Stranger Things may be coming to an end this year, but star Finn Wolfhard isn't done fighting monsters just yet — not by a long chalk. In fact, with his and fellow actor Billy Bryk's joint directorial debut Hell Of A Summer, the 22-year-old Canadian is diving headfirst into genre territory for a throwback summer-camp slasher complete with ouija boards, masked killers, and all the blood and guts a horror fan could hope for. Check out the newly released first trailer for the gory horror-comedy, co-written by and co-starring Wolfhard and Bryk, below:
A bunch of horny teens? Check! Drinking, smoking, and candid campfire conversations? Check! Dead lines, death by six-string, and a sketchy dude called Jason? Check, check, and check again! When Empire spoke to Wolfhard and Bryk way back in October 2023, the duo — who cited everything from Night Of The Living Dead to Scream to Evil Dead II as inspirations for Hell Of A Summer — said of their first foray into filmmaking, "We had a lot of fun," that "the whole film was just us trying to make each other laugh over Zoom." And the vibe here as we see Fred Hechinger's awkward camp counsellor pull up to Camp Pineway and get immediately thrust into an out-and-out Camp Sleepaway style survive-the-night slasher with his teen colleagues suggests we're in for a lot of fun — and a lot of laughs — too. With a healthy does of arterial spray and limb detachment, naturally.
Here's the official synopsis for the film: "Hell Of A Summer centers on 24-year-old camp counselor Jason Hochberg (Hechinger), who arrives at Camp Pineway thinking his biggest problem is that he feels out of touch with his teenage co-workers. What he doesn’t know is that a masked killer is lurking on the campgrounds, brutally picking counselors off one by one.” Among Jason's eminently killable counsellor pals are an ensemble of promising young stars including D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Abby Quinn, Pardis Saremi, Rosebud Baker, and Adam Pally.
Hell Of A Summer hits cinemas stateside on 18 April but, being a Neon release, is likely to arrive in multiplexes here in the UK a few months further down the line. All of which is to say that if timings check out, we could well be in for a hell of a Hell Of A Summer summer. We'll take royalties on that one by cheque or Stranger Things scoops please, Mr Wolfhard.