Hell of a Summer

While I'm giving this film a rather negative rating, I was convinced by a review from one of my top YouTube channels that certain ages will, and are enjoying Hell of a Summer. (side note: I feel like this will be my version of "she's watching her stories" - instead it will be "he's watching his channels." I'm fine with that at this point.) Their argument that sold me was there are definite generational differences at play with this one, so really, this film isn't for me. I still don't understand what those differences are, but I think that's exactly the point. So my rating here of 1.5/5 is more an accumulation of my observations, than laying down a final verdict. Out of fairness.

My observations are pretty simple. Even by scanning the end credits, one could see there is a lot of good will in Hollywood towards Bryk and Wolfhard (famous for his role in the Netflix series Stranger Things), and thus they received some help with their debut. Nepotism in a sense, I suppose. And that's fine. But I feel the fact this was ready for release in 2023, and it wasn't until two years later did that happen, is rather telling. As for me: what I witnessed was ... yeah, a first project, by young novices, who have plenty of passion, a little luck and some friends in high places. It wasn't horribly made; even though there were definitely strange choices made from time to time, they were still well executed. It was just very clearly a first and very, very young script. A good way to describe it is It felt like a first draft, one of what should be many. For instance, where is the comedy? Where is the horror?

I just had to keep telling myself: It's only a movie, it's only a movie, not for you, not for you.