Welcome to Camp Pocumtuck which is about to be transformed into Camp Wedding. Mia (Kelley Gates, Life Coach) got a great deal renting it on AirBnB. Maybe because a camper drowned there after being struck by lightning. Or because executed witches are buried somewhere on its grounds. Or maybe it’s due to settlers massacring a tribe of peaceful Native Americans there.
In any case, Mia her finance, Dalvero (David Pegram) and a few of her wedding party including bridesmaid Flynn (Cadden Jones, Love, Repeat) the bridesmaid who is allergic to the mention of gluten, Gore (Sean Hankinson, Bad Actress) the gay best friend and token nerd Elieen (Wendy Jung, Spell Claire) are there to clean the place up and turn it into the perfect spot for a wedding. Unfortunately there’s a lot to do, not much time to do it, and Mia has seriously overestimated how much her friends are willing to do. And that’s also before people start disappearing.
As you can probably guess, Camp Wedding is a comedy. And director Greg Emetaz and co-writer Cara Consilvio have set their sights on plenty of targets, not just wedding films and summer camp slashers.
Social media and cell phone addiction in particular comes in for a beating. The digital effects showing everyone’s text are nicely done, and the way the characters constantly text each other, even when they’re in the same building, is certainly realistic. Unfortunately, many of the jokes are ones we’ve seen before.
However Camp Wedding is billed as a horror spoof and that’s why I watched it. And there’s very little horror until around the fifty minute mark when the first body turns up. I was expecting something a bit more along the lines of You Might Be The Killer, Final Girls or even Camp Death III in 2D! which made horror related humour the center of the film.
Instead Emetaz and Consilvio fill the first hour with jokes about texting, selfies, and hookup aps. We also get Bridezilla and relationship jokes almost none of which made me grin let alone laugh. What few genre elements we do get involve characters in masks and a trope reversal that sees the men running around shirtless instead of the women.
Camp Wedding does pick up its pace once the bodies finally start dropping. But the jokes don’t get any better. Arguably it becomes worse as the film merges its social media and horror angles with people being zombified and controlled by their cell phones. Using a Teddy Ruxpin in the film’s finale was an inspired idea, but that’s about the only one we get here.
And for those who might be wondering, Camp Wedding has almost nothing in the way of effects. Instead there’s a bright flash of light when something bloody would be happening. The shirtless guys are it for skin. Which means this is an attempt to parody slasher films with no blood, no nudity and damn few laughs.
Camp Wedding is available to stream via Gravitas Ventures. It’s also available on Tubi if you live in a country where it’s available. You can check the film’s website or Facebook page for more information.