Camp (Egypt, 2008) (AKA "Kamb")
Rating: ***
Starring: Yasmen Abaza, Amr Abdelaziz, Amr Abdullatif
It's not very often we see a horror film straight out of Egypt due to the country's strict censorship, so the fact that we even got this teen slasher from them is no short of a miracle and a real ham of a treat for us bodycount fans.
The scene starts at a luxurious birthday party of one Wael, who we see having a bit of a talk with his on-again-off-again fiancé Shirin before she has to leave on the account of a family emergency. Right about that time, the rather beautiful Shaky arrives with her date Gamal to join the festivities and then the story jumps ahead a year later. And Shaky is now dead.
After visiting her grave, Wael, Shirin, Gamel and the rest of their gang (plus Shirin's kid sister for some reason) drive to the titular camp, which is less of a
camp and more of a nearly-barren hotel manned by its owner and his promiscuous wife, a trolley guy with a case of sticky fingers and a mute cleaning lady who eyes the guests suspiciously. The group's there to celebrate their graduation by having a great time at the beach, dining fine and dancing around a bonfire to some spicy salsa music. Trouble comes bickering when talk of romance, cheating and doing the nasty out of wedlock gets brought up within the group, but that would soon escalate to more dire problems like random fires down hallways, creepy shadows looming across windows and their cars' batteries going dead.
Dire turns deadly when a killer resembling a pale ghoul shows up to terrorize the doomed partyers, stabbing and hacking people to death, stirring up a whole mess of accusations and suspicions as the victims try to uncover who's hunting them all down...
Focused more on building suspense and intrigue rather than a high kill count or a messy spot of gore,
Camp (2008) works its way through the interpersonal problems and relations of its casts for a good bulk of the plot, building enough drama and red herrings for the eventual killing spree to make it as twisty in its turns as possible. It's an approach that would've functioned better if it wasn't for the bits of comedic outings that clash with the movie's more serious moments, not to mention the sudden amount of overacting and breakneck editing around the second half which knocks off any earnest sense of chill or fright from the murders. Still, the film is shot with a modest quality and there's an undeniable fun factor to be found so long as you don't mind a dose of cheese and what's practically a run-fest of victims fleeing all over the hotel while the killer either legs after them or show off their parkour skills. It doesn't always fly well, nor does it make sense, but it's gorgeous to look at and it surely does help not to overthink how quickly our killer can change in and out of their cosplay-level disguise, among many other things.
The kills aren't too graphic and are mostly implied offscreen to appease Egypt's censors, not quite that big of a problem personally since the scenes around the attacks work well enough entertainment-wise. The finale is, shall we say, up for the audience's interpretation: it would have been your standard unmasking and reveal with a flashback to compliment the twist, only made just that complicated and confusing by adding one little detail that simply doesn't make any lick of sense at all. The film just threw it at us at the near end and left it at that, but the very gist of the whole fiasco's basically one big revenge plot and so long as
that's clear at least, I can roll with it.
Camp (2008) undoubtedly could have been better, but for what it is able to accomplish, I can appreciate. It has the look and feel of an 80s slasher done right, one that isn't too coy on hamming it a bit with its thrills and spills. A neat little bodycounter flick from a different culture!
Bodycount:
1 male hacked on the neck with a curved knife
1 female found dead from a cut throat
1 female hacked on the head with a curved knife
1 male stabbed in the back with a curved knife
1 female stabbed in the back with a curved knife
1 male found stabbed in the back with a curved knife
1 female killed offscreen, later found stabbed in the chest with a curved knife
1 male found stabbed on the back with a curved knife
Total: 9
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