Actors Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk stopped at college campuses nationwide during a press tour for their co-directorial debut, “Hell of a Summer,” a summer camp slasher film that released on April 4. Their tour concluded with a virtual press roundtable on March 31, where Wolfhard and Bryk sat down over Zoom with over a dozen college newspapers, including The Emory Wheel.
“Hell of a Summer” follows a group of camp counselors who, one by one, face fantastically gruesome fates. The film presents the fictional Camp Pineway and taps into the familiar, frenzied fun of a summertime slasher. Wolfhard and Bryk also partake in the on-screen Pineway madness, with Wolfhard appearing as Chris and Bryk appearing as Bobby.
NEON, a film production and distribution company based in New York City, hosted the press roundtable. During the event, the pair discussed the inspiration behind their horror flick and their reflections on the filmmaking process. The creation process for “Hell of a Summer,” as the pair described it, began when Wolfhard and Bryk discovered that they had written nearly identical horror-comedy screenplays over the years.
“That felt like a weird, serendipitous moment and something that we couldn't avoid,” Bryk said. “In a lot of ways, the movie was born out of that, and that's certainly where my character and his story came from.”
Wolfhard and Bryk initially met on the set of “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” (2021), and became quick friends. While neither had collaborated on a project of this scale before, by the time filming started, their joint effort smoothly raced forward.
“Because we had been planning the film for so long, by the time we got on set and were actually filming, we had the same mind in a lot of ways,” Wolfhard said.
While co-directing went smoothly, Wolfhard and Bryk found that securing a location was more difficult than they had expected. Without the budget to hire a location scout, the responsibility to find a filming location fell to the directors.
Bryk scouted sites across Canada and joked about now having “seen every single thing on Airbnb that somewhat resembles a cabin within six hours of Toronto.” From calling up the YMCA to planning visits to remote fishing lodges, Bryk searched far and wide for the perfect summer camp site. He only succeeded after stumbling across a painting online of a cabin with green bunks and red doors, which — after a reverse image search — led him to the summer camp where the film was ultimately shot.
Having an alluring set was a priority for both Wolfhard and Bryk. According to the directors, the set had to have a campy atmosphere to foster the horror-comedy genre they set out for — no pun intended. Their set also had to allow Bryk and Wolfhard to achieve what they hoped to accomplish with the film: close the divide between Generation Z filmmakers and older directors by allowing the characters and plot to evolve away from modern life and technology.
“We wanted to put these young characters, that were very contemporary characters, in a very timeless place and a setting that felt stuck in time,” Bryk said. “Everybody knows what summer camp feels like because it hasn’t changed all that much in the last 60 years.”
This serene summer vibe was exemplified by scenes with long walks in the woods and songs by the campfire. However, “Hell of a Summer” does not waste any time getting into what slasher audiences crave most: the kills. After the first pair of murders, only a few minutes in, a masked figure continues to swiftly pick off the Camp Pineway counselors.
The counselors themselves are a motley crew of character archetypes. The kind-hearted and socially awkward Jason (Fred Hechinger), the sassy, self-absorbed socialite Demi (Pardis Saremi), the knuckleheaded jock Mike (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), the sweet, smart Shannon (Krista Nazaire) and the aloof Chris and Bobby all stand out among other fun, albeit cookie-cutter, characters.
Over the course of the film, the main characters — Jason, Chris, Bobby and Shannon — desperately race away from each new scene of bloodshed, and tensions rise as the characters realize that there is not just one killer, but two.
Though the killers’ identities, which are revealed toward the end of the movie, are not particularly surprising, the chaos they unleash by murdering the stereotypically inept at using critical thinking teens is thoroughly entertaining. From murder-by-peanut-butter to several bloody stabbings, axings and slaughters, “Hell of a Summer” has no lack of bloodshed and employs an acceptable amount of chase scenes and narrative twists-and-turns.
While the film occasionally fell victim to overused slasher tropes in conventional characters with little depth and development or fun kills that ultimately contributed little to the overall narrative arc, cinematographically, it excelled. The smart and seamless transitions between kills and clever camerawork propelled a somewhat flat plot. The relationships within the film are also interesting to watch, like the budding romance between Chris and Shannon, Bobby’s failed seduction-through-veganism and Demi’s obsession with social media fame over Mike, her boyfriend.
Even though Byrk admits that he might not have pursued the project again today, he is nonetheless proud of taking the first step toward his directorial dreams. To capture this sentiment, he compared the film to a “stupid” tattoo he got at only 18 years old.
“I want the movie to be a tattoo. This tattoo meant a lot to me at that time, and even though I don't like it now, I like it as a symbol of something that I really cared about enough at that time to put it on my body forever,” Bryk said. “I feel the same way about films.”
Amelia Bush (she/her) (28C) is majoring in English. She is from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and enjoys walking around their many lakes. Outside of the Wheel, you can find her reading, scrapbooking, or playing tennis.
Hunter is a freshman from Georgia. He loves writing about music, politics, and public education. In his free time, Hunter plays piano, runs, and spends far too long crafting Spotify playlists.
