Camp Pleasant Lake

Stumbling upon the 2024 horror movie "Camp Pleasant Lake" without ever having heard about it, of course I had to sit down and watch it, given my love of the horror genre. However, I must admit that I wasn't exactly harboring any particular grand expectations to the movie, as it just didn't really have that particular feel to it. But I still opted to give writer and director Thomas Walton the benefit of the doubt.

"Camp Pleasant Lake" was an archetypical masked slasher flick. But unfortunately not a great one. The storyline and script was pretty straightforward, although it was riddled with plot holes and things that just made zero sense. For example, why wouldn't the Rutherfords have a carefully planned and orchestrated routine of how to faking the deaths of the campers or councilors, but would just wing it as things went along? That made absolutely no sense for something set to take place at a camp site that ran horror experiences for paying customers.

I am rather impressed that a horror movie with the likes of Andrew Divoff, Mike Ferguson and Bonnie Aarons on the cast list would prove to be this abysmal. In addition, there were a couple of other familiar faces on the cast list, with the likes of Michael Paré and Robert LaSardo. The acting performances in the movie were fair enough, but the actors and actresses were seriously struggling with having nothing worthwhile in terms of script, dialogue or character gallery to work with.

And the fact that character gallery was as bland as tap water just didn't help promote the movie either. I have to admit that I didn't care one bit about any of the characters, much less the masked killer. In fact, the masked killer proved to be more of a comedy gag than anything else.

This was a lousy attempt at making a slasher, even with some of the effects being so dubious that you just had to go back and see it twice, to ensure that you hadn't seen it wrong, and coming to believe that effects could be that horrible. I loved the fact that when throats were cut, the blood would appear an inch or two above the line where the cut was made. That was just such an amateurish thing.

It amazes me that the movie had a staggering 6.2 rating here on IMDb when I sat down to watch it. This movie is a dumpster fire of a slasher flick. Sure, if you are a newcomer to the horror genre and slasher subgenre, then I guess that the movie comes off as being watchable. But if you have grown up on slasher movies, then "Camp Pleasant Lake" is just a movie you want to forget about ever stumbling upon.

My rating of "Camp Pleasant Lake" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

Wow. What have I just been watching? Who decided that making this "film" was a good idea? Is it a tax write-off? A crowd-funded passion project, made with friends, family and maybe some of the funders? (The large number of exec and assoc producer credits would appear to favour the latter.)

The plot has more holes than an average road in Britain. The dialogue is matched in cringeworthiness only by the acting (and obvious lack of professional direction). The lightning of the night scenes made me laugh out loud. If I have to list something positive: some of the effects are okay-ish and the actors seem to have had a great time (although most of them won't be needing agents I suspect).

As a professional film this should not get more than one or two stars. But the thing is, I enjoyed watching the whole thing. So I'll give it a generous five stars.

Dumb slasher movie. Starts off that Camp Pleasant (home of some bad stuff in the past) is being turned into a horror show camp where people pay to be scared.

The guys who are gonna do the special effects are murdered.

Cut to titles and scene where a bunch of ju-ju-bees are talking about the camp. The acting is HORRIBLE.

You actually can't imagine how bad the acting is. Not one of these performers is any good.

The plot is laughable and void of any imagination. Even the kids in the flashback make no sense. Their parents are black haired but the kinds are platinum blondes!!!!!

Can't believe I wasted my time on this garbage!

The first few minutes of a movie should somewhat keep me interested, however, the first few minutes of this movie gave me secondhand embarrassment. The acting is so bad. How do the people not realize this as they're filming? Watched it for 11 minute and decided that's it...I shut it off to find something else. Good luck to those that try.

"tHe StoRyY" it seems like bad acting, I couldn't care for the characters, definitely not a good horror movie. At least they added special effects. The story could be good if the writing was good. It just isn't a movie for anyone probably, also maybe there were voice over for the people. But, just nothing sounds genuine. Looks like they had a budget at least, drone shots, some props and locations. They at least did go outside. I can't really see anything to recommend that is good about this movie and definitely should skip like me but instead I kept trying to watch. A toddler calls his older sibling who is like 6 years old, Big sis. I feel like that only really occurs in books.