Everyone wants their wedding to be special.
Mia (Kelly Gates) wants her wedding to Dalvero (David Pregram) to be so fantastic and memorable that it will launch a new career.
Camp Wedding to the rescue!
Directed and by Greg Emetaz with Cara Consilvio, Camp Wedding explores the traditional horror camp genre “in a world of ubiquitous social media and text communication.”
That is the world we live in today. Friendships aren’t maintained in person but through text messages and Facebook and Instagram posts.
Those friends you’ve known all your life will be relative strangers when you all get together again for something as significant as a wedding. Really, is there any other reason to connect these days than a required gathering?
Camp Wedding starts with Mia, her best guy, Gore (Sean Hankinson), and her friends Flynn (Cadden Jones) and Alexis (Melissa Roth) heading to Camp Pocumtuck, which Mia scored via Airbnb.
Instead of navigating for Mia or having a general conversation between friends, Gore, Flynn, and Alexis text and post photos on social media. They’re all so busy that they miss the history of Camp P even when it’s literally displayed on large signs they pass on their way there.
Like all horror genre summer camps, Camp Pocumtuck has a trauma-filled past with a young girl’s death at the camp, a history of burning witches at the stake, and a Native American massacre.
Mia obviously doesn’t watch horror movies or didn’t do even the slightest bit of research into the place, or she might have better understood why it’s not a summer camp any longer and open for rental by schmucks like her.
But these people are so intent on impressing others with their faux lives on social media that everything else goes undiscovered.
Dalvero’s best girl, Paulette (Morgan Mcguire), and Mia’s old school chum, Eileen (Wendy Jung), await their arrival.
Paulette and Mia have never met, and through a misrouted message of some sort, Eileen got an invitation to the wedding, an error Mia highly regrets.
That’s a shame since Eileen’s hope for a “frienaissance” with her former friend makes her the most excited to be a part of the wedding.
Generally, Mia goes bridezilla as she hopes her friends will pitch in and get the place ready for the arrival of her guests the next day, but before the preparations can even get off the ground, Camp Wedding turns from a bridal comedy to a summer camp horror.
There have been successful instances of terrorizing through social media.
Pretty Little Liars’ A effectively upped the ante with her omnipotence through technology, and Unfriended uses Skype to pick off friends associated with suicide due to cyberbullying, for example.
So, while it has been done effectively elsewhere, Camp Wedding fails in its attempts to converge social media, texting, and horror because the characters are so buried in their devices that they can’t determine relevant social cues of any kind, whether online or in person.
The timing of watching this falls in line with watching a comedian who shared his concern over the old people of the future.
While today’s aged people still have stories to share while flipping through their photos with grandkids and such, where will these meaningless social interactions stack up?
Real-life and actual connections are disregarded for the image you want to portray. How will that hold up? Emetaz definitely has something he wants to say, but the message isn’t clear.
Watching these characters with their device addiction just makes a rather sad statement on where we are today, made worse since Camp Wedding isn’t satisfyingly funny or frightening as the story unfolds.
Even though it falls short of a cutting commentary, there is a bit of a twist near the end that ensures watching wasn’t all in vain.
Early in the film, there was a clue to the twist, but things get so busy as a result that until it circles around again, you will probably have missed it.
If Pretty Little Liars and Unfriended used past sins as their reason to enforce media-driven justice, Emetaz’s attempt with Camp Wedding feels lackluster and unfocused by comparison.
Although the cast did a good job with their material, there was a little too much at play here to get a thumb’s up, but if it were to be reworked with a more streamlined script and pointed direction, it could have the potential to become a cult hit.
Camp Wedding is available VOD on iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, VuDu, Vimeo On Demand, Google Play, FandanGO.
Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She’s a member of the Critic’s Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on Twitter and email her here at TV Fanatic.