Hello, everyone. Welcome to Slash Film Daily. Today is Tuesday, April 8th, 2025. On today's episode of the show, I'm going to talk about the new movie, Hell of a Summer, and I'll present an interview with Finn Wolfhard, who pulled Triple Duty as one of the films, writers, directors, and stars. My name is Ben Pearson. I'm an editor at SlashFelm.com, and yet again, it is just me on today's episode. We're going to have more interviews for the rest of this week, but I'll have some of my colleagues joining me for those.

So stay tuned on that front.

In the meantime, though, I want to tell you about a fantastic movie called Hell of a Summer, which is out in theaters right now.

It is a horror comedy, which can be a very tough genre to nail, but this one does it. Fred Heckenger from Thelma and Gladiator 2 and The White Lotus Season 1 plays a summer camp counselor

named Jason, who has returned to be a counselor one too many times. He's overly gung-ho

about the job, while the other counselors who are a little younger than he is don't take it

nearly as seriously.

They all arrive at the camp a couple of days before the campers do, and that's when the counselors start getting picked off one by one by a mysterious masked killer.

It's a very familiar slasher movie setup, but in a recognizable genre entry like this,

it's all about the execution. And the foundation here is incredibly

strong because this script is so, so good. It's funny, the kills are interesting, I legitimately

cared about the characters, and that last part may sound like it should be the bare minimum for a

movie like this, but if you watch a lot of films, you'll know it's easier said than done.

It also helps that this cast, which also includes

people like Abby Quinn from Knock at the Cabin and DeFaro Wunitai from Reservation Dogs,

is just pitch perfect the whole way through. Finn Wolfhard is poised to have a very, very big

2025. In addition to writing, directing, and starring in Hell of a Summer alongside his friend

Billy Brick. He is also

co-starring in A24's The Legend of Ochi later this month. He's releasing an album called Happy

Birthday that comes out in June. And of course, he's starring in the final season of Stranger Things,

which is supposed to hit Netflix at some point this year. I caught up with Finn several weeks ago and spoke

with him about the writing process on this movie, what he learned as a director, the balance of

...