A movie can be campy without being dumb. A movie can be dumb in a good way. Some movies can even walk the line of being gory and campy and still be serious. Sleep Away Camp II attempts a lot of these… and just fails on every level.
Camp Rolling Hills is a fun summer camp that kids have always enjoyed going to. The counselors are fun, the other kids are nice, and everyone seems to get along and understand that “kids will be kids” and that’s just the way it is. All of this was true before this year. Angela is the new counselor at camp and she isn’t putting up with any of the nonsense from previous years. Even going so far as to disobey her direct boss “Uncle John” and sending kids home. Angela has quickly become the most hated counselor at camp… and soon to be the most feared.
So I don’t mind having a horror movie where the killer is outright known from the jump. Take for instance American Psycho. Patrick Bateman is a terrible person that hacks up his victims basically from the start. It was fine because he was such a good character and portrayed so well. Angela (who is supposed to be the same “girl” from the original Sleep Away Camp) isn’t even close to the kind of killer that Patrick was. She is overt in her hatred for the kids, sure, but it never feels like it’s grounded in anything meaningful. Though her kills are all for the same reason that Jason or Freddy have killed their victims in the past, Angela does it without any real conviction. It’s a weird thing to complain about, I know, but it just sticks out as the main problem here. Angela is not a very good/skillful/well thought out killer past Sleep Away Camp (the original). The first SAC was creepy. It was scary, and it was a decently thought out movie. Past the original Angela became almost a comedic killer. She wasn’t menacing, she was mediocre.
It’s hard for me to really describe why I don’t like this movie, but I don’t. Other than the problems I have with Angela it’s a decent enough slasher film. If she wasn’t introduced so early on as the killer it would be so much better. If the killer had been hidden and the viewer left to try and figure out everything It probably could have been an actual scary movie. I like the other cast members and they all play their roles well. The script is good in a bad movie kind of way. There are enough blood and gore and dumb killings to satisfy that aspect of an 80s film. I guess the Angela character is enough of a bad taste to sour the entire film for me.
I wouldn’t recommend this one. I think the first movie is wonderful, and I think that’s about it. The rest of the series is terrible. Watch the original and be done with it. That’s coming from a guy that stupidly bought the boxed set on DVD a long time ago.
Comentários