‘Hell of a Summer’ Review: Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk’s Sleepaway Camp Slasher Is a Coming-of-Age Story with a Sharp Edge

Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk co-write, direct, and star in a throwback more fun than scary.

Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk’s “Hell of a Summer” is a sharp and funny enough sleepaway camp slasher from two people with an obvious love for the genre. Still, it’s hard to watch the movie without being constantly reminded of the fact that its writer/director team — a Netflix star and a low-key Canadian nepo princeling who struck up a friendship when they were both cast in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” — were basically still children when they shot it (Wolfhard was 19, Bryk 22). Actually, not “but” so much  as “because.” 

Nothing about the actors’ modest yet assured directorial co-debut suggests that they were undeserving of the opportunity to make it, or that Wolfhard was overeager to cash in on the cachet he’s earned as the lead of “Stranger Things.” On the contrary, “Hell of a Summer” only stands out from the endless sea (or crystal lake) of “Friday the 13th” knockoffs precisely because it feels like it was made by kids — kids who remember just how stupid and self-conscious coming of age can be, and still maintain direct access to the terror of reaching that point in your life when you finally have to become a real person or die trying. 

That abstract terror is considerably scarier than anything that happens in “Hell of a Summer,” but Bryk and Wolfhard — for all their youth — already have wisdom enough to recognize that their movie wants to be more “Superbad” than “Sleepaway Camp.” The first hints of that inclination can be found in the film’s stab-happy and relatively straight-faced prologue, in which the married owners of Camp Pineaway are murdered by an unseen assailant as they enjoy a late-night date on the shores of the lake; one of them, impaled to death on his own guitar, is played by comedian Adam Pally, whose cameo is enough to suggest that “Hell of a Summer” would sooner make you laugh than scream. 

Needless to say, the gaggle of late teen and early twentysomething counselors who show up to get ready for the summer are quick to discover that they have full run of the place (the killer leaves a polite note explaining that the owners had an emergency, but will return soon). That’s fine by 24-year-old Jason Hochberg (an endearingly dweebish Fred Hechinger), whose greatest fantasy is to make a career out of the camp he’s been coming to since forever. His mom may not understand why he’s passing up a law firm internship to spend another summer refereeing color wars or whatever, but Jason loves the Neverland of it all so much that he hardly seems to care that it doesn’t love him back. While it’s clear that his fellow counselors stay in his thoughts all year long, some of them don’t even remember his name. 

They all have other things on their minds. Bobby (Bryk, radiating “Adventureland” vibes), for example, is solely focused on having sex, even if that means going hungry at a barbecue to impress the staff’s resident vegan. Chris (Wolfhard) is similarly horned up, but at least he’s got Shannon (Krista Nazaire) to make out with behind the bonfire — and to go down on for the entire 127-minute running time of “Spider-Man 2.”

TikTok fashionista Demi (Pardis Saremi) only seems to care about when she can get her phone back after Jason collects everyone’s devices for the summer, while Ezra, the extravagantly gay theater geek (Matthew Finlan), just wants to put on a show worthy of Stagedoor Manor, and Mike (“Warfare” star D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) just wants to keep bragging about that time he punched a cop. At least the jaded and newly singly Claire (played by ever-believable “Landline” actress Abby Quinn) is nice enough not to treat Jason like a joke, even if she — like everyone else — is confused to see him again after the melodramatic farewell speech he gave at the end of the previous summer. 

None of these characters are particularly nuanced, but all are a refreshing change of pace from the braindead meat sacks who tend to populate films like this, and “Hell of a Summer” gets a lot of mileage from a cast that feels like it got lost on the way to a “Wet Hot American Summer” sequel. They’re all funny enough in their own ways (Bryk’s desperation is expressed through a great bit about Ryan Gosling), and it’s amusing to suss out the varying degrees to which these kids are full of shit in how they present themselves. That investigation becomes a matter of life and death once the movie is overtaken by the mystery of who’s killing them. 

The kills themselves are extremely tame, but Bryk and Wolfhard play them for laughs by leaning on a variety of silly match cuts (to the point that it’s easy to forgive certain lapses in logic re: which murders we’re seeing and why). Meanwhile, Jay McCarrol’s Carpenter-esque synths help thread the needle between sincerity and homage. The cast keeps the energy up throughout, the goofy but resolute Hechinger most of all, and it never fails to amuse that each of the characters only cares about the murders so far as they reflect their own self-image; when Bobby figures out that the counselors are dying in reverse order of hotness, he’s furious that no one has tried to butcher him yet.

“Hell of a Summer” only begins to flatline once we learn who’s behind the murders (a reveal that comes a bit sooner than you might expect), leaving Bryk and Wolfhard to lean on the genre elements that clearly excite them least about laughing their way through a slasher. But even the worst capitulations to convention are short-lived, just as even its most eye-rolling moments can be seen as more of a feature than a bug toward the end of a fun sleepover movie that never forgets how hard it is to grow up without losing your head.

Grade: B-

Neon will release “Hell of a Summer” in theaters on Friday, April 4.

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