Camp Blood

Dir. Brad Sykes (2000)

Four campers must survive a trip to the woods, where a psychopathic clown stands between them and escape.

CAUTION: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

For a Shot-On-Video film, Camp Blood is not half bad. The production values are really not bad for something filmed in 198… wait a second, this was made in 2000? Holy cow, cellphone cameras in 2000 were better than this… It says it was filmed in 3D, but I don’t believe it. It’s hardly in 2D.

Well… I guess it’s going to all come down to the story, then. The story is fairly typical, a group of young adults who go camping in the woods and find a psychopathic killer who wants to off them with his weapon of choice. It’s inspired by all of the classic slashers of the 80’s, and it wears those inspirations on its sleeve, coming off like a carbon copy with a few new wrinkles. It’s basically a trope-fest, but it's surprisingly well-done aside from the grainy cinematography, and it’s a practically perfect party movie or one that you can put on in the background with your friends. In that respect, it’s better than most horror movies, because that’s the ideal horror movie atmosphere. It’s certainly a quick watch, with the story moving along fast enough to avoid any major boredom (though the middle of the film definitely did drag a bit) and enough basic special effects and gore to be worth a watch. This one falls firmly into the “so bad it’s good” category. It spawned about 17 sequels, and after watching this one, I’m going to have to get to those as well. I don’t suppose you can really give a film like this any more praise than that: it actually left me wanting more and intrigued in the direction it can go after the original.