REVIEW: CAMPING TRIP

• Director: Demian Fuica, Leonardo Fuica
• Writer: Leonardo Fuica
• Stars: Leonardo Fuica, Caitlin Cameron, Alex Gravenstein, Hannah Forest Briand

Review

Camping Trip is set right about the time of the worldwide peak of Covid-19. Discussions of lay offs, working from home and following the regulations. Amidst this going camping was a welcome escape for many people, somewhere you could be that was away from other people and also away from the confines of your home, sure it maybe against the regulations but once you aren’t allowed to do something, that is like a red rag to a bull.  Enzo (Fucia), Polly (Cameron), Coco (Briand), Ace (Gravenstein), all have the same idea and decide to go to a remote lake camping spot for a few days, once the four get there they let loose free from the prying eyes of the world and live it up for a while. In another part of the remote area, a worried looking man is carrying a bag full of money… Now this sounds like the setup for many a slasher film and you’d be correct but this film doesn’t quite go the way you think.

Directed by Demian and Leonardo Fuica, Camping Trip is directed well by these two, getting some arty shots in situations you don’t expect, like seeing a slow motion capture of the chaos of a certain moment in the film (no spoilers) but it looks good and is certainly something different for a film like this. Utilising the setting to their advantage, making it seem expansive yet when trouble arrives they manage to make it seem quite claustrophobic.

At nearly two hours this film is far too long. Trim about forty minutes off it and make it leaner and meaner and you might have had something a bit more palatable. With the COVID talk throughout the film, Leonardo Fuica maybe has something to say about how COVID managed to bring out the worst in people but its message is layered under some very stereotypical characters and dialogue. There is a moment where the four friends have an orgy, this dynamic (beyond it showing just how close they are) is never even broached again, besides a throw away dick joke. I did like that the story didn’t quite go where you thought it would and they did try and mash a couple of genres together, however the inordinate amount of time it took to get there killed off the surprise, the 3rd act happens so quickly and escalates so rapidly that it loses any effect.

The acting is earnest, every actor commits one hundred percent and the Fuica’s know how to frame shots and aren’t afraid to experiment (especially in their feature length debut) so you can’t fault the effort of everyone involved, the film just needed a ruthless editor both with the script and the film.

Camping Trip is available On Demand – USA/Canada/UK/Australia/NZ now

Ryan Morrissey-Smith | Twitter: @TigersMS78