Vague Visages’ Camp review contains minor spoilers. Avalon Fast’s movie 2025 movie features Zola Grimmer, Alice Wordsworth and Cherry Moore. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

Femininity and witchcraft have long been linked in contemporary cinema, most notably in The Craft (1996). The iconic 90s movie was evidently a big source of inspiration for Camp (one character is even named Nev), the impressive if frustratingly opaque sophomore feature from 26-year-old Canadian filmmaker Avalon Fast. Following The Serpent’s Skin and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, 2026 is fast becoming a year personified by woozy, atmospheric and queer coming-of-age stories. And if Camp is the least effective of the trio, the movie still suggests a fruitful career to come for its highly ambitious writer-director.

Opening at the kind of Gen-Z party typified by speechifying about safe spaces and performative allyship, Camp introduces its heroine, mousy Emily (newcomer Zola Grimmer), as an outsider with only one real friend. During an ill-advised game of Truth or Dare, Emily is coaxed into spilling that, as a teenager, she hit and killed a child with her car. Later, another driving mishap results in the death of Charlie (Giselle Morison), without whom Emily doesn’t understand her place in the world. Her well-meaning father (Michael Tan) suggests she take a job at a camp out in the middle of nowhere, to distract from this insurmountable loss while, hopefully, also giving Emily surer footing in life.

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The establishment in question, simply called Camp, is run by the well-meaning but hyper religious Dan (Austyn Van de Kamp), but Emily’s attention is immediately drawn to a group of young women, and fellow camp leaders, who represent a sense of belonging that she hasn’t experienced up until this point. There’s her roommate, the bubbly Rosie (Cherry Moore), brooding Hope (Ella Reece), wild Nev (Lea Rose Sebastianis), ethereal Jo (Sophie Bawks-Smith) and gothy Clara (Alice Wordsworth), with whom Emily instantly feels some charged chemistry. Through raucous, campfire-adjacent parties filled with drink and drugs, and clandestine meetings in an attic whose production design is straight out of Charmed (1998-2006), Emily gradually taps into her inner power as both a woman and a sorceress.

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Camp is just under two hours long and really feels like it. Fast, who has a brief cameo early on, is credited as the screenwriter, director and co-editor alongside Taylor Nodrick. Although the scope of her vision is massive, tackling the editing herself (even in conjunction with another party) may have been to the filmmaker’s detriment. The pacing is off, with certain scenes dragging on interminably while others feel unnecessarily chopped before they really get going. The opening sequence, shot in moody monochrome for no discernible reason beyond aesthetics, doesn’t fit and goes on for way too long. There’s also a surplus of competing story elements, which leads to certain plot-points — most glaringly one involving a bad boy camp counselor — being unceremoniously dropped, while a disturbed emo teenager who gets her first period at camp feels underserved despite her ostensible connection to Emily.

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None of it really gels, suggesting Fast bit off a little more than she could chew. Honing her focus in on Emily’s burgeoning coming-of-age moment would have served both her protagonist and Camp itself better. As it stands, even the queer elements feel disappointingly undercooked. They could’ve been more sharply observed, and better signposted along the way, with the core relationships more finely drawn to give the performances a chance to breathe and feel more lived in. Viewers don’t learn all that much about any of the central group, including Emily and Clara, whose love story should ideally be front and center. Each actor struggles to stand out, with only Moore making an impression through a kind of hyper Baby Jennifer Tilly performance, while everybody else feels interchangeable. Grimmer and Wordsworth have a nice, easy rapport with each other, but they’ve got curiously little to do and their romance lacks sizzle.

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At least Camp looks gorgeous. Cinematographer Eily Sprungman captures the natural beauty of the woods with a palette comprised primarily of dark greens and greys, which make the pink of a hat worn by Emily’s father really pop during a pivotal conversation, while the inky blue sky looms ominously overhead, artistically dotted with stars. Those stars are often animated, in a magical-realist touch that solidifies the other-worldly elements of the story. Likewise, a sequence lit with deep red, and a shot of Emily sitting in the misty forest by herself in the dead of night, stand out too. Handheld camera visuals make certain scenes feel more intimate — the film actually could’ve benefited from more of it, to make audiences feel less at a remove from the action — while Emily’s initial trip up on the train is characterized by tactile furnishings like a sofa, bed, landline phone and desk, hinting that rail travel is far more luxurious up north. It’s all perfectly lovely, but despite Camp feeling nicely out of time, there just isn’t a lot there.

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Consider Camp’s ending, which obviously won’t be spoiled here. Although attention-grabbing in its intensity, it doesn’t feel earned or even like a logical closure point. It’s a fascinating note to end on that doesn’t speak to anything that’s come before, which is unfortunately emblematic of what’s wrong with Camp on a grander scale. The opening house party sequence doesn’t feed into Emily’s journey of self-discovery, and it’s a clunky way to establish that she’s someone who’s predisposed to darkness. Many of the most crucial details are told rather than dramatized, and what is communicated is often fuzzy, which is presumably purposeful, to generate a sense of mysticism. Unfortunately, the effect is dulling, not evocative. Notably, celebrated queer filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun gushed that Camp is a “tone poem,” which feels fitting since narratively it doesn’t quite hold one’s attention. Fast’s sophomore feature is truly lovely to look at, and it’s hardly a chore to sit through, but it does feel long. As such, while certainly imaginative and moody, Camp is ultimately much easier to admire than enjoy.

Joey Keogh (@JoeyLDG) is a writer from Dublin, Ireland with an unhealthy appetite for horror movies and Judge Judy. In stark contrast with every other Irish person ever, she’s straight edge. Hello to Jason Isaacs. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film reviews at Vague Visages.

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