After ‘Camp Blood: First Slaughter’ I didnt think it was possible for the ‘Camp Blood’ franchise to really sink much lower. I mean…’First Slaughter’ was and is widely considered to be one of Mark Polonia’s worst movies…and when your the WORST MOVIE that MARK POLONIA ever made…well there isnt really anywhere else for you to go but up honestly.

And yet! Dustin Ferguson has legitimately pulled a ‘Hold my Beer’ here with ‘Camp Blood 4’ a film that quite literally is BARELY a film.

Heres the full breakdown of the whole movie, I cant really spoil anything, because there IS nothing to spoil:

*Its established in the first 5 minutes that the film takes place 3 years after ‘Camp Blood First slaughter’ and we open with a couple going into the woods, having sex and get murdered.

*from minutes 7 to 31 we then follow ‘Raven’ a young woman, as she wakes up, cleans herself up, gets dressed, watches the news and hears about the grizzly murders that took place the night before, feeds her cat, pops a shirt on and walks to a local record store/thrift store/bar. she goes through the merch, walks home and takes a phone call from her boyfriend kyle who asks if shes ready for the ‘concert tonight’. while two other girls in a different house put makeup on, walk to Ravens house, head inside and make a pot of coffee.

We then see a man put a clown mask on and pace around a shed before going for an extended walk in the woods. our gang get into a car and drive to a local gas station and its here…THIRTY ONE MINUTES into this 71 minute feature that the ACTUAL plot of the movie is mentioned. This gang of 30 somethings playing teens are going to a rock concert a couple of towns over, and they plan to stay overnight at ‘Camp Blood’ to save them having to drive all day on the day of the concert. The other customers at the gas station try to warn them about ‘Camp Blood’ but the gang dismiss them as weirdos, pay for their stuff and get back on the road.

Minutes 32 to 45 feature a montage of the clown killer wandering around in a concrete shed, and footage of the gang in the car, on the road talking about the legend of ‘camp blood’ while stock footage from ‘Camp Blood 3-2’ plays in the background, before they arrive at the camp at the 45 minute mark, walk in the woods for 3-5 minutes and FIFTY FOUR MINUTES into this 71 minute feature, our group have a tent set up in the woods.

we then have 10 minutes in which they gather around a campfire and learn about the ‘Camp Blood Clown Killer’s origin (which is now COMPLETELY different from the last 2 origin stories made for him) the gang smoke some weed, a couple go off to make out and have sex. and then at the hour mark, it suddenly jump cuts and two of the women have been pulled away to the concrete shed, ones dead, and one gets called a ‘slut’ by the clown killer, who then murders her to.

Bearing in mind, there is now only 5 or so minutes left of the movie because this film has 6-7 minutes worth of end credits. Our clown killer does another walking montage, kills one of the gang when he goes to take a leak, kills another when he goes out looking for the guy who went to take a leak, kills the GIRLFRIEND of the guy who went to take a leak leaving 2 girls running in the woods for 2 minutes before they reveal who the killer is, and its someone who ‘Raven’ knows, but who wasnt even really in the movie. the film then ends on a ‘To Be Continued’ slide.

the AUDACITY of this film to do that. given that AT LEAST 50 minutes of this 71 minute film is extended walking shots or stock footage. is frankly brain addling…I dont really know how to explain it much better than that. when the ‘To Be Continued’ slide popped up, I genuinely thought they were joking. But they’re not.

The scripts absolutely atrocious. they say that, on average 1 page of a script should equal roughly 1 minute of screentime. if this was the case ‘Camp Blood 4’ had a 71 page script with at LEAST 60 of those pages being blank. I cannot stress enough how LITTLE happens in this movie. its astonishing to me to even consider that they charged money for this release given how little ACTUALLY happens.

the characters are all super non descript, they dont have any kind of unique personality traits or identifiers, I only know Raven because they write her name in big letters on a note to her in the opening of the film. The dialogue is awful, the pacing is quite possibly the worst i’ve ever seen in a movie, the tone is seemingly set to ‘air conditioner’.

I cant comment on the directional style of this film, because despite watching this on a crisp 1080p bluray copy, the decision has seemingly been made to ‘black crush’ the entire movie, and blow out all the highlights…as a stylistic choice. What this basically means is that any scene set during the day, the natural light is basically just pure white…it looks like someones dropped a nuke on screen its blinding white light with only items in the immediate forefront visible and anything with a darker tone being crushed to the point it just looks pitch black.

When they shoot at night, because they’ve ‘black crushed’ the whole movie. your literally just watching a black screen with an occasional flicker of movement whenever someone wearing white runs past the screen, because any colour darker than white is basically black because of the stylistic choices.

the handful of scenes that are viewable, are basic. very VERY basic. rudamentary scenes, lots of shakey cam footage, levelled off flat profile mid and wide shots. whenever they cut to the stock footage from ‘Camp Blood: First Slaughter’ they’ve put a SUPER ugly ‘film effect’ style filter over the footage, presumably to differentiate it from this movie…but it makes no difference because…being honest, if your more than 3 films into the ‘Camp Blood’ franchise, your pretty well acquainted with them.

the cine is awful, its either locked off tripod shots that do NOT push the boundaries in any way shape or form (my kingdom for a high or low angle shot) OR! its hand held shakey has hell footage that, when combined with the black crushing, is basically unwatchable. Composition of shots is dire, they didnt bother getting much in the way of B-roll, its long, cross faded shots of people walking for about 55 minutes. And its awfully edited footage of people walking at that.

The performances are almost non existent. Because the microphone quality on the shoot was so dire, most of the film is dubbed over with royalty free stock music that is just…THE most generic sounding music i’ve ever heard in my life. When the cast DO have lines if they arnt talking directly into the camera, its muffled and obscured making it VERY hard to figure out what they’re actually saying.

The physical performances are stiff, pretty lifeless, they dont have much in the way of animation or life behind the eyes. and I damn near bust a gut laughing when Raven finds out who the killer is, and her reaction to this killer (who she knows) butchering half a dozen of her best and closest friends…is the same reaction I give when my local pizza place stiffs me on the free soda promotion…its not a measured response is what im getting at.

‘Camp Blood 4’ Makes Ray Dennis Stecklers Porn era look like Martin Scorsese in his prime. a DIABOLICAL work, the fact Sterling Entertainment looked at this and gave it the nod through to sell for fulll retail price is the only real fright you’ll find in this thing.

TRUELY a poor experience on every single level. this isnt even entertainingly bad, its cheap, low effort, low/no gain cinema. and Im still kind of stunned it ever left Sterling Entertainments hard drives.

AVOID.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/camp-blood-4/