Rotten Tomatoes Rating: NA (Critics) / NA (Audience)
Directed By: Harrison Smith
Written By: Harrison Smith
Starring: Eric Roberts, Felissa Rose and Danielle Harris
Studio: RLJ/Image Entertainment

Synopsis: The “Summer Camp” horror trilogy was one of the most popular franchises of the 1980s. However, the decade ended and so did director Julian Barrett’s career. Now Barrett plans to resurrect his gory series via a modern reboot patterned after reality filmmaking. With his former leading lady and an eclectic group of 10 young “contestants,” Barrett returns to the same locale where his old splatter-fests were filmed. When one of the campers is found savagely murdered, they realize there’s more at stake than just fame and fortune. Each of them is in a fight for their lives as they realize summer is over – forever. – (Source)

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The Good:
Eric Roberts gave a perfectly Eric Robertsian performance and I appreciated it greatly. This movie also featured a return to the horror movie genre for SLEEPAWAY CAMP’s own Angela, Felissa Rose ass a former “Scream Queen” which was a pretty neat touch.

The Bad:
I try to be a bit more forgiving with slasher films especially the ones made on a miniscule budget but this movie tried my patience greatly. It just seemed like everything was rushed and slapdash from the death scenes to the practical effects. And the fact that the blood that was used never looked anywhere close to real blood and kept changing color and consistency from scene to scene didn’t help. Also, and this is something that a lot of people making this type of film overlook, the pattern of killing victims in slasher films is a bit of an art. Characters can’t just be murdered all willy nilly with no thought being given to proper timing or how the dead character’s absence is explained. There also was no creativity to the kills either. And don’t even get me started on the nonsensical twists at the end either.

The Ugly
It was a bit of a bummer that reigning “Scream Queen” Danielle Harris was in probably a combined 10 minutes of this movie. Not cool, people behind CAMP DREAD. Not cool at all.

Final Verdict: CAMP DREAD is a messy little horror movie that you can see was made by people who love the genre but passion without much talent and zero budget is a recipe for a bad movie and that is exactly what we have here. Eric Roberts provides a nice spark every time he is on the screen and the welcome return of one of the genre’s most interesting actresses is nice but at the end of the day this is just not a good movie.

Grade: D