ReturntoSleepawayCamp

Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008)

So here we are at another summer camp. This time the twenty five year old teenagers are picking on a kid named Alan, who loves to leave every room by telling someone that their butt smells. The other campers hate Alan and continually pick on him. They do normal silly camp stuff like shoot spitballs at him, call him names, give him wedgies, and skin his frogs. Yeah that last one seemed like a bit of an escalation to me. Anyway soon the kids that are torturing Alan begin turning up dead. At first camp counselor Ronnie (form the first movie) immediately thinks that Angela is back and killing again. But of course more sensible heads prevail upon him that it has to be poor Alan. *Spoiler* Hah the joke is on them because it is Angela who was posing as the worlds most effeminate chain smoking sheriff ever!

I really like the first Sleepaway Camp with it’s incredibly twisted and out of nowhere ending. The two sequels are also very cool in their own campy silly way. But this movie is a complete mess. Seriously I’m looking at my notes and about five minutes into the movie I have written down, “What the Hell is this?” Which accurately sums up how I feel. This movie is saddled with some of the worst dialogue that I’ve ever heard in a movie before. It sounds like one of those terrible Disney Channel sitcoms (hey I have a niece) with a bunch of “f” bombs dropped in. The main character Alan leaves almost every scene with the line “you butt stinks”. Really this is supposed to be funny to an adult? Again I’m kind of insulted, but not so much as I am about the big “twist”. I understand that the movie is not supposed to be serious, but the big pay off at the end is so poorly executed that I can’t imagine what they were thinking. I’m all for bringing Felissa Rose back to the series, but why bury her under a makeup job that everyone can see thru? This is just a terrible idea in a badly written movie that doesn’t deserve to share the name with the original or the first two sequels.

Lets talk about the cast now. Felissa Rose isn’t the only one wasted in this movie. Issac Hayes has what is a glorified cameo and is criminally underused. Vincent Pastore is a decent actor, and far superior to most of the rest, and he also isn’t given much to do. What we end up watching are a bunch of unknowns trying to be convincing as teenagers and giving lousy performances. I especially disliked the performance of Michael Gibney as Alan. Thankfully this appears to be his only film credit. This is one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen in a movie that wasn’t shot on a handy cam in someone’s back yard.

The special effects in this movie are pretty damn good. Now there is some bad CGI in the stoner/gasoline kill, but they more than make up for that. The first kill in the movie is homage to the first kill in the original. This includes some neat practical effects work. Also there is another kill involving a man and a tree that I thought was fun. But honestly this movie could have had the best kills ever in a slasher movie and I still couldn’t recommend it. That is how bad the rest of the movie is.

This is a very disappointing movie that I simply can’t recommend. Not much more to say about it.

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer