By MICHAEL GINGOLD

Starring Jonathan Lipnicki, Michael Paré and Kelly Lynn Reiter
Written and directed by Thomas Walton
DeskPop Entertainment

CAMP PLEASANT LAKE opens with no less than a half-dozen animated production company logos, which begs the question of how a movie with so many backers can look so cheap, and have so little inspiration behind it. Indeed, a couple of those little tags demonstrate more imagination and creativity than this latest in the long line of low-rent slasher flicks.

Also before the movie proper begins, a text screen informs us, “They say you cross paths with at least 20 killers in your lifetime and don’t even know it…” If you’re a horror fan, you’ll definitely know you’ve crossed paths with at least 20 mad-killer movies like this one in your lifetime. That phrase actually has little to do with what follows, since CAMP PLEASANT LAKE’s murderer wears the telltale garb of all black, including hood, and a weird mask. There is a subtheme kinda sorta established about real and staged murder figuratively and literally bleeding into each other until those involved can’t tell the difference, but the movie doesn’t begin to explore it in any meaningful way.

In the movie, Camp Echo Lake was once called Camp Pleasant Lake until, of course, terrible stuff happened there 20 years ago. In a lengthy flashback that’s as awkwardly written and played as the rest of the movie, we follow the Meadows family as squabbling Mom and Dad take their kids Jasper and Echo to a weekend “Halloween camp” (?). They first stop at a rural diner and encounter the local weirdos; once Jasper and Echo have been dropped off at camp, Echo is bullied by the other kids and then lured away and kidnapped. Jasper subsequently disappeared and their parents were murdered, Echo’s spirit is now said to haunt the place, and there’s lots of dialogue informing and re-informing us about this during the film’s present-day portions.

These involve Echo Lake being set up as a “Camp of Terror” attraction by Rick and Darlene Rutherford (Michael Paré and Maritza Brikisak). They’re basically exploiting a real-life tragedy for money, though neither the characters nor the movie ever address this issue. Their patrons all look like they should be hanging out in a small-town sports bar, not taking part in a horror event; one of them is Jonah (Greg Tally), a reporter from HandleWithScare.com who keeps asking the Rutherfords for an interview, which gives him a distinguishing characteristic missing from all the other campers.  You can’t believe for a second that any of these people could afford the $10,000 the Rutherfords are charging for attendance, and it certainly doesn’t look like they spent more than a few bucks setting the place up. The whole situation puts one in mind of the recent Willy Wonka experience fiasco in Scotland, a story that was much more interesting than anything that happens here.

The idea is that the patrons will witness staged killings, and inevitably a real villain shows up to start bumping off both them and the staff, the latter of whom are connected to those awful past events. “What the fuck? I thought this shit was supposed to be fake!” says an early victim as he’s slain, and that’s as far as the real/fake bloodshed dichotomy is examined. Since CAMP PLEASANT LAKE can’t be bothered to create a protagonist to follow or identify with through the story, all that’s left is to watch the slaughter of the colorless, hapless characters, who are given nothing of consequence to say and are not terribly persuasive while saying it. Some of them are played by crowdfunders who paid for the privilege of dying onscreen, though it can’t be said they come off much worse than anyone else in CAMP PLEASANT LAKE, including familiar faces like Paré, THE NUN films’ Bonnie Aarons, WISHMASTER’s Andrew Divoff and perennial screen thug Robert LaSardo. Jonathan Lipnicki, the kid from JERRY MAGUIRE all grown up, is also here overacting up a storm, though writer/director Thomas Walton doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity to have him find out if a human head really weighs eight pounds.

Walton and his producers must have spent all their money on those genre names and their aerial photography; they’ve got a drone and they never let you forget it, including multiple shots of a speeding train that have nothing to do with anything else in the movie. There’s no visual invention or stylistic ambition to compensate for the microbudget look and slapdash plotting, which includes a revelation of the killer’s identity that’s obvious from about the 10-minute mark. Once the malefactor claims victims two separate times right in front of the other characters, and also takes out a bunch of other people in a very conspicuous (if poorly staged) way, and no one ever acknowledges, addresses or discusses these actual slayings, CAMP PLEASANT LAKE has descended from tedious and grating to downright insulting to the intelligence. Even the most die-hard of slasher fans are advised to take their vacation elsewhere.