Return to Sleepaway Camp

TITLE: Return to Sleepaway Camp
RELEASE DATE: 2008
SCORE: 2 out of 4

Daaamn! Issac Hayes is looking good these days. I mean, physically. His role in this movie isn't exactly a stretch: he plays "Charlie, the Chef" at a summer camp full of many types of kids: psychotic, deranged, evil, candy-assed, prepppy, homicidal... the usual range. Most of the supporting cast are really bad actors, however, and it leaves an artificial taste in the mouth. I think they even fucking overdubbed the live talking parrot.

Fortunately suspenseful deaths and mystery soon visits the otherwise obnoxious din of badly written teen dialogue. The death scenes are fairly clever and there are nice subtle touches to some shots. However the cinematography in general is lackluster and does little to conceal the constraints of the film's budget. The producers of this movie, as Hayes' character in this film would say, appear to be "tight-ass motherfuckas."

I like the obvious Satanist Teen in the popular clique. He really makes this movie for me. Although he should have been wearing an Ankh. Also weird lines like "Its weed, Shmeckel!" were interesting amusements. Schmeckel? WTF?!? No one who says things like "Lets fuckin' smoke weeeed" also uses words such as "Schmeckel," I'm pretty damned sure about that, mothafuckas.

However the film does posit a fundamental and essential question:
"How many joints can we smoke in one night?"

The world may never know...

This supposed sequel to Sleepaway Camp is hard to peg. It revolves around the camp having a major hate-on towards one, horrible wretch of a camper named Alan. Sure, it starts out with the horseplay, but soon enough -- things get serious. And that's when knives and blood make a prominent appearance into the film. I enjoyed it fairly well; time will show if it ages into cult status, but I doubt it. The lack of any actually humorous scenes generally precludes entry into the category. While most of the actors who played campers were vapid insipid cunts playing vapid insipid cunts, there were a few glimmers of real potential amongst the cast. Lindsey Hiltzi ("Toby") is especially good for a complete unknown.

Unfortunately this movie is more than just a bit lackluster. They should turn it into a franchise where Angela goes from summer camp to summer camp just knocking off bullies for a bit of the ol' revenge fantasy ultraviolence. Perhaps this film is the possible set up to that scenario...

As it stands, however, this movie feels way too long and the dialogue is just atrocious. And c'mon, the yget Issac Hayes to actually play a fucking chef and he gets like 3 minutes of screen time?! WTF?! Come back with Sleepaway camp that's not so sleepy!