“In 1980 a mother took her son to get a present on his 10th
birthday. They went to an old abandoned Campground: Little Farm on the River.
She took him to an old camper and asked him to step inside, once he did she
reached out and grabbed a screwdriver sitting on the counter and began stabbing
him over and over again. Now 30 years later a group of friends decide to go
down to the campground to celebrate a birthday party, but the mood soon changes
when people start turning up dead. Will the teens be able to check out or stay
at camp permanently?”
From the opening scene, the stage is set for a chilling and
effective movie. A basic, yet haunting
movie score sets the tone and atmosphere for this slasher right from the
start. The location choices really lend
a feeling of isolation needed for the movie to work. We see from the beginning that the deaths are
going to be simple, yet absolutely brutal.
Make no mistake, the kills may not be very inventive, but they will make
you cringe. Writers Jossart and Brandon
Prewitt seems to have embraced the idea that there is no way to kill a person
that has not been seen time and time again, so instead, he goes for attacks
that will make you feel sympathy pains.
That basic intensity is not the only thing which writer Brandon Prewitt
and writer/director Roman Jossart seems to grasp.
Ever since Scream
in 1996, characters, who most of the time are supposed to be teenagers, seem to
be required to wow us with snappy dialogue that makes each and every one of
them sound like they have a master’s degree in psychology. Witty comebacks and snappy one-liners flow
like manna from heaven out of the mouths of attractive youth. Jossart and Prewitt, on the other hand,
embrace the background that his characters would be likely to actually have and
gives us believable and natural dialogue.
Perhaps two of my favorite lines from the movie show that Jossart and
Prewitt can both make us laugh and chill us with words. Early in the film, two friends are giving
each other a hard time in a store. We
could easily imagine ourselves having a similar conversation with our closest
friends. As a closing line, Brandon
tells his friend “the chips? They’re in
aisle three by the tampons.” This is nothing
ground shaking or worthy of a standup comic, it is just two friends screwing
around with each other, yet the delivery is funny. Later in the movie, once the protagonists
have run into a local with knowledge of the killer, the local informs them “you
didn’t get away, he just gave you a head start.” The line is delivered very non-dramatically
and fits well with the mood at that point of the movie. It is just one example of the solid and
believable performances delivered by the cast.
Let’s be clear, horror movies should not be aiming to win
their cast academy awards. Save that for
the drama and the comedies. Good acting
in horror movies is as simple as staying in the right mood at the right moment,
if you die, doing it believably, and making us accept that the bad decisions
you make that will ultimately lead to your death are a natural extension of who
your character really is. Every actor in
The Campground delivers on this
premise. My favorite character was
Brandon. Every group of friends had one
of these people growing up (if you are saying to yourself “no, my friends
didn’t have someone like this,” then it was probably you). This person was cracking jokes at all the
wrong times, displaying a major case of ADHD when everyone else was trying to
concentrate on an issue, and generally always doing the wrong thing at the worst
possible moment. Roman Jossart not only co-wrote
this character to perfection, but played him just as well. The shift in the group member’s moods from
carelessly having fun, to sadness at the news of a friends “suicide,” to fear
and anger is played out amazingly. You
have no problem believing that these are real people in a really bad
situation. I think the only time I
didn’t believe that anyone could make THAT stupid of a decision was when some
of the characters take refuge in a car to protect themselves from the killer,
yet leave the windows down. Otherwise,
all of the bad ideas seem to fit the characters and they even question each
other’s mistakes and second guess decisions.
The flashback of Charlie’s death is especially haunting if you focus on
the blank look of the mother after she has killed her son, walking from the
trailer soaked in blood. Essentially,
none of the actors overdid or underdid their role and kept you in the reality
of the movie.
In my opinion, it is the simple things that can make or
break an independent movie. Jossart and
Prewitt avoid one of the big mistakes that many independent film makers fall
into, which is overreaching the limits of what they have to work with. The reported budget for The Campground was $3,000. By
keeping his death scenes simple and his effects minimalistic, but believable,
Jossart and Prewitt really made the most of that budget to provide a good
film. Their focus was obviously on the
minor things that can make or break a movie.
They let the atmosphere do the work.
Perhaps one of the most chilling scenes of the movie is when one of the
girls answers a phone left in the bathroom for her and the killer recites a
twisted nursery rhyme in a raspy voice. One
of the biggest things that stood out to me was the lighting. A lot of independent films tend to suffer
from poor lighting that ruins the mood of a movie as they try to make the best
of what they have available to them.
Jossart handles this very well, keeping the film dark enough to maintain
the atmosphere while lighting it enough to keep you from having to struggle to
see what is going on.
As you can see, my critiques on this film are minimal. Sure, you could tear this movie apart piece
by piece if you wanted to, but to do so would be to miss the gem that Jossart and
Prewitt have created with so little with which to work. The only flaws I would see worthy of pointing
out where two basic things, that, hopefully, they can correct in the future to
make an even better production then the highly entertaining movie he has
already given us. My first issue was a
basic production complaint. There are a
couple of points during the campfire scenes where the ambient noises seem to
loud, making the dialogue difficult to hear.
I’m not sure if this is something Jossart could give more focus during
post-production on future projects. My
only complaint as far as the story and its execution on screen go is Charlie’s
age. This is the same issue I have
always taken with Friday the 13th. Why, if the killer died as a child, are they
now a full-grown man? I understand from
a horror film perspective that a large man makes a better killer then a small
boy, but I don’t think that is something that needs to keep occurring. Along with that is the actor who played the
“child” Charlie. A couple of times we
are told that Charlie was killed when he was ten-years-old. I understand the choice for this as it is
more horrifying that a mother would kill her small child with no clear
motivation then it would be for an older teenager to die. However, the actor who plays “10-year-old”
Charlie is clearly much older. I feel
like it would have been better if Jossart had found a child to play the role or
re-written it so Charlie’s age matched the actor’s a little more closely.
Minor gripes aside, this was a fantastic movie. It had a strong story, great acting,
effective kill scenes, and (at under 60 minutes long) leaves you wanting more
without just filling the time with unnecessary and distracting story
elements. If you want to see what
effective and entertaining independent horror looks like, you need look no
further than Roman Jossart’s The
Campground.
So, what’s the Rage score?
Here it is:
Acting – 4.5/5
Story - 4/5
Effects - 4/5
Camera
Work/Production Skill - 4/5
Overall Entertainment
Value - 4/5
Total Score – 4.1/5 –
What are you waiting for? Go check out
this solid and entertaining horror movie!
So where can you get The
Campground, you ask? Check out these
options:
Even better, you can support Roman Jossart and Brandon
Prewitt’s latest project and pick up a copy of The Campground at the same time on Indiegogo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-woods-within. Best of all with The Woods Within project is that Jossart and Prewitt have ensured
fans that the movie will be made no matter how much of their goal they
achieve. The more support they are able
to get, the better film they will be able to produce. So let’s help them make an even better film
then the first and show our support for Independent Horror!
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