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Emily (Zola Grimmer) can’t help but be forthcoming when, in a juvenile game of truth or dare at a party, she’s asked to confess her biggest regret. She first opts for a harmless revelation, but when probed, she admits
to having taken someone’s life by accident. The night will end with another unexpected death under her watch. That’s the tragic setup to Avalon Fast’s “Camp,” a transfixing and tonally mischievous tale of sisterhood forged from trauma, grief and witchcraft. But before the explicitly otherworldly takes over, a despondent Emily arrives at a summer camp for troubled children where she’ll work as one of the counselors. It’s ironic that she’ll be providing support to younger kids in her state. The hope is that being among peers in darkness might bring out some light.
All the girls Emily meets at the camp have been attending for years, but they quickly embrace her, especially the vivacious Rosie (Cherry Moore) and Clara (Alice Wordsworth), the group’s alluring de facto leader. From there, “Camp” evokes “The Craft” with a dose of the esoteric, forest-fairy aesthetic that the musical act Florence + the Machine has for long procured as their signature — but in an indie film context that allows for evocative formal inventiveness. Fast cultivates eeriness, but also a sense of enigmatic wonder that, while decidedly unsubtle, is welcome: Shining stars that at times take over the frame and fantastically artificial backdrops place the narrative in an interstitial space between reality and an intoxicating, dream-like realm.
Grimmer’s expertly calibrated turn as Emily presents the character as eager for connection and at first comfortable enough to surrender to drunken nights and camaraderie without the need to divulge her secrets. Her unraveling, from sadness to despair to acceptance and ultimately empowerment, feels earned, as the pendulum of emotions swings from side to side on more than one occasion until she reaches a catharsis.
The kids at camp are little more than an afterthought, except for one, Eden (Izza Jarvis), whose instability triggers Emily. Otherwise, the girls’ lack of concern for what should be their priority is compelling: They’re here to work on themselves through, as we later discover, self-determining sorcery but also to indulge in the carelessness of youth.
Fast makes no concessions to the male characters, committing fully to an appreciation of supportive girlhood, at the expense of the other gender. Emily questions such disregard for men, but eventually accepts it as part of the pact to prioritize herself and her newfound sorority. It’s a fitting transaction that feeds into the playful malevolence of their practice. Still, Emily’s strongest bond is with her father, whom she calls repeatedly and to whom she speaks honestly about her struggles, even if he can’t fully understand her pain.
Dan (Austyn Van de Kamp), the God-fearing leader of the operation, loses his virginity to Nev (Lea Rose Sebastianis), another of the girls, during a drunken night. His deflowering serves as sacrifice for the feminine force that grants these young women powers. Later, another nerdy boy will fall prey to their antics, yet there’s no gruesome violence on sight, only a melancholic and ethereal exorcizing of the demons that plague Emily’s heart. Few details are ever shared about what the other girls have endured. It’s as if the longer they spend at camp, the more distant those sorrows become.
One could indeed refer to what Emily and her friends are doing as “practical magic,” since the consequence of their dabbling with the occult is the rebuilding of their self-esteem and a reframing of how they understand the experiences that have shaped them. Thankfully, however, Fast doesn’t reach this in a straightforward, conventional manner. Instead, the prolific, up-and-coming filmmaker luxuriates in dances under the moonlight, fiery rituals and glimpses of memory, conceived with an ethereal quality in collaboration with cinematographer Eily Sprungman.
Though in a far more delicate register, “Camp” does exist in a similar space as Jane Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” — not only because of their shared setting, but because they cleverly usurp the modes and tropes of horror and the supernatural to dissect humanistic concerns rather than solely exploiting them for gory diversion. And they do so with a gendered consciousness that’s imperative for the impact of their thematic focus.
With “Camp,” there’s a clarity of emotion if not of the mechanisms behind the witchcraft. It’s the mood that matters, an atmosphere of unpredictability and anticipation, but not exactly of danger — like listening to a slightly terrifying tale by the campfire with an open sky above in the company of people you are certain care about you. Once Emily commits to stepping away from what tethered her to her past, a new freedom, and maybe new fears, emerge. She’s no longer swallowed by tragedy. A new loving force holds her up.
