“Camp” writer and director Avalon Fast has a wonderfully specific genre designated for her film: “A bunch of girls in the woods doing weird stuff.”
As if that doesn’t sell a ticket already, trust that Fast’s dreamy vision of friendship, queerness and the occult is a singular experience. “Camp,” in theaters now via Dark Sky Films, follows Emily (Zola Grimmer), who begins working as a counselor at a remote camp for kids dealing with different types of trauma, much like she is. Once there, Emily bonds with four other counselors — played by Alice Wordsworth, Cherry Moore, Lea Rose Sebastianis and Ella Reece — who begin to explore their witchy reality together.
To say more would be to spoil the soaring details contained within, the ideas of which Fast says have formed for years.
“It’s a blessing and a curse that the way I process my own feelings is to share them with the world,” Fast says. “As a kid making short films, it was more of a curiosity and creativity, whereas as I get older, it becomes more about sharing and being understood. I’ve found myself a little bit lost for words when I talk about ‘Camp,’ and maybe I’ve found that with everything that I’ve made. The best way that I’m able to share myself and to feel understood is to put it in film. Maybe that’s a little bit cliché, but that’s how it feels.”
“Camp” is Fast’s second feature film, following 2022’s “Honeycomb,” and made a splash at festivals, including winning the Next Wave award at last year’s Fantastic Fest.
For a film this bold, much of the emotional complexity rests on the shoulders of the cast. Fast says that, beyond casting, the actors were able to create real-life bonds to bring into the film.
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“Some of these actors were people that I’d known before, and some we cast a month out of shooting,” Fast says. “You’re crossing your fingers and hoping it works, and it did. I felt a bit removed from their thing, which I think was cool. The girls would all spend time together and I was really busy. But I remember watching them do their thing, even on our days off, and they operated as this unit. It felt like some kind of manifestation.”
Also central was the film’s ethereal and surreal camerawork, courtesy of DP Eily Sprungman. Fast says their shared history acted as a shorthand to evoke the visuals, many of which were drawn from the shooting location in the forest of Alberta, Canada.
“We grew up really close to each other and the place that we grew up in, the land that we grew up on and the sacredness of that and the magic that was there, was something really important to this story,” the Canadian filmmaker says. “It was a huge reason I wanted to work with her, because I knew she understood that. The largest inspiration comes from that understanding. And then, we referenced some shots directly from Renaissance art. There’s a big Ophelia reference in the film, and that was really fun. That was, ‘OK, we have the resources here to do bigger lighting setups. Let’s get creative with it.’ But I do think the really deep tone of ‘Camp’ comes from that understanding of home, where we came from and those environments.”
As for upcoming projects, Fast hopes to keep things spooky but branch off in different directions.
“The next project I want to make is about a boy,” Fast says. “I’ve been so focused on telling stories about girls, so I want to branch out a little bit and challenge myself. And then I feel like I’ve got like one more girl horror cult movie in me to round up this idea, this question that I’ve been asking. So a little bit of the same stuff, and then something completely different.”
Watch the “Camp” trailer below.