How
does the prospect of spending a weekend with Bridezilla and a pack of serial
hash-taggers sound? Do the words “kill me now” come to mind? Unfortunately,
that is the whole idea. A destination wedding runs completely off the rails in
Greg Emetaz’s Camp Wedding, which
releases today on VOD, its natural home.
Camp
Pocumtuck is like Camp Crystal Lake on bad karma steroids. It is built over a
Native burial ground, near the site of historic witch burning. When it was last
functioning as a proper summer camp, a little girl died because of the
counselor’s abuse and negligence. However, it was available cheap, so Mia
booked it for her destination wedding.
Her
idea was to have a camp-themed wedding, with activities and a talent show. It
all sounds truly awful, but it probably isn’t happening, because some strange
unseen force starts luring members of the wedding party out into the dark. Once
they are disposed of, the mystery grudge-holding power will post grotesque
selfies of them on the social media feed for Mia’s wedding. If Mia, her groom
Dalvero, and their friends could work together, they might have a prayer of
surviving. Alas, that is highly unlikely, especially after Mia lets it slip
that she only invited her old childhood chum Eileen by mistake.
Camp Wedding is funnier than
most alleged horror comedies, but its skewering of the hyper-online Twitter
generation is often a little too on-target. For the most part, these characters
are unremittingly shallow and abrasive, but at least this way we really won’t
mind when they wind up hanging from a tree.
Of
course, the more outrageous their behavior, the better the scattergun humor
works. Morgan McGuire and Adam Santos-Coy score a lot of laughs as Paulette,
the groom’s misanthropic platonic bestie and Trask, a horndog groomsman.
Frankly, David Pegram is a bit too normal as Dalvero and Kelly Gates is too
realistically annoying as Mia. However, Wendy Jung upstages everyone and even
manages to eke out some character development as the socially awkward but
surprisingly resourceful Eileen.
There
is definitely a ceiling on Camp Wedding’s
commercial appeal, but it is tailor-made for the digital VOD market, after
having enjoyed a credible run on the horror festival circuit. It lacks the
in-your-face gore and subversiveness of the upcoming Ready or Not (apparently, this is a golden age for wedding horror
movies), but if you think you will find it amusing, chances are your
expectations will be satisfied. Recommended for genre fans who enjoy caustic
attitudes as much as bloody mayhem, Camp
Wedding releases today (8/20), on VOD platforms.
