering how long they’re planning on dragging things out for.
We can’t dive too far into what happens in Glamping’s climax that nearly redeems what comes before it…but the movie does have something worth watching. Eventually. It actually finds an interesting use of the influencer trope that so many horror movies have struggled to deliver. After an hour of patiently waiting for anything to happen…I can tell you that I was not expecting to enjoy the final ten minutes of Glamping as much as I did. In my head this review was much more negative than it ended up…because those ten minutes let me walk away from the movie less annoyed than I had been most of the time I was watching it.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, I know. It’s not intended to be. Glamping isn’t a good movie. It’s a boring movie that eventually makes one interesting move. Not enough to save the film as a whole. But enough to lessen the blow a bit. Maybe it would work better for non-horror fans. If they can find themselves invested in Olivia’s struggles and enjoy the character dynamics thrust upon them for a full hour…they might enjoy the total package more than I did. I don’t know what audience that’s aimed at. I just know that I’m not a part of it.
Scare Value
While other streamers are napping their way through Spooky Season, Tubi keeps throwing things against the wall. The majority of Glamping quickly falls off…but one strand manages to stick. While that’s not enough to eat the whole bowl…it won’t kill you to give it a taste. That’s as far as I can take this pasta analogy. Just find something else to eat.
2/5
Glamping Link
Streaming on Tubi
