Camp Pleasant Lake Review-Campy Slasher Is Unintentionally Funny

Slasher camp movies are a mainstay. The Cabin in the Woods trope has become so prevalent it has almost become a joke. Camp Pleasant Lake from Thomas Walton is the latest in the long line of bloody camp sagas. For the most part, you get precisely what you are expecting. There are a ton of kills, buckets of blood, and a revenge plot backstory to tie everything together. If you are expecting something unique, this film isn’t it. If you are looking for a cheesy horror film that is unintentionally funny, it’s perfect.

A couple purchases a derelict camp and decides to open a horror-themed event that capitalizes on the tragedy that closed the camp twenty years ago. As you can imagine, it goes very poorly for everyone involved. The new camp is one of those extreme haunts meets adult camp situations where participants are immersed in a “horror story” for the weekend, complete with fake killers, jump scares, themed food and drinks, and parties. The camp’s new owners are pretty inept, and campers are initially very disappointed. That is until actual killers show up and begin taking out the staff and fellow campers right in front of everyone.

Years before, Echo and Jasper were left at camp, and Echo was abducted by hillbilly bikers she encountered in a diner on the way to camp. Evidently, she wasn’t the only one taken, as neither child was ever seen again. It’s a confusing two sequence opener that doesn’t make much sense until late in the film, and even then, there are some plot holes surrounding Jasper and his murdered parents. Those plot beats feel as if they are there more to conceal a gotcha moment in the end than anything else. Incongruous storytelling and timeline jumping further confuses the issue. Camp Pleasant Lake could have stood for more editing and better plotting.

Surprisingly, all of that combines to make a pretty funny movie. It is unintentionally humorous but would make for an excellent double feature with Shudder’s Dead Shack. Sometimes, you want to laugh and see fictional vile people get axed. The large cast is made up of genre reliable and Jonathan Lipnicki gamely hamming it for the camera. Almost everyone is unlikable. The owners are opportunistic morons. The campers are stereotypical archetypes. They are all quasi-stupid, stoned, superficial, mean, or sociopathic. When the killing started, which was thankfully very early, I was relieved. If you watch Camp Pleasant Lake with a Deadpool bet, it makes it much more enjoyable.

The genre veterans do good work. Michael Pare, Bonnie Aarons, and Andrew Divoff take their roles seriously. Mike Ferguson is genuinely scary and all but saves the film. They are professionals who try hard to elevate the movie. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast, especially the campers, are so wooden they bring the entire production down. In fairness, the script doesn’t give them a lot to work with. Perhaps it would have been better if the campershad matched the intensity and seriousness of the seasoned actors or everyonehad jumped on the cheese train. The result, however, is a mismatched energy that feels like you are watching two different movies.

For a micro-budget slasher, the effects aren’t bad. Spurting blood is plentiful, and some kills are truly funny. I’m not sure if that is intentional, but I found myself laughing between Lipnicki’s outlandish performance and a myriad of squirting head wounds. If you like these types of campy slashers, you will enjoy Camp Pleasant Lake.

It’s not often that horror movies have an ironclad moral. Camp Pleasant Lake absolutely does. In the text, before the action starts and again after the final shot fades to black, we are told the average person comes into contact with 20 killers in their lifetime. I won’t spoil the reason for the kills, but suffice it to say, it would be better to be kind to people because you never know if someone is a psycho. In case you are wondering, the possible number of killers we may walk past in a lifetime is actually higher than 20. According to The New York Post, the number is 36. Makes you wonder. I’m now worrying if I shouldn’t have been so honest in this review.