Final Summer (2023): A Summer Camp Slasher Without A Deep Cut (Review)

Time is a great equaliser, and if you rewind to the mid-to-late 1980s then movies like Final Summer would’ve been ten-a-penny. It’s fair to say that this could result in fatigue, but there was an audience for movies like John Isberg’s feature directorial debut (he’s also done plenty of work as a cinematographer). In 2023 it’s much harder to get the modern horror fan in front of a summer camp slasher (unless it has a “compelling hook”), simply because horror has evolved since those days – which is as it should be since a genre can only stay relevant through invention and reinvention.

After a familiar opening scene of teens around a fire at a Summer camp, drinking and telling stories of a mysterious man in the woods who has taken to murder, the teens are (you guessed it), killed by a mysterious masked assailant. Events jump back a few years to an incident in the woods where a grieving father (and Vietnam veteran), snaps and kills all the camp counsellors after losing his mind when his child turns up dead – or at least that’s the story Isberg and Final Summer are spinning. The camp owner leaves the senior camp counsellor in charge and promises to return on Sunday night, but another counsellor immediately goes missing, and a different masked man arrives to (clumsily), kill them one by one.

Recurring references to Friday the 13th aside, Final Summer plays very differently to titles from the halcyon days, and that manifests in two ways. First and foremost – the violence is unusually minimalistic for a style of cinema that is famous for its gore, and this shows how much the goalposts for low-budget horror have moved. A lack of money never stopped filmmakers in the ’80s from employing salacious violence, but changing times dictate that the most violent Final Summer can get are some shots of slash wounds and a gunshot in the final act. The second major difference is that the movie is completely sexless – which is actually for the better given that the typical ’80s slasher was aggressively exploitative of young women in various states of undress.

Even the most ardent of defenders would never claim that there was anything deep about a slasher beyond the violence and set-pieces, and as I previously mentioned – the man in the very Wish-like skeleton mask is a clumsy killer. It’s almost impossible to build slick set pieces around a threat who stumbles from scene to scene, and this questions the appeal factor of Final Summer. In answering that, we hit upon the core reason why this film doesn’t work as either a classic-era slasher or a post-era one.

A classic-era slasher would have sex and gore, and failing that there would be a light mystery as the cast tried to survive while finding out who (or what), was trying to kill them. Here, the identity of the killer doesn’t come into play as assumptions have already been made, and once the shit hits the fan there’s little room for anything else other than dying or trying to survive. Post-slashers use the classic format to satirically discuss the sub-genre, or use it as a vehicle to tackle the bigger picture, but this is a straightforward piece whose only deeper meaning suggests that we “be careful of the stories we mythologise”.

Removing both discussion points leaves it to the characters and dialogue to do the heavy lifting, so it’s unfortunate that the script isn’t up to the task. There are countless scenes that feel like their only purpose is for the young actors to deliver monologues for their showreel. Dig a little deeper and there’s a line of dialogue where, in trying to stop a fellow survivor from panicking, a character says “You aren’t the only one with hopes and dreams”. It’s a line that’s earnestly delivered, but given that these words wouldn’t come out of anyone’s mouth – ever – it lands with a thud. Beyond that, the dialogue is mostly nondescript, and the characters don’t fare much better either as the only notable ones are the two black males who, luckily, don’t succumb to the tone-deaf “sacrificial black man” trope that would’ve been par for the course in the slasher’s golden era.

I have to admit that Isberg’s experience as a cinematographer shines through, which is a fairly obvious choice of words to highlight that the lighting used throughout is glorious (sorry, I couldn’t help myself). There’s also nothing particularly bad about Final Summer as it’s entertaining in the ways you’d expect these films to be. The problem is that there’s nothing memorable about it, and the sad fact is it’s much worse for a film to be forgettable than bad – people remember bad movies.

Rob’s Archive: Final Summer