Welp

It was supposed to be a renaissance of summer camp slashers in the tradition of Friday the 13th, where boy-scouts are threatened by a redneck murderer and his young masked apprentice. Well, the renaissance is not quite happening after all. In its craftsmanship, Welp fulfils the most strict criteria - such a nicely shot horror film is not something you see every day. A nicely captured beautiful forest setting, torch lights flashing among the trees, the small villain has an original mask and the home of the big villain is properly dark and dirty. But what is all that any good for when you have a slasher-fest without a single likeable character? We don’t get to know much about the villains, only that they have an ingenious underground shelter (how did it get there and what is it exactly?), that they have set bizarre traps in the woods (MacGyver would be green with envy), and that they have the entire area secured with sophisticated sensors that warn them when someone has entered it. It feels as if the main villain should have at least a doctorate in some technical field, even though he actually looks like a redneck who can’t count to five. The murders aren’t too shabby, but they are not many and certainly nothing special, either. And on top of that, the film never exploits the fact that most of the potential meat for the butcher counter are kids – endangered kids would arouse a lot more fear an tension in the viewer (especially if they were cute and nice, but that would probably be too much to ask already) – but they are never really in danger, the murderers are happy picking the adult camp supervisors and random passer-bys. Overall, it was passable horror fun, the ending is quite tense, but given the first-class technical quality, the film should have been better than just passable. The final twist also felt rather unconvincing, which served to reinforce my tentative impression. 6/10 (02.03.2015)