Camp Night
By nature, Rodney and his friends are city folk, he recently promoted to department supervisor for his hard work which has seen record gains for his Chicago firm, invited by colleague Josh to join his annual camping trip to celebrate, the offer extended to Rodney’s girlfriend Sabrina, friend Cam and his baby sister Toy and their friend Fats, setting off early the following morning.
Fats concerned about the lack of suitable snacks in the car, happenstance turns to coincidence turns to enemy action as they find the car which aggressively pushed past them on a rural road in the diner when they stop for lunch, the parking lot confrontation with the driver followed by waitress Scarlett freaking out when they state their destination, their arrival revealing the hostile driver already there ahead of them, Josh’s racist brother Todd.
Camp Night the debut of director Isaiah Russell from a script written by Darrell Murray Jr who has a brief appearance as a man whose lack of sports skill matches his inability to look for traffic when crossing a road, they are also co-editors alongside Paris Simon Jr, the trio also holding between them roles as colourists, effects artists, camera operators, production designers, script supervisors, props and locations managers and intimacy coordinator.
The film taking over an hour to arrive at Big Bear Woods after porch snacks the night before and the stop at Tasty World for soda, burgers and buffalo wings where waitress Scarlett (Marlissa Starling) acts as harbinger, identifying the Tree of Life pendant worn by Toy (Heaven Williams) as a charm to protect her from the curse of the wachawi, sorcerers of her ancestral land Nairobi, her great-grandmother was lynched as a witch doctor in 1942 in the forest they now approach.
That ghastly campfire tale recounted with glee by Todd (Eric Jacobsen), Rodney (Lonnie Davis) realising the trip is a setup planned by Josh (Gavin Zbynski), the pieces are in place for a folk horror of racial generational trauma and retribution were it not that Camp Night is at every turn horrifically scripted and acted, fully two thirds of it vacuous chat of bitches and hoes on the tedious road to “hillbilly heaven” Slaughterville, detouring around the cultural wells of Peele but hitting every Wiseau pothole.
The soundtrack curated by Murray at times mercifully drowning out dialogue more concerned with calories consumed by Fats (Lawrence Mead) than anything resembling adult conversation, Camp Night is low on atmosphere and indifferent to continuity, Tyra Renee posing differently in each take of her opening scene as Sabrina but putting in more effort than those around her, the fight akin to a kindergarten brawl as the friends face off against the white boys and the ghost of Annie Mae Moore (Anniah Davis), hunting her descendants to hit them with her stick.
Camp Night will be available on digital download from Tuesday 13th October
