Camp Pleasant Lake

Camp Pleasant Lake
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Thomas Walton
Screenplay by	Thomas Walton
Produced by	Jared Safier Thomas Walton
Starring	Jonathan Lipnicki Bonnie Aarons Andrew Divoff
Cinematography	David M. Parks
Edited by	George Lambriodes John Mark Triplett
Music by	Reuven Herman
Production companies	Safier Entertainment PhilaDreams Films Lux Angeles Studios Mahal Empire Movies by Misfits RMR Productions Stag Mountain Films
Distributed by	Deskpop Entertainment Safier Entertainment Starz
Release date	February 27, 2024 (2024-02-27)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Camp Pleasant Lake is a 2024 American slasher film that takes place in a camp around a 20-year-old mystery regarding a missing girl.

Plot

Twenty years ago, the peaceful air of Camp Pleasant Lake was shattered when two children, Echo and Jasper Meadows, vanished without a trace. Their parents were discovered brutally murdered, stabbed repeatedly, their bodies left in the open like warnings. The crime was never solved. The camp was shut down, its legacy drowned in whispers of horror and blood.

In the present day, Rick and Harper Rutherford purchase the old campground, hoping to revive it as a horror-themed attraction. Their concept is to turn its haunted reputation into profit, offering a “Haunted Halloween Weekend” where guests pay to be scared. Actors are hired, stories are fabricated, and scenes of horror are staged—but something far more real and dangerous begins to stir.

As guests arrive, strange things begin to happen. A mock hanging, set up as part of the attraction, suddenly becomes real, one of the actors is found genuinely strangled, their body swaying gently in the cold wind. At first, the Rutherfords think it’s a sick joke. Then the killings escalate.

A couple sneaks off into the woods for privacy and are discovered hours later, she with her throat slit from ear to ear, eyes carved out and stuffed with acorns, and he nailed to a tree with broken branches driven through his wrists and ankles. Nearby, a crude symbol is scrawled in blood, an eye with a line through it.

Campers begin to panic as the line between fiction and reality disappears. The power goes out. Phones are dead. In the kitchen, the cook is found gutted like a fish, hung from meat hooks by her tendons. Her mouth has been sewn shut with fishing wire.

One guest stumbles upon in RV that was supposed to house the camp counselors, only to witness it explode moments later, sending body parts into the treetops. The killer is never seen directly, only shadows, breathing, and once, a mask made of stitched leather, eerily similar to the mask Echo wore as a child during a camp play.

Flashbacks begin to reveal what truly happened two decades ago. Echo and Jasper had been mercilessly bullied by the other campers, pushed into a dark ritual dared by cruel teens led by Esmeralda, the self-appointed queen of the camp. One night, things went too far. The children were forced into the woods, where a group of drifters, part of a sadistic biker gang found them. The parents were murdered when they tried to intervene. The kids were taken. Or so the story goes.

In truth, Echo survived.

She returns to Camp Pleasant Lake under the cover of darkness, wielding vengeance sharpened over twenty years of suffering. She is the killer. Her brother is dead, killed by the bikers after years of abuse—and now, she is here to make the others feel every ounce of pain she endured. Esmeralda, now a broken, paranoid woman hired as a last-minute scare actor for the event, is dragged into the lake and drowned while tied to a floating dock, her face pinned under with barbed wire.

One by one, the original tormentors and those complicit in the cover-up are slaughtered in elaborate, theatrical ways, bodies torn apart in bunk beds, heads crushed with canoe paddles, teeth shattered with rocks, and intestines spilled across the canteen floor like ribbons of regret.

Harper discovers the truth in a series of disturbing journal entries and newspaper clippings hidden in the office. She tries to confront Echo, only to be knocked unconscious and tied up in the old arts-and-crafts cabin. When she awakens, she’s surrounded by photos of the original campers with red Xs drawn over their faces. Echo gives her a choice, confess her part in the camp’s reopening profiting from pain or die like the rest.

As police sirens echo in the distance, Harper limps from the cabin, bloodied and broken. She survives but Camp Pleasant Lake is once again soaked in blood, haunted not just by the past, but by the fury of a girl who was never rescued.

Cast

• Jonathan Lipnicki as Jasper Meadows
• Bonnie Aarons as Esmeralda
• Andrew Divoff as Evil Man
• Mike Ferguson as Lucifer 'Lou'
• Amber Oliver as Sheena
• Sajid Ali as Gabe
• Michael Paré as Rick Rutherford
• Robert LaSardo as Angel
• Tyrone Evans Clark as Julian
• Anne-Marie Olsen as Kim
• Kelly Lynn Reiter as Echo Meadows
• Devanny Pinn as Harper
• Jody Nolan as Ross
• Elley Ringo as Grace
• Tom Batchelder as Logan
• Ashley Medina Perez as Bayley
• Peter Augustine as Mitchell
• Adam Treasure as Jamal Davis
• William Delesk as Young Jasper
• William Bowker as Lenny
• James Di Giacomo as John Meadows
• Leila Almas Rose as Ruby Meadows
• Jackson Everest as Hunter
• Sophie Welch as Młoda Harper
• Paul Gunn as Clay
• Jean Heathen as Joanne
• Lacey Burdine as Young Echo
• Joe Barlam as Wyatt
• Scott Alan Ward as Charles
• Thomas Walton as Camp bus driver
• Elizabeth Noelle as Andrea
• Anson Days as Terrance
• Christopher Sky as Mike Wilson
• Collin Lee Turner as Jacob
• Mary Jones as Isabelle
• Randy Pascuzzi as Jackson

Production

• Thomas Walton directed and wrote this feature.
• The film was produced by Jared Safier and Thomas Walton.
• Cinematographer was David M. Parks and the feature's editing was completed by George Lambriodes and JohnMark Triplett.
• Original music was created by Reuven Herman.
• Kurt Finney was the production designer, and the art director was Nicholas Griffo.

Release

The film was released in selective theaters and VOD platforms on February 27, 2024. It was released by STARZ network on June 1, 2024, and had since been their number #1 movie for two straight weeks.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 20% of 10 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.80/10.

Darren Lucas of moviesreview101.com wrote, "The slasher subgenre has struggled in recent years and after decades of franchises dominating, could we have a new addition? Well, if you are a slasher fan, you are going to have a lot of fun with this movie."

Matt Donato of Bloody Disgusting wrote, "Worse still, the film's slasher elements might be squirting red juices like sprinklers full of Kool-Aid, but the working mechanics that keep the killer slicing and dicing are a mess. There's nothing exceptional about Camp Pleasant Lake despite dialogue that tries to cheekily serve up "epic" sequences of violence — a garden-variety masked and hooded murderer stabs victims with sharp objects who drop to the floor immediately dead."

Jeremy Werner of Moviehole wrote, "All-in-all, "Camp Pleasant Lake" is empty on laughs, empty on suspense, and sometimes empty on gore despite the killer slashing his way through 30 people throughout its runtime. It's really unfortunate because the idea behind the film is fantastic, the look of the killer is great for being low budget, and the killer's origin story could easily be built into a franchise, but it never blossoms."

In B-Sides & Badlands, Bee Delores wrote, "Camp Pleasant Lake knocks off Friday the 13th & Stream - and it's a blast." A staged murder weekend bursts into a nightmarish wasteland worth of any of the Sleepaway Camp sequels."

Michael Gingold of Rue Morgue wrote, "There's no visual invention or stylistic ambition to compensate for the microbudget look and slapdash plotting, which includes a revelation of the killer's identity that's obvious from about the 10-minute mark. Once the malefactor claims victims two separate times right in front of the other characters, and also takes out a bunch of other people in a very conspicuous (if poorly staged) way, and no one ever acknowledges, addresses or discusses these actual slayings, Camp Pleasant Lake has descended from tedious and grating to downright insulting to the intelligence. Even the most die-hard of slasher fans are advised to take their vacation elsewhere."

John Soltes of Hollywood Soapbox wrote, "The acting in the movie, which is written and directed by Thomas Walton, doesn't add up to much, although there are some sinister delights from The Nun's Bonnie Aarons. The jokes don't land, and the horror is never terrifying enough for the audience to care too much. The kills are gratuitous and not terribly original."

In Spectrum Culture, Miyako Pleines wrote, "There is so much tonal dissonance in this film that it becomes totally unwatchable after a point. Nothing is surprising to the viewer, and it's obvious from the very first scene who the real killers are. Basically, the story is the sort of movie you expect a seventh-grader to turn in for her English class. The only difference is that it might actually be more interesting to read that seventh-grader's story than it is to watch this film. Camp Pleasant Lake is a movie that makes you realize that it's actually truly hard to, well, make a movie. Not just anyone can do it. These people certainly can't."

J Hurtado of Screen Anarchy wrote, "There's nothing new in Camp Pleasant Lake, and the things that are familiar aren't even executed well, leaving the audience to wonder what exactly is the point? The film attempts to place itself in the universe of meta horrors, acknowledging the bloodthirsty nature of many fans of the genre, the idea that the context of the bloodletting is inconsequential just as long as it doesn't stop flowing. And there is something to that idea, but the film has no interest in investigating this mindset, rather it mocks these fans as they are gleefully picked off, one by one. "

In Scare Value, Bryan Staebell wrote, "The story of Camp Pleasant Lake is one of concept vs. execution. Unfortunately, the latter wins out too often. There is a fundamentally great idea at the core. When the movie is able to take advantage of it...the movie hits some nice highs. There is also a fun performance by Jonathan Lipnicki. In the end, however, there it's trying to serve too many masters."

External links

• Camp Pleasant Lake at IMDb
• Camp Pleasant Lake at Rotten Tomatoes
• Camp Pleasant Lake at TV Guide