Fantastic Fest Review: Camp

In its use of teen witchiness as a metaphor for self-awareness, Camp is basically a Gen-Z riff on The Craft, with outcast Emily (Zola Grimmer) finding solace among wiccan-ish friends, only to wonder whether her newfound powers and friendship are quite worth the cost. For this profoundly reshaped successor to the ‘90s cult favorite, writer/director Avalon Fast reassembles much of the crew from her 2022 debut, Honeycomb, for another look at female connections and support. There’s a much more melancholic tone than The Craft and yet seemingly much lower stakes, as the witchcraft here mostly involves getting high, messing with boys, and lots of crushed velvet.

Aside from the velvet, that sounds very much like the standard summer camp adventure, which is what Emily’s father hopes she’ll have. However, it’s not the standard summer camp, as she’s sent to be a counselor at a camp for traumatized kids. She’s perfectly qualified, since she’s been a part of two deaths – one revealed through the world’s most awkward game of truth or dare, one shown on screen – that have left her with deep psychological scars.

For all its supernatural themes, Camp isn’t really a horror film. Those elements are more akin to a kids illustrated book in its sense of simplistic wonder. That’s not a failure, as Fast plays with a minimalist, illustrative approach to magick. Indeed, Camp’s most spectacular and charming moments come from visuals that seem born of the mother of invention. She repurposes classical filmmaking techniques, like rhythmically jiggling the camera to emulate a train ride, matte painting through windows, and simply animated sparkles of starshine twirling around a character’s hand. Those moments of visual enchantment can sometimes serve as a respite from the sometimes ponderous pacing crafted by Fast and editor/producer Taylor Nodrick, which sometimes leaves leaden line deliveries to just hang in the air. Combined with a Badalamenti-esque score from Max Robin, it feels like Fast is trying to emulate the portentous delivery of a David Lynch film but instead proves that no one except Lynch could ever really carry that off.

None of those deathly deliveries come from Grimmer, who finds every iota of character within the script and gives it compassionate, broken life. If the camera lingers on her too long, all that happens is that she is given a little more time to silently reflect upon and indicate Emily’s inner turmoil. Indeed, her performance seems to fill in some gaps left by the script which never really gets into Emily’s culpability, or even mentions the traumas that are supposed to have brought any of the other characters to the camp. The only pain that matters is hers, and Camp never seems to quite tackle the fact that two people are dead, and she had at least some role in both deaths. Yet her search for self-forgiveness overwhelms the sorrow she leaves in her wake. Moreover, her path to redemption carries more costs for others than it does for her, and Grimmer seems to grasp that in a way that the rest of the film never quite does.

It’s not that those elements aren’t there in the script, it’s just that it’s so less interested in them than in the idea of having blithely supportive and forgiving friends as a panacea for all sins. Camp feels like it may suffer a similar fate to The VVitch and Midsommar, that the outward appearance of a happy ending leads to audiences ignoring that Emily’s fate is a tragedy.

The Vile

World Premiere

Fantastic Fest 2025 ran Sept. 18-25.
Find all our news, reviews, and interviews at austinchronicle.com/fantastic-fest.

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