Three years after her debut film, Honeycomb (2022), Canadian auteur Avalon Fast is back with CAMP, another genre-blending fever dream that explores the beauty and brutality of female friendships. With its cast of first-time actors and (slightly bigger) DIY-production value, CAMP has the blend of punk sweetness that made her first feature so endearing, but it’s also a major step up for Fast, who continues to refine her voice and aesthetic.
Zola Grimmer plays Emily, a girl already struggling at the film’s start, but who spirals further downward when her best friend overdoses and dies right in front of her. Realizing Emily is mired in grief and survivor’s guilt, her father recommends she volunteer to be a counselor at a summer camp for troubled teens in order to channel her feelings into something positive. She reluctantly agrees, wary of the program because it’s technically a Christian camp, but she sees all is not as it seems when a tight-knit clique of cool, alternative girls welcome her with open arms, quick to identify Emily as “another gorgeous weirdo just like the rest of us.” Even though she’s made new, accepting friends and finds that she may actually be a capable counselor, Emily’s trauma catches up to her as the summer goes on, distorting the world around her and forcing her to face her demons. Things become even more complicated when Emily starts to suspect her new circle of friends feels like a coven because it might actually be one.
CAMP’s general concept makes comparisons to The Craft (1996) almost inevitable, but Fast and cinematographer Eily Sprungman conjure surreal scenes within the lush forest that are more reminiscent of Kate and Laura Mulleavy’s Woodshock (2017) or Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy (2018). Sparse use of VFX like brightly blinking stars and digital aurorae in the sky subtly inject the atmosphere around the girls with magic, but Fast uses such techniques with restraint. For a film that could easily go over the top, there is an intimacy and emotional honesty throughout that grounds it.
CAMP screens this evening, October 19, at Nitehawk Williamsburg as the Centerpiece Film of this year’s “Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.”
