Pack your bags, start up the campfire and get ready for one “Hell of a Summer.”
The comedy-horror film, directed and written by Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk and featuring an ensemble led by Fred Hechinger, Abby Quinn, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Wolfhard and Bryk, follows a group of young counselors hanging out at the quaint Camp Pineway the day before kids arrive. When night falls, they realize an anonymous killer in a red demon mask is picking them off one by one.
On Monday, March 31, eleven student journalists from around the country were invited by independent distribution company NEON to attend a virtual roundtable Q&A with Wolfhard and Bryk about their feature directorial debut.
Wolfhard and Bryk met as co-stars on the set of “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.” The two bonded over their love of coming-of-age comedies like “Superbad,” “Dazed and Confused” and “The Graduate,” and inspired each other to create their own horror-themed twist on the genre.
“We had both written comedy-slashers before we met each other,” Wolfhard said. “It just felt like kind of the perfect place to kind of start as a writing duo. I think it allowed us to have an opportunity to write parts for a younger cast, like a teen ensemble.”
As if getting a feature film made at such a young age wasn’t enough of a challenge, Wolfhard and Bryk soon faced a much larger hurdle in the Covid-19 pandemic, which shut down summer camps for multiple years. After securing funding from Aggregate Films, the production company founded by actor Jason Bateman, the duo took it upon themselves to scour the east coast of Canada for the right filming location.
Wolfhard recalls spending days “cold calling the YMCA, just asking for any camp that may have been available,” while Bryk joked, “I think I’ve seen every single thing on Airbnb that somewhat resembles a cabin within six hours of Toronto.”
Once they finally stumbled upon the right location and filming began in the summer of 2022, Wolfhard and Bryk then had to work together with their crew to shape the camp’s atmosphere into something that felt timeless.
“It was always finding that balance of how do things feel specific and then also how do they feel generic,” Bryk said. “How do they feel like there’s a bunch of history, but then also how do they feel sort of empty and liminal and weird and creepy?”
“Hell of a Summer” originally had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was named runner-up for the Midnight Madness People’s Choice Award.
Canadian filmmaker and critic Jaime Rebanal, who attended the screening, remembered, “everybody was psyched out of their minds… to see what kind of chops does (Wolfhard) have behind the camera” after knowing him from other projects like “Stranger Things” and “It.”
Almost a year later, NEON acquired the rights for the film’s American release. After the company’s previous critical and commercial successes in the last year with films like Oscar winner “Anora” and horror films “Longlegs” and “The Monkey,” Rebanal felt NEON “would be a great home for (the film)… They really wanna push for everyone to see what they acquire from film festivals.”
For Wolfhard and Bryk, partnering with NEON allowed them to help build word-of-mouth for the film by holding advanced screenings and Q&As for the film in select cities leading up to its wide release.
“It’s a dream come true in a lot of ways,” Bryk said. “Not only the way the movie’s coming out theatrically, but the way that we were able to do this tour and go around the country showing it… NEON has got behind it in a way that’s so exciting to us.”
After more than five years between the film’s conception and release, Wolfhard and Bryk agree that the film was a great learning experience and hope that it will encourage other young artists to fight for their own creative visions.
“No one wants two twenty-somethings to make a movie, no matter what show you’re from or if you’ve done anything,” Wolfhard said. “(But) if you write something and you really care about it, you’ll be surprised at the lengths you’ll go to get it made… We definitely evolved as people and filmmakers, just trying to get this made.”
“Hell of a Summer” was released theatrically nationwide on April 4.
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