Sleepaway Camp

What a fucking disappointment.  I've heard a LOT about this movie.  I had heard it would "blow my mind" and had "awesome gender bending".  But I don't do well with transphobia, and that's what I saw here.  In fact, here's a phenomenal article on transphobia in horror.  Go read it.  This review is optional, reading that article is mandatory.

 This is Angela and her cousin Ricky.  She's severely disturbed, having seen her parents die in a boating accident.  Ricky is highly protective (with good reason) of his cousin.  They're going to camp.

They have a creepy guardian who constantly praises herself for being "so nice" for doing things like packing lunch for the children she is presumably parenting.  

Angela doesn't speak and is harassed by everyone except a young love interest named Paul.  Their courtship is awkward, and involves a scene where he tries to take her top off at the beach and she becomes very upset.  That made me pretty uncomfortable.

Oh, and people are dying!  I'm being flip about the campiness in this movie for a reason which will become obvious in a minute.  Above we have the camp cook, a pedophile who makes lewd comments about the young women who come into camp and who attacks Angela (and seems like he does that sort of thing a lot).  He dies literally right after attacking her.  And don't get me wrong, I definitely cheered.

But, like so many revenge films, we hit a problem.  You see, EVERYONE who is mean to Angela dies immediately afterwards.  It's not a subtle movie.  There's some question about whether the killer is Angela or Ricky, but I was always pretty sure it wasn't Ricky.  Angela's the disturbed, tormented one after all.  And this would be okay, if all the people she killed seemed to "deserve it" (in the horror movie sense of course, I don't support the death penalty). 

This is the scene where the movie gets really awful.  You see, the murders get more and more horrific and are for more and more petty offenses.  A girl kisses Paul (the love interest), calls Angela a prude and then throws her into a lake.  Absolutely dreadful bullying, yes.  But she's raped to death with a curling iron.  And that's where the murders become indefensible, getting rid of any concept of mercy for the killer (who we've all figured out is Angela).

So here's the problem.  The movie isn't over.  We know who the killer is.  There is no one running from the killer we're rooting for.  And we know there's no defending what she did.  So what on earth is the climax?  What's the reveal?

Angela has killed Paul, and is standing naked making a gutteral screaming noise on the beach.  Also she has a penis.  The big reveal is that Martha (the creepy caretaker from the beginning) was demented and forced a boy to live as his dead sister and that's what made him crazy.  The "most shocking ending in horror history" is not who the killer is, it's that the killer has a penis.  Also did I mention Peter/Angela had gay dads?  We're not meant to sympathise with this child or condone the killings.  We're meant to be horrified by the fact that who was presented as a girl has a penis.

This fucking movie, man.  After YEARS of hype this is what I get.  Now, if you didn't already, go read that article on why this is fucked up and why specifically it is transphobic (since the main character was forced to be a girl against his will he is not actually transgender).