Finn Wolfhard Has a Hell of a Summer Vacation in a Different ’80s Throwback
Say this much for Finn Wolfhard: He’s making the pop-culture throwback he wants to see in the world. Not necessarily with Stranger Things, the Netflix ’80s Amblin/Stephen King homage that made him famous, and which he allegedly still stars in on occasion. (A long-delayed fifth and final season is due later this year.) He’s a face of that show, not a creative force behind it. But Hell of a Summer, releasing after its own substantial delay (it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in fall of 2023), is Wolfhard’s genre-pastiche baby; he co-directed, co-wrote, and co-starred in it, alongside his fellow writer-director Billy Bryk. It comes on like a Friday the 13th riff, with nearly the exact same set-up: Teenage counselors descend on an old summer camp a few days before the kids get there, ostensibly to prepare but really to drink, party, and hook up. Little do they know the masked threat lurking in the cabins, etc., etc.
The first formula tweak is that one of the counselors is drifting further and further from teen-hood, albeit against his will. Jason (Fred Hechinger) excitedly anticipates his sixth summer at Camp Pineway, as his mother seethes over the law-firm internship he’s turned down in favor of a princely $115 per week. Frankly, his camp buddies are a little confused, too; even Claire (Abby Quinn), the young woman who clearly if somewhat inexplicably likes him, wonders why he’s come back after his tearful goodbye the previous summer. Jason claims that the camp owners asked him back, which may be true—but you sense they maybe didn’t need to press him to return.
Hechinger plays Jason with a beatific beam of touchy-feely wonder, and through some combination of dorky costuming and physical acting makes his arms look too short for his grown-up body. (Hechinger has played other arrested cases, in everything from Kraven the Hunter to Thelma, without this condition.) The performance has a spoofy, Wet Hot American Summer energy, but despite that touchstone and the Friday the 13th set-up, Hell of a Summer is set in the present. This means that some of the campers are a little self-conscious, Scream-style, when bodies start turning up. Some of them specifically suspect Jason, who one amusingly describes as a fortysomething. To my recollection, no one points out that he shares a name with a famous summer-camp slasher, which serves as an appropriate sign that no one here is ready to move up into the big leagues of a Scream movie.