Hell of a Bummer

Stranger Things is a show I watched out of solidarity, because we need more popular misfit shows. I enjoyed it enough, none of the children actors were off putting, even if I found them all pretty static. It was a show I watched for the style, because there wasn’t much beyond the surface.

The cast have been slowly transitioning into Hollywood roles, Millie Bobbie Brown being the biggest name and Sadie Sink having the best resume. Finn Wolfhard is making a pivot into writing and directing, I think that’s probably going to be better for him long term if he can develop the skills.

Hell of a Summer, his feature debut with Billy Brk holding down co-writer and director titles, seemed like a strong jumping off point for his new career. A horror/comedy slasher throwback to the 80s summer camp movie, updated with modern sensibilities from someone who has spent most of their formative years in an 80s time capsule.

Instead, we were treated to what felt like two rich bros getting a nepo baby film made. Wolfhard and Bryk play two secondary characters that feel like extensions of the actual writers, but are flat and uninteresting. They have no real character traits, no humanity, just caricatures of real people.

I would be more apt to feel that critique were misjudged if that feeling didn’t reverberate throughout the production. The characters are sketches, far from fleshed out characters. Fred Hechinger is the anchor of the movie as Jason Hochberg, a forgettable loser who is still working as a camp counselor at age 24. That’s not my opinion of him, but it is the one the movie hammers you with constantly.

Jason has a real career opportunity as an intern as a lawyer, but he’d rather play forest ranger at a sleepaway camp. Is Jason really a loser? I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him really. We never find out why he loves the camp so much, just that he does. We never find out why he doesn’t want to be a lawyer, those kinds of questions don’t matter. He’s just there as a punching bag.

Someone starts killing people, but we never really see the killshots. Not a great idea for a slasher flick. There’s pasted on relationships that happen without any development. Just people being interested in each other because they are interested in each other. Wolfhard’s character Chris is painfully lauded throughout the movie, even called the perfect man once. Maybe it was a mocking self-insert, but it comes off as crass and sad to me.

What was most saddening for me is that it missed the point of slasher flicks. The foundation of slacker flicks is the self-righteous bullies finally get held accountable. The people who are so divorced from their consequences have to pay the piper and he is pissed. Pamela Vorhees getting revenge on the type of kids who let her son drown in Camp Crystal Lake. Angela from Sleepaway Camp (talk about a complicated movie) sees everyone who abuses her die.

I didn’t care what happened to the kids at Camp Pineway, they were props in game. I hope that if Wolfhard and Bryk do continue down this path, they take some time to develop characters and plots to give their stories depth and heft. The comedy, such as it was, felt very tuned into what a group of teenage boys might think is funny.

There were a couple of truly funny moments, one involving bear spray, but I found myself trying to find a reason to care for most of the runtime. Hechinger was the standout of the cast, but this was far below his affable slacker in Thelma or his englightened racist from Nickle Boys. He is the one one to show signs of humanity and it is played for laughs like the worst Happy Madison productions.

I hope the boys take the feedback the world has given them and use it to enrich their work. We need more storytellers, not less. Worse, though, would be them turtling from the criticism this film has faced and refusing to improve. A symptom of white America.

Deflection of criticism and running from accounability are baked into the white experience in America. It’s a big part of what got us where we are today. So on that note, I’m going to encourage everyone to take accountability for where we are today and make a commitment to change. The future of our country was at stake, that time has passed. But futures can change, it takes a concentrated effort from all of us to step up and stop letting the sins of the past be our sins of the future.

As much as I wanted a fun escape into Hell of a Summer, I want even more for us to have a future where we can grow as artists and as people. For my friends’ children to have a world that cares for them and supports them. For humanity to have a positive impact on the planet. But it starts with us.