To say that Sleepaway Camp is one of the best horror films ever made is not giving it enough credit. This would, without question, land in a Top 10 Films of the 1980’s list that I would create. In creating a film about adolescence and transsexuality, Robert Hiltzik perfectly realized this film to have its climax be both shocking and explicable. What is misinterpretted as campiness and quirks and 1980-isms proves to be a subtle build-up to what should have been obvious all along. In showing us just how obvious everything is, it becomes questionable. In Todd Haynes’ Safe, Julianna Moore plays a woman who is physically reacting to something, but we don’t know what. The film makes a judgement of what it could be, and halfway through, decides to follow this diagnosis. While it is the most logical conclusion to follow, the fact that it is being followed so closely and matter-of-factly makes the viewer question whether or not the filmmaker is just leading us further and further into a rabbit hole.
When the killer in Sleepaway Camp is revealed, it is one of the most expertly crafted scenes I have ever seen. The triumphant trumpets, the zooms in and out of the killer, the computer distortion, and the hybrid of human and animal wheezing came together to create the only cinematic sensation that has prompted me to physically back away from the screen, while at the same time try to look closer to understand just what exactly it is that I saw. This movie is perfect.
i have never seen the ending described as it actually happened with me or described as it should be described. brilliant.