Hell of a Summer (R)
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This slasher comedy was co-written and co-directed by Finn Wolfhard (whom I know as an actor from Stranger Things) and Billy Byrk. The duo also have acting roles in the film. I enjoyed the film well enough, though it's nothing particularly special, and I don't really expect to remember it all that well. At least I'm glad to have seen it.

It starts with a man and a woman sitting out by a campfire near a lake one night. The man is playing guitar, and the woman keeps zapping him with a bug zapper racket, which she apparently thinks is funny. It will turn out that they are John and Kathy, the owners of a summer camp called Camp Pineway, which is soon to open for a counselors' weekend, prior to campers arriving. Unfortunately, John and Kathy are killed by someone in a devil mask before that happens. Later, we meet 24-year-old Jason Hochberg, who will be attending Pineway as a counselor for the sixth year in a row, even though last year he said he'd never be back. Jason is very enthusiastic about Camp Pineway, and wants to make the weekend fun for all the other counselors, but most of them don't particularly like him. There is one who does, though: Claire (Abby Quinn, whom I knew from season 8 of Mad About You), who I think clearly has a romantic interest in Jason, though that isn't made explicit until the very end of the movie. Other counselors include best friends Chris (Wolfhard) and Bobby (Byrk). Chris is romantically involved with another counselor, Shannon, which Bobby seems to resent. He'd like to hook up with one of the "chick" counselors, though it doesn't really seem to matter which one. Unfortunately for him, none of them are interested in him. He does come close to befriending a vegan named Miley, by pretending to be vegan himself, but that doesn't work out. Another counselor is a social media influencer named Demi, who is the first counselor to be killed. Other counselors include Ezra (who has a peanut allergy), Mike (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, whom I knew from Reservation Dogs, though I didn't recognize him here), Ari (who is a thespian), and Noelle (who seems kind of goth). Anyway, when John and Kathy don't show up on the first day, Jason assumes a leadership position, which no one really objects to, but they don't take him seriously.

The movie takes a fair amount of time just letting us get to know some of the counselors a bit, though most of them still felt pretty underdeveloped. On the first night, Jason discovers Demi's dead body in her cabin, and rushes to tell the others, but they don't believe him. They do eventually go with him to her cabin, but her body is gone. There's still plenty of her blood there, though, so everyone finally believes him. They can't leave because their cars have been disabled, and all their phones have been stolen, as well as the landline being cut. Of course, more counselors soon die, and eventually the remaining ones decide that Jason is the killer, so they tie him up and plan to torture him. Claire helps him escape, but after awhile he decides he has to go back to protect the counselors from the real killer, or whatever. And... plenty more stuff happens that I don't want to spoil, though I will say the identity of the killer is revealed to the audience well before the other characters find out.

Anyway, there's not much more I can say. I guess bits of the movie were kind of amusing, but not all of the humor really landed with me. And the horror parts weren't really scary. And I didn't really care about most of the characters. I mean, I probably cared about them a little bit more than I do the characters in a lot of slasher movies, but still not much. Overall, I thought the movie was okay. I did kind of want to mention that before I watched it, I knew the killer would be wearing a devil mask, and I expected that would remind me of the first season of Scream Queens, but... it kind of didn't. And I guess that's all there is to say.