Final Summer (2023) - Was it meant to be this understated?

I'm no film historian, but I can roughly chart the style of the horror (slasher) movie genre throughout the last fifty years.  In the seventies they were gritty and dark, being labelled 'video nasties.' Then the eighties made them mainstream and each one tried to 'one up' its competition.  In some ways, the nineties were the final incarnation of the genre where films like 'Scream' parodied the original cliches associated with the genre.  Now, some twenty years later, with everything being already done, what's left to do?

In 'Final Summer's' case, the answer is: go back to the beginning.

I'm not sure whether I like the fact that, despite being made in modern day, it tries it's best to emulate the slasher movies of the eighties (even though it's set, for the most part, in 1991).  Doing this seems to have its pros and cons.  For a start, the film-makers have managed to make an entry into the genre which if you shot it through a wormhole back to the eighties then they'd probably think it was made then.  However, despite having over thirty years advantage on the genre, it would still be forgotten with all the others that tried to emulate the success of the 'greats' such as 'Friday 13th' and ultimately failed.

Yes, it's a slasher film.  Yes, it's stripped down to the bare bones of what the genre was like back in the eighties.  And, yes - sadly - it could get lost among the masses of similar movies made any time from the seventies to last week.  It's about kids at a summer camp being stalked by a masked killer in the woods.  All the cliches are there such as the overs3xed teens, incompetent police officers and stumbling through the woods when you could just run away.

Despite the film-makers intention being to try and make something that fitted more in back then than now, I think they've succeeded a little too well.  Back in the eighties films like this didn't have much of a budget.  And neither does this one.  This means that it doesn't have the money for anything from an original mask for the killer (looked more like one of the ones from 'Halloween III: Season of the Witch' - and we all know how highly regarded that one is thought of!).  But, more disappointingly, there's not much in the way of inventive kills or gore, let alone any characters you'll root for, let alone remember.

If this was the first of its kind ever made it would probably be remembered in the same league as 'Texas Chainsaw' and so on, but it's not.  It's a love letter to a time where movies didn't have the money to do much other than run through dark woods.  If you want to see that, it's not a terrible entry - it's just nothing we haven't already seen in the genre for the last fifty years.

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights