FINAL SUMMER * USA 2023 Dir: John Isberg. 82 mins
Oddly when watching the opening minutes of Final Summer (2023) I thought I was viewing just about every camp slasher film made with the scary story campfire sequence. Is this a homage to those eighties horror films which frankly are becoming clichés? Let’s redo what influenced us because we can’t think of anything else and it’s safe.
Everything is here that many have seen before which for me could serve as an intro to those that have never seen a slasher film. The film plays much like a lot of the work done by Blumhouse except M3gan (2022) and The Exorcist: Believer (2023) which had some style to them. Final Summer (2023) is full of stereotypes with poor dialogue. You get the intellectual, the visible minorities, the pretty girl lusted after by the unrequited lover, the arrogant rich kid and last but not least the evil mother type. The stunt work looks odd no gore, no nudity even gratuitous which as so much a part of that genre is missing.
Mechanically the film is sluggish with the usual shots of the moon, dark forests, and old buildings here people run into. Its saving grace is the actors, who all look like a theatre class that went out to make a film unfortunately mired in inane dialogue and situations that most viewers would moan at not in a good way. These people are not the usual pretty faces that one sees in the genre like a budget concern which does give the work an area of authenticity. Some other good moments were seeing a character reading Fangoria magazine plus another remarking as they walk through the fog-shrouded woods at night that ‘This feels like a horror movie’. The drawback is if you are making fun of the genre, you must do it with style, respect and finesse not just drop these non sequiturs into a story.
Final Summer (2023) is hard to watch since it is disappointing for those who view the genre. If you want to show someone a safe slasher film as an intro to the style, then this is one to show them. To me, it seems to fit that shot-for-shot abhorrent remake of Psycho (1998) by of all people Gus Van Sant or anything M. Night Shyamalan can pass off as a film. My question is why this is made, which I can only think that it’s training for other things which I do hope it is. The late Roger Corman did this, however unfair to compare this with even his oddest work as the times, the market, the money, and the business are all different. Like digital photography, now anyone can shoot a film, the question is with all that is out there one hopes some new people emerge. ‘Everything old is new again’ for some.
Review by Terry Sherwood
FINAL SUMMER is out now on Digital Platforms including to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and USA