AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
A sleepaway camp deep in the woods, frisky young counselors letting loose by the pond, eerie music, a mysterious killer, even someone named Jason - "Hell Of A Summer" has all of the stuff for a good slasher film. But in this movie, Jason is a soft-spoken, nice guy, and with every nod to a classic of the genre, there's also a subversive wink.
FINN WOLFHARD: Hey, this is Finn Wolfhard.
BILLY BRYK: Hi, this is Billy Bryk.
RASCOE: Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk wrote and directed "Hell Of A Summer," and they are stars in it as well. And they do a hell of a job.
WOLFHARD: Thank you for having us.
BRYK: Thank you so much.
RASCOE: How would you classify this movie? Is it a horror comedy, or is it more of a comedy with a horror spin?
BRYK: I think it can be both. I mean, I think we wanted to make a horror comedy that really treated its characters with care and respected its characters and cared about their dynamics as much as it cared about the kills. So at first, we had set out to make a coming-of-age teen comedy that gets interrupted by a slasher film, and that was kind of our, like, initial idea. It leads with comedy but not in a way that feels like parody or feels too satirical or too silly.
RASCOE: One thing that I did love about this movie - these characters do feel very real, and it's kind of like a Gen Z update to this. The way that they react when dead bodies start showing up is very how I felt like real teens would act.
WOLFHARD: One of the big reasons why we wrote the film was because we were kind of sick of seeing movies - when characters are put into dangerous situations, they kind of just become heroes randomly, and it doesn't really feel like a part of their character. And so the idea behind these characters is just, what would you do in this situation? And would your insecurities and, you know, your sort of quirks go away? And the answer is no. They would actually probably be amplified in these moments of kind of stress or danger. And that's where a lot of the comedy also comes.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HELL OF A SUMMER")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Claire, stay back. He's the killer.
FRED HECHINGER: (As Jason) I'm not.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Are too.
HECHINGER: (As Jason) Ow.
ABBY QUINN: (As Claire) Get off of him.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) You're the one who took our phones.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Yeah.
HECHINGER: (As Jason) It's camp policy.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) And you're the one that found Demi's body.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Yeah.
HECHINGER: (As Jason) That was a coincidence.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) And you're, like, 45, and you still go to summer camp.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Yeah.
HECHINGER: (As Jason) I'm only 24.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Save it for the jury.
QUINN: (As Claire) Get off of him.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Claire, enough. He clearly hates himself, so he snapped and started killing off the hottest counselors.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) Wait, what? Timeout. We don't know that. That's subjective.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) No, we do. It's obvious.
RASCOE: Billy, can you talk to me about some of the kind of archetypes that are in there? The jock, the popular girl, the theater kid, who's (laughter) quite funny - the usual kind of high school stereotypes but done in a really interesting way?
BRYK: I think part of the reason that the characters feel contemporary and updated is just because Finn and I are young, and we wrote this movie as teenagers. We were just trying to write characters that sort of felt like versions of people we knew. There was an authenticity sort of baked into our perspective.
And we also knew the kind of characters we didn't want to write. I think there's a lot of very thin characters in slasher films from other eras because those were just the type of characters of that time. I think it just allowed us to write these characters that felt new and maybe fresh and, like, something we haven't seen in a slasher before.
RASCOE: Are y'all best friends in real life?
BRYK: IRL?
WOLFHARD: No.
(LAUGHTER)
WOLFHARD: No.
(LAUGHTER)
WOLFHARD: Well, no, we definitely are. We've been through so much together as friends. I'm 22 now. Billy's 25. I've known him since I was 16, he was 19. This is a movie that I think perfectly encapsulates our relationship at that time.
BRYK: It weirdly sort of mirrors the journey of our main character, Jason. And it is - at the end of the day, it's a movie about stepping out of your childhood and into adulthood and leaving certain things behind that meant a lot for you.
RASCOE: Well, that's the thing. So the lead character - he's the lead counselor, Jason. He has this innocence, and he's holding on to summer camp. He's older. He's 24. In this movie, that's old.
WOLFHARD: Yeah.
BRYK: Right.
(LAUGHTER)
RASCOE: And...
WOLFHARD: Compared to the 16-year-old, 17-year-old counselors.
RASCOE: Yeah. I guess, what do you think was the driving force for Jason?
WOLFHARD: Jason is someone that is at an age where life starts to get scary, I think, for the first time, and, like, you really have to start fending for yourself. And I think he's someone that cares so genuinely deeply about being a counselor at Camp Pineway and that it's been his safe and happy place. It's hard for him to let go.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "HELL OF A SUMMER")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #5: (As character) Wait, why did you come back?
HECHINGER: (As Jason) Well, John and Kathy needed extra help, so yeah. I don't really see why it's such a big deal.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #5: (As character) It's not a big deal.
HECHINGER: (As Jason) Oh, OK.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #5: (As character) Yeah, I'm just surprised cause last year, you said you weren't coming back.
HECHINGER: (As Jason) Right. But...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #5: (As character) You were, like, crying.
HECHINGER: (As Jason) I don't think I was crying.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #5: (As character) You were definitely crying. You were, like, sobbing.
HECHINGER: (As Jason) I...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #5: (As character) You gave that end-of-an-era speech.
BRYK: For me, at least, when we started writing this script, I had just dropped out of college, and there was that feeling of a structure to being in school all the time that you know for basically your entire childhood, really. Now I had to go figure out how to find structure in my own life. And, like, as an actor and as a writer, as a director, it's not the most structured lifestyle at all. There's something that was really exciting about making a movie about that period of time.
And we talked a lot about movies like "The Graduate." That's really a movie that has sort of similar themes about somebody who is now not sure what to do with the rest of their life. For Jason, you know, it's a terrible thing that happens, when all these characters start getting killed off in increasingly gruesome ways. But at the same time, it's kind of the thing that he needs to kickstart his...
WOLFHARD: The next chapter of his life.
BRYK: ...Next chapter of his life. So it's - the only thing that would shake this guy away from this summer camp is if a bunch of...
WOLFHARD: Tragedy.
BRYK: ...Kids are getting killed there.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
BRYK: And that's exactly what we did to him.
RASCOE: That's what you did. I got to ask you, though, like, when you think of these sorts of stories, why do you think we keep coming back to summer camp to tell these sorts of stories?
WOLFHARD: It's a universal social setting, and it, I think, gives a great opportunity to have these characters interact with each other because they're all going through sort of similar things at the same time.
BRYK: The other thing that's so interesting about summer camp is it's an opportunity for young people to sort of reinvent themselves. And it can be a very formative experience for a lot of people. Finn and I didn't really go to sleepaway camp. Well, I did for one week. I went to basketball camp. It's a story for another day. But part of the reason we wanted to make a summer camp movie is 'cause we wanted to go to summer camp, and it was some of the most fun we've ever had.
RASCOE: That's Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard who directed and star in the movie "Hell Of A Summer," out now. Thank you so much.
WOLFHARD: Thank you so much.
BRYK: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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