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[Spirit Camp]
Plot:When a street smart Goth girl is forced to attend cheer camp as part of her rehabilitation from a juvenile correction facility, she clashes with the "popular girls" and finds herself embroiled in a bitter rivalry with the bitchy ringleader. But when members of the spirit squad start turning up dead, the girls must put aside their differences as they struggle to survive the murderous rage of a crazed psycho-killer lurking among them.
Cast:Julin,
Denise Williamson,
Brandon Smith,
Marco Perella,
Alyssia Dujmovich,
Megan Moser,
Roxy Vandiver,
Katy Rowe,
Amy Morris,
Kerry Beyer,
Jon Paul Burkhart,
Matt Tramel,
Brandon Hearnsberger,
John Lansch,
Linda J. Martin.
My Thoughts:Lacks spirit.
Review:Indie slashers come and go, but a majority of them are total wastes of time, for various reasons. Bad script, bad acting, bad kills, bad everything. "Spirit Camp" is yet another indie, straight-to-dvd slasher film. While it hasn't received a wide DVD release yet via any distributor, the movie has been released on limited-dvd, meaning screeners, official website purchases, etc. So does it have spirit? No pun intended? Well, for the first 10 minutes it did.
The film follows a group of girls who are attending cheerleader camp. As part of her rehab duties, a non-suburban-looking girl has to tag along with them. She doesn't fit in with these cheerleader chicks, but because she's a rebel with a dark past, she really doesn't care. But she soon begins to care when they arrive at the camp, and begin being picked off one by one. The culprit? One of those pesky unseen assailants that always seem to show up in movies like this.
Oh, and he's wearing a mask too. Another one of those pesky slasher film familiars. Can the girls stop the killer before it's too late? My feeling was, "no", because the majority of the characters in this movie were total idiots, and they were too busy going through every cheerleader movie cliche in the book. This film oddly enough tries to blend elements of "Bring It On", with "Halloween" (Carpenter's original). Even going as far to play a tweaked version of the "Halloween" chase theme music during the films first death sequence, creating a character named Mrs. Haddonfield, and even calling the lake where the cheer camp is located "Loomis Lake".
Great huh? Unfortunately, this film couldn't even shine "Halloween"s shoes, and I really hate it when films aspire to copy or homage, or even spoof movies from the past. When that same energy could be better used to make their own film a better product. But alas, that's life sometimes. At any rate, the movie also goes on to do a little "Friday The 13th" homaging as well, with a few creepy "girl-walking-through-the-woods-alone-only-to-end-up-murdered" scenes, and at some point, you start to realize "Spirit Camp" doesn't wanna do it's own thing. It just wants to homage and spoof all day.
And when you have a movie with hyper-annoying characters, hyper-annoying dialogue, and a plot that's on the fast-track to nowhere, you should really concentrate more on fixing your films problems, instead of taking pages from other peoples books. "Spirit Camp" opens it's first 10 minutes with a lot of promise, but it quickly peels away to a terrible genre piece once that initial 10 to 15 minutes have come and gone. Not surprising though, I've seen indie slasher films open well, but can never get over the hump after that opening few moments.
"Spirit Camp" sadly, is just another victim of this. And to be honest, I don't think this film could've been fixed regardless. It just didn't start out with a good enough idea, and further more, an even better way of implementing that idea. Kills and deaths here are lacking also, very sorely. The movie just gets lazy with it's demises. Something which could've saved the movie from total doom.
Sure, your characters and story may stink, but hey....give me some good kills and it'll make it harder for me to totally disregard your movie. This film couldn't even do that though. With off-screen deaths, random stabbings, and one person getting an axe to the face. But these deaths aren't elaborate, cool, unique, or interesting. They harken back to the early 80's, where stabbings actually carried a significant amount of shock value. But in 2010? This stuff is just lame. If you're looking for a clever twist to smack you in the face at the conclusion of this movie, well, think again.
It ends as predictably and blandly as it stamped itself after it's opening 15 minutes. "Spirit Camp" could've been an indie gem, the likes of the "Sleepaway Camp" films. Instead though, it ends up being just another must-avoid on dvd whenever it gets or receives major distribution.
Positives:The opening 15 minutes was solid.
Negatives:Post first 15, it just falls apart, a collapse of epic proportions. And this collapse exposes it's other fatal flaws such as overused cliches, bad acting, and twists with no creativity behind them what, so, ever.
Overall:One star out of four.
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