Top 10 Best Summer Camp Horror Movies

Possession, serial killers, summer camp, oh my! This movie has it all. In 1978 Ziggy and her friends accidentally set in motion events hundreds of years in the making. With dynamic performances by Sadie Sink and Emily Rudd, this movie is a standout in the “Fear Street” trilogy. There’s truly something for everyone. If you’re a boomer you’ll get nostalgic for the ‘70s setting. If you’re a millennial, you’ll get nostalgic for the R. L. Stine of it. It also pays homage to classic slashers, making it an instant classic itself.

This one is kind of a crossover between “Cabin Fever” and a zombie flick at summer camp. Rather than your usual slasher, the counselors at this camp are afflicted with a deadly virus that turns its victims into zombie-like creatures. While putting a new spin on the summer camp horror flick, it also calls back to some classic horror movie tropes. How about no phone service: the line is sketchy and calls aren’t going to save anybody. Then there’s the no way out: they are all trapped in the setting. And, of course, there’s the bad thing that ends up inciting the entire plot, a character getting bitten by a seemingly rabid dog and then acts like it’s no biggie. Yeah, that bodes well.

Like many mystery whodunit flicks, but unlike quite a few slasher flicks, in this one you don’t know who the killer is from the get-go. If you’re watching a movie in the very famous slasher franchises, you are (well, usually, more on that later) in the know that the killer is, say, Michael, Freddy, or Jason. Here, at cheerleader camp, the suspense comes at the audience fast and furious. It’s kind of an Agatha Christie meets “Scream” vibe, a slasher murder mystery complete with nightmares, double crosses and lots of sexytime. So the fear not only comes from the deaths themselves, but from the uncertainty of who the bad guy is. The suspense… will kill you, are we right?

This one essentially combines several big horror movie themes. It’s a summer camp movie, an urban legend film, and a slasher flick all in one. While gathered around the campfire a group of campers and counselors are telling scary stories. Max tells the story of Madman Marz. An urban legend who supposedly killed his family with an ax. Unbeknownst to Max, by telling the story, he summons…. You guessed it, the Madman. Interestingly, though scarily, enough, even though the tale of the Madman is a fictional urban legend for the movie, it is based on the New York legend of the Cropsey, who turned out to be a terrible and terrifying real life killer.

This isn’t a typical summer camp film at all, and deals with very contemporary themes. It takes place at an LGBTQIA+ conversion camp. As monstrously scary as the killer roaming around in the woods — of course there’s a killer in the woods — are the tactics used by the camp in their “conversion” efforts. This includes subjecting campers to a variety of terrible tortuous treatments. And then, in addition to all that, is that aforementioned lurking masked killer, who is slowly killing off camp counselors and workers. That’s a lot of horror all-around.

We previously mentioned the Cropsey legend. This is another film loosely based on that legend that came out around the same time as our earlier selection, “Madman”. However, in this movie, the only connection to the original urban legend is the borrowed name of the villain and the fact that it takes place in New York. In this film, the caretaker of Camp Blackfoot is the victim of a vicious prank by the campers that leaves him horribly burned. He then takes out his revenge on future campers by going after them with pruning shears. The film is pretty brutal, and also has some seriously impressive visual effects work for the time.

This movie is really interesting. It combines various genres to create a musical slash comedy slash horror extravaganza — emphasis on the slash. The campers at a theater camp are hunted by the Opera Ghost, a not-so-thinly veiled reference to “The Phantom of the Opera”. As opening day approaches, the bodies pile up. And the show itself is an absolute bloodbath, but the audience thinks it is all a part of the show. The songs are funny and well-written, and the over-the-top premise expertly rides the line between believable absurdity and unbelieveable ridiculousness.

You want more trope-y than pretty much any other homage film? Or even more meta than “Scream”? Well, then you might want to grab some popcorn and enjoy a viewing of “The Final Girls.” The title itself basically lets you know that this film isn’t just leaning into the horror movie tropes, it’s turning them up to eleven. Max and her group of friends find themselves trapped in the slasher film that her mother starred in back in the ‘80s, “Camp Bloodbath”. To survive the film, the group will have to use their knowledge of horror movie rules and tropes to outsmart the masked baddie.

This one was commercially unsuccessful when it was first released, but it was definitely underrated. People seemed to think it ripped off “Friday the 13th”. But hey, how can you not pay homage to the classic? But even though this movie didn’t do well originally, it’s grown a significant cult following over the years. Admittedly, it is fairly similar in premise to “Friday the 13th”, but the deaths in this one are really creative, if equally brutal. And the mystery goes further than who the killer is. At first, the characters think they are just the victims of some crazy accidents. When they finally realize they are at the mercy of a killer, well…it’s scary.

Oh, did we mention “Friday the 13th”? You just can’t beat the classics. This is the film that basically jump-started the overall summer camp slasher craze. While all the sequels focus on Jason Voorhees exacting his revenge on the residents of Camp Crystal Lake, this first one is essentially also a murder mystery. As the counselors take advantage of some alone time on the lake before the campers arrive, they are slowly taken out by an unknown killer. The mystery part of this first installment adds an extra element to the scare factor of this one. You try to figure out who the killer could be as the suspects get added to the body count. Hey, maybe they should make some sequels!