Everybody needs their marriage ceremony to be particular.
Mia (Kelly Gates) needs her marriage ceremony to Dalvero (David Pregram) to be so implausible and memorable that it’ll launch a brand new profession.
Camp Marriage ceremony to the rescue!
Directed and by Greg Emetaz with Cara Consilvio, Camp Marriage ceremony explores the standard horror camp style “in a world of ubiquitous social media and textual content communication.”
That’s the world we reside in immediately. Friendships aren’t maintained in particular person however via textual content messages and Fb and Instagram posts.
These pals you have identified all of your life will likely be relative strangers once you all get collectively once more for one thing as important as a marriage. Actually, is there some other motive to attach today than a required gathering?
Camp Marriage ceremony begins with Mia, her finest man, Gore (Sean Hankinson), and her pals Flynn (Cadden Jones) and Alexis (Melissa Roth) heading to Camp Pocumtuck, which Mia scored through Airbnb.
As an alternative of navigating for Mia or having a normal dialog between pals, Gore, Flynn, and Alexis textual content and put up photographs on social media. They’re all so busy that they miss the historical past of Camp P even when it is actually displayed on massive indicators they cross on their approach there.
Like all horror style summer time camps, Camp Pocumtuck has a trauma-filled previous with a younger lady’s demise on the camp, a historical past of burning witches on the stake, and a Native American bloodbath.
Mia clearly would not watch horror motion pictures or did not do even the slightest little bit of analysis into the place, or she may need higher understood why it isn’t a summer time camp any longer and open for rental by schmucks like her.
However these individuals are so intent on impressing others with their fake lives on social media that all the things else goes undiscovered.
Dalvero’s finest lady, Paulette (Morgan Mcguire), and Mia’s old skool chum, Eileen (Wendy Jung), await their arrival.
Paulette and Mia have by no means met, and thru a misrouted message of some kind, Eileen bought an invite to the marriage, an error Mia extremely regrets.
That is a disgrace since Eileen’s hope for a “frienaissance” together with her former buddy makes her essentially the most excited to be part of the marriage.
Usually, Mia goes bridezilla as she hopes her pals will pitch in and get the place prepared for the arrival of her company the following day, however earlier than the preparations may even get off the bottom, Camp Marriage ceremony turns from a bridal comedy to a summer time camp horror.
There have been profitable cases of terrorizing via social media.
Fairly Little Liars’ A successfully upped the ante together with her omnipotence via know-how, and Unfriended makes use of Skype to choose off pals related to suicide attributable to cyberbullying, for instance.
So, whereas it has been finished successfully elsewhere, Camp Marriage ceremony fails in its makes an attempt to converge social media, texting, and horror as a result of the characters are so buried of their gadgets that they cannot decide related social cues of any form, whether or not on-line or in particular person.
The timing of watching this falls in keeping with watching a comic who shared his concern over the outdated individuals of the longer term.
Whereas immediately’s aged individuals nonetheless have tales to share whereas flipping via their photographs with grandkids and such, the place will these meaningless social interactions stack up?
Actual-life and precise connections are disregarded for the picture you need to painting. How will that maintain up? Emetaz positively has one thing he needs to say, however the message is not clear.
Watching these characters with their machine dependancy simply makes a quite unhappy assertion on the place we’re immediately, made worse since Camp Marriage ceremony is not satisfyingly humorous or scary because the story unfolds.
Despite the fact that it falls wanting a slicing commentary, there’s a little bit of a twist close to the top that ensures watching wasn’t all in useless.
Early within the movie, there was a clue to the twist, however issues get so busy because of this that till it circles round once more, you’ll in all probability have missed it.
If Fairly Little Liars and Unfriended used previous sins as their motive to implement media-driven justice, Emetaz’s try with Camp Marriage ceremony feels lackluster and unfocused by comparability.
Though the forged did an excellent job with their materials, there was slightly an excessive amount of at play right here to get a thumb’s up, but when it had been to be reworked with a extra streamlined script and pointed course, it may have the potential to change into a cult hit.
Camp Marriage ceremony is on the market VOD on iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, VuDu, Vimeo On Demand, Google Play, FandanGO.
Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a employees author and critic for TV Fanatic. She’s a member of the Critic’s Alternative Affiliation, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of tv and movie with anybody who will hear. Comply with her on Twitter and e-mail her right here at TV Fanatic.