FINN WOLFHARD’S CHILDHOOD was largely spent around monsters and ghouls. Demogorgons, Pennywise, ghosts — he’s busted the lot. So, no surprise that his feature directorial debut, Hell Of A Summer, which he’s co-directed, co-written and stars in alongside Ghostbusters: Afterlife actor Billy Bryk, is a bloody affair — asummer-camp slasher with tongue poking firmly in cheek.
“The energy was crazy,” Wolfhard beams of the film’s Midnight Madness debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. With axes swinging, knives slathered in deadly peanut butter (it’s an allergy thing), and guitars used for more than just campfire singalongs, the body-count is high. “We had a lot of fun,” says Wolfhard of devising fresh kills. “It was years of going over what should be the ones to go in the film.”
Shining a new light on the summer-camp slasher genre:
From their first meeting — before being cast together on Ghostbusters: Afterlife — the pair found a shared wavelength (“It felt almost like a camp friendship,” Wolfhard explains), and soon began cooking up screenplays together. Bryk thought their first feature should be a slasher, something with “a little bit of gore in it”, that was “fun and spooky and funny”, while Wolfhard was particularly influenced by Scream (“It really changed everything for me”). “I was a big fan of Evil Dead II, Night Of The Living Dead — anything that Greg Nicotero did,” he adds. “My mom showed me this documentary called Nightmare Factory. It starts with
Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard; Co-writers, co-stars and co-directors Wolfhard and Bryk between takes.