A little bit of background first. I'm a huge fan of the original Sleepaway Camp. I've bumped into my fair share of people in online debates who hate it, but that's to be expected. Technically speaking, it's not a "good" movie. The acting is a little...suspect, and the narrative more than occasionally veers into dopey territory. For all its faults, though (and they are quite numerous), I find that the movie has this amazing ability to suck you in to its middle school drama and make you care about its characters. And then it hits you with that unreal finale, as sweet little Angela Baker - the most likable character in the movie - winds up being a freakin' psychopath of Albert Fish proportions. To say nothing of the psychosexual circus that the ending also implied. Admittedly, the fact that the ending comes after such an endearingly stupid movie makes it all the more effective. It's like an episode of The Simpsons that ends with the snuff murder of Lisa. The sequels, for all intents and purposes, are also all kinds of fun, although they are VERY different in tone from the original.
All that said, I was pretty excited when I found out about Return to Sleepaway Camp, the movie released direct to DVD in 2008 that served as the first "official" direct sequel to the original and marked the return of original writer-director Robert Hiltzik along with main stars Felissa Rose and Jonathan Tiersten. Such great ingredients on paper. If only I'd known the shit sandwich that I was about to eat.
PLOT: Oh, the plot of Return to Sleepaway Camp. If I'm already exasperated, that should be a pretty good clue as to how the rest of this review is going to go. Anyway, we're back in a summer camp some 20 years after the events of the original film. Much of the movie is a long series of incidents involving Alan (Michael Gibney, who both looks and talks like a much more punchable Josh Peck), the resident loser of the camp who is bullied relentlessly by his peers. Much like how the original film had every character who harassed and/or wronged the shy (and that's putting it lightly) Angela meet an untimely end, this movie does the same thing in regards to Alan. At various intervals, camp owner Frank (Vincent Pastore) and counselor Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo, who was also in the original film) do their best to solve the mystery. There's nothing wrong with the plot in principle, but the execution of it fails colosally. More on that, right after this.
PLOT RATING: * out of ****.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS: To be sure, the original film was peppered with dislikable characters, many of whom met an untimely end. At its core, though, it had Angela and her cousin Ricky. Their story was easy to latch onto, an unpopular shy girl and her protective cousin who does his best to deflect the torment inflicted on his relative. This movie, though, has what may be the most collectively assholish group of tools I've ever seen in any horror movie. Even Alan - the guy that we're supposed to (I think - there are some people who think otherwise) connect with, comes off as an annoyingly grating dope who deserves what he gets from his bullies. The only people in the film with redeeming qualities (Ronnie, Frank, a grown-up Ricky during his three-minute cameo) are used sparingly, leaving us with a completely detestable group of people from top to bottom. I've never been a fan of horror movies that leave us ROOTING for mayhem and death, reacting to every murder with elation that another annoying face has been wiped off the screen, but that's what we've got here.
CHARACTERS AND ACTORS RATING: I award zero points, and may God have mercy on their souls.
COOL FACTOR: On paper, this is a movie with some pretty out-there death sequences, and many of them are indeed cringeworthy. I'll give this movie one thing - it's the only flick I've ever seen involving hooking a guy's junk up to a rope and yanking it off with a truck. OUCH. At any rate, it's hard to get invested in any of the mayhem involved for the reasons already stated. Oh, and this movie also has a final twist that tries to shock you just as much as the original did, only the mystery killer in this film can be spotted the second they show up on screen.
COOL FACTOR: * 1/2 out of ****.
OVERALL: I remember reading the intial series of reviews in the days following the DVD release. They weren't good, but I didn't let it waver my excitement over the movie. I chalked it up to overexuberant nostalgia on the reviwers' parts, going ahead and ordering it off Amazon anyway and popped it in with much anticipation. 90 minutes later, I was able to report that all of the reviews were right. Folks...this is a movie that is just impossible to connect with in any way. It's a bad movie with bad execution, and it's not even bad in the funny kind of way. There's a reason why there haven't been that many jokes in this particular review. This flick borders on unwatchable at times, and it's a shame, because they had a chance here after what the original movie served up to really hit a home run and struck out swinging.
OVERALL RATING: * out of ****. Everything you've heard about this one is true.
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