Review #297: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #14- Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Watch it here on Tubi!

Finally! A movie that's generally regarded as pretty good, and is relatively well-known. Sleepaway Camp is a definite cult classic that's become pretty popular in the last ten or fifteen years, largely because of the shocking twist at the end but also (in my opinion) because it actually does a pretty good job of setting up a mystery with compelling three-dimensional characters. Normally I would try not to give away the twist of this one (as I really think it's worth watching blind if it hasn't already been spoiled) but I'm also going to be covering two of the sequels, and the nature of the twist would be ruined with even a cursory glance at either of those reviews so it's probably best to go ahead and give away the ending to this one (in due time) just so I can meaningfully discuss it. So if you're at all interested in watching this movie, I highly recommend you go do it right now.

(Also: there's probably like infinity articles online about the various social and psychological topics that this movie involves. If you're looking for in-depth discourse about sexuality you're not going to get it from me- as a cisgendered heterosexual male I am not equipped to discuss those types of topics, so I plan on covering the movie simply as a piece of cinema and only briefly, if at all, brushing on those topics as I go.)

Sleepaway Camp starts with a scene of two children out on a boat with their father, and the father's male friend on shore watching them. Some teens jet-skiing are goofing around and not paying attention, and they crash- resulting in the father being killed, and an implication of one of the children being killed as well. Fast forward eight years, and we're introduced to Angela, the surviving child, who is now living with her cousin Ricky and incredibly bizarre Aunt Martha. Martha waxes poetic about remembering to give them their medical evaluation forms as they get ready to leave for summer camp, and sends them on their way.

Once at camp, the dynamic becomes clear: Ricky is very protective of his cousin, Angela is incredibly shy and reserved (and borderline antisocial, not saying a single word to anyone for the majority of the film), and many people around camp are either outwardly hostile to Angela, or try to provoke her into reacting- which leads to Ricky often retaliating more and more aggressively. The only person who gets a positive reaction is Ricky's friend Paul, with whom Angela develops a budding romance throughout the film, though things start to get weird as Paul tries to get more physical with Angela and she reacts poorly to his advances.

But, remember, this isn't a teen romance film, it's a horror film! So of course people start dying- first the pedophilic camp cook, then a couple of the camp bullies, then Angela's counselor and bunkmate, and so on and so on. They all had one thing in common: they all tried to hurt Angela one way or another. Mel, the camp administrator, suspects Ricky of being the murderer- so at the climax of the film he drags Ricky out to the woods and beats him unconscious, but then Mel himself is killed by an unseen attacker.

Paul and Angela's tumultuous romance has come to a head, however, when Angela tells Paul to meet her at the waterfront at night. When he does, she tells him to strip naked so they can go swimming. Next time we see either of them, however, Angela is sitting on the beach with Paul's head in her lap. Paul's... severed head. 

With a flashback, we're shown that Aunt Martha was a lot crazier than we thought. When the boat crash happened at the beginning of the story, the child Angela and her father were killed. Angela's brother, Peter, survived but suffered a brain injury. Aunt Martha, not wanting a second son but desperately wishing she had a daughter, raised Peter as a girl, calling her Angela from then on. 

As camp staff discovers her, she stands up, hissing, and it's revealed that Angela has a penis. Cut to credits.

So, first let me say that I think this is actually an incredible film. All of the characters have nuance, I love the setting (I have a soft spot for summer camp movies), and even the camaraderies and rivalries between the characters felt real and meaningful. The Whodunit aspect of the movie is very well-done (you briefly see the killer several times, but the casting of Angela, Ricky, and a few other characters is cleverly done so that multiple people all share a similar silhouette and each have legitimate reasons to be carrying out these murders) and of course, the ending is incredibly shocking and I guarantee nobody saw it coming. (Though the movie does hint at it several times if you know what to look for!) I'll give a slight spoiler for the next couple days by saying that I really don't care much for any of the sequels, but I think this film on its own is just a hair shy of being a masterpiece. It really does tell an incredibly compelling story and even rewards rewatches by letting the viewer understand a bit more of what's going on in characters' heads once you know how it ends.

And of course, I need to talk about the twist.

So, Angela was assigned male at birth but later forced to live as a girl. Most likely as a result of this dissonance, she has become homicidal against the people that wronged her, and once we know the twist, a lot of the events earlier in the film- particularly, the things she did or didn't do that caused people to get so frustrated with her- make a lot more sense as habits she formed to hide the truth about her body from being discovered.

I don't know what this movie is trying to say, if anything, about transgenderism. Like I said earlier, there's probably been hundreds of articles written about that. All I know is that as a viewer of a movie, I am both terrified of the character of Angela and also incredibly sympathetic towards her. For most of the film, nearly every person who interacts with her is either trying to bully her, tease her, or rape her. The actress does a fantastic job of making herself look simultaneously complacent and curious, with her ability to just stare at whoever is yelling at her with this vacant expression, yet eyes that are fully aware and awake, and so many times in the film she is framed in such a way that she's occupying the lower half of the screen while someone else is above her (both physically and authoritatively) to make it clear how everyone else views and treats her. So while on one hand Angela is a psychopathic murderer who most of the time is taking revenge for what really amounts to childish behavior, on the other hand you can really see why someone in her position might finally "snap" and to a small extent you can even feel a catharsis when you see that she's finally stood up for herself in a way that nobody expected her to.

It's just a shame that standing up for herself means murder.

Anyway, this movie truly is great and I highly recommend watching it if you haven't already (and watching it again if you have).

Overall Rating: 9/10 Beehives in Bathrooms

Nostalgic Rating: 10/10 Extremely Tight Shorts and Too-Short Shirts

Bad Language: Apparently, when Johnathan Tiersten auditioned for the role of Ricky, director Robert Hiltzik asked Johnathan to swear at him, which he did for several minutes straight before being given the part.