Forgotten Lake
It’s almost expected that the camp counsellors will tell spooky stories over the campfire to scare their teenage charges, a rite of passage of the summer camp experience which Paul and Annie are only too happy to indulge, the difference being that their spooky story of Forgotten Lake Summer Camp actually happened.
Already passed into the pantheon of local legends even though it was only ten years ago, he was known as the Blueberry Boy, nine years old and never seen again after he went foraging for berries in the local forest, his body never found, presumed eaten by a bear or a wolf, or perhaps some evil force which still haunts the trees…
Written, directed and shot by Astron-6’s Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy, known for Father’s Day and The Editor, they return to the short form horror comedy with which they first established themselves with a trip to the cabins on the shore of Forgotten Lake, reuniting with The Void’s Steven Kostanski who is in charge of the special makeup effects.
Starring Brooks and Samantha Hill as Paul and Annie with Curtis Howson as the masked Blueberry Boy, returned from the forest and seeking a second serving, Forgotten Lake is most obviously inspired by the clear waters of Friday the 13th whose ripples have already reached as far as Creepshow 2 and V/H/S/85, as well as more directly in fan film homages such as the Never Hike Alone sequence.
Shifting from teasing from to terror, Paul previously dismissive of Annie’s premonitions which she has channelled into her abstract watercolour portraits until she unravels into hysteria, there is blood and blueberry pie though no plates or cutlery, just chainsaws and axes, but the question lingers of why any responsible camp counsellor should have a bottle of poison on their person.
Brooks and Hill appropriately over the top in their performances, the supporting cast required to do little other than run, scream and die, Forgotten Lake is perhaps not as clever and subversive as Astron-6’s 2018 cannibal cowboy short Chowboys: An American Folktale but like Lake and Wood’s blueberry ale it provides precisely what is promised by the can, the satisfaction of something sharp and wet.
Forgotten Lake is currently available on Vimeo
