There’s a question I ask every time I watch a new movie about paranormal investigators who decide to try one more time to prove that ghosts are real.
Have they never seen a horror movie? Like, ever?
I mean, I’m not a ghost hunter and even I know that when you go looking for evil spirits, bad, bad shit happens. No one survives. The end.
And, yet, here we are with the debut of “Camp Cold Brook,” the umpteenth movie (I’ve honestly lost count of how many variations of this film I’ve seen) about cash-strapped reality TV stars giving it one more go to stave off cancellation.
Camp Cold Brook
1 out of 5 stars.
Rated: Unrated
Run Time: 86 minutes
Directed by Andy Palmer
Starring Chad Michael Murray, Danielle Harris, Michael Eric Reid, Candice De Visser and Mary Kathryn Bryant
Now playing in limited release and on streaming Video-on-Demand platforms
It’s got a solid cast, including scream queen Danielle Harris and genre veteran Chad Michael Murray, but more than that, it has the support of Joe Dante (yes, the man who made “Gremlins” and “The Howling”), whose name matters when it appears in the credits as an executive producer.
Murray and Harris play Jack and Angela, who together with film school grad Kevin (Michael Eric Reid) and technical assistant Emma (Candice De Visser), are struggling to get the greenlight for another season of their ghost show, Haunt Squad.
Early on, “Camp Cold Brook” shows promise. It does a good job humanizing Jack, a married father of two with mounting debts. It makes sense why he would wager everything when his producer gives them one last chance, in the form of a 90-minute special, to drum up viewership by finding the most haunted place they can.
Angela suggests filming at the famed Winchester house, but it’s Emma’s suggestion to investigate a former church-run summer camp in Oklahoma that sticks. According to legend, dozens of children drowned themselves there after being entranced by a local woman named Anise Bernadeau (Mary Kathryn Bryant), who was believed to be a witch.
So far, so good.
The problem with movies about paranormal investigations often comes down to execution. Viewers know going in they’re going to see ghosts, but how those spirits manifest and the havoc they wreak is what hooks people and keeps them watching.
Sadly, director Andy Palmer and first-time screenwriter Alex Carl have no idea what to do with a decent premise.
Bernadeau’s backstory is presented haphazardly through flashbacks with very little substance. And the angry spirits of the children who died at Camp Cold Brook are hinted at and teased, a spectral hand here, a shadowy figure there, but never given a worthwhile reveal.
The team’s dynamic also is problematic. Kevin is an elitist who bitches that he should be the director of photography on a major Hollywood production. Angela is presented as a literal fraidy-cat who has no business investigating ghosts. And Emma, well, she just lingers around until a whopper of a third-act twist that would be difficult for most genre films to pull off. Suffice to say, it doesn’t work at all in this case.
And that’s the big issue with “Camp Cold Brook,” so much of the film just doesn’t make sense, which is genuinely surprisingly given Dante’s involvement as a financier.
In addition to the twist with Emma, viewers also are subjected to two other big reveals that, if properly foreshadowed or intelligently written, might have worked. Instead, they fall completely flat.
Jack goes from being a non-believer to an expert on hexes and spells without any logical transition or context.
And, while I get that witches are the new zombie/vampire/insert iconic monster, you can’t just make a character an all-powerful witch and leave it at that. There has to be some justification, some basic explanation, in order to make your witch, you know, scary. In this case, Bernadeau comes off as silly more so than frightening. She appears randomly without doing much. Her motives are wholly unclear. And the one legitimate shock in the film’s final frame is telegraphed so early, and so poorly, that it kills the impact.
The cold, hard truth is you have seen dozens of variations of “Camp Cold Brook,” some done much better and some done far worse, but sadly there’s not anything original or exciting enough on display here to warrant a watch.
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at Blood Violence and Babes.com, on Facebook @BloodViolenceBabes or on Twitter @BVB_reviews.
This article appears in Feb 20-27, 2020.