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“Everything in life is temporary. Only thing that’s forever is death.”

Author: Sergio Gomez

Drunk teenagers. Woods. Killer cannibal. Bad juju. That’s the plot summary for Camp Slaughter.

As the name implies, Camp Slaughter is all about the classic slasher. There’s a killer who by day seems like a nice, simple guy, but guess what, he has a different personality at night, when he takes on the mantle of Varias Caras, hefts ye olde machete, and finds some people to eat and faces to wear.

Varias Caras himself is an amalgamation of everything that has gone before him. We’ve got some Psycho (mother fixation anyone), some Jason (camp compound, woodsy killing grounds, and the dude is basically unkillable), some Leatherface/Ed Gein (Varias Caras loves himself a good face mask – made out of other people’s faces, of course), and some stereotypical creepy-guy-in-the-woods cannibalism thrown into the mix. The problem is, it’s soooo obvious that Camp Slaughter is just an amalgamation of the horror classics that came before it. It’s so obvious, that’s its borderline straight stealing, and we soon drift away from the story. Nothing new here. As a matter of fact, we’ve all seen this somewhere else, better done, back when there weren’t 1,000+ remakes and fanfics.

Image by PixelLabs from Pixabay

Hopping over to the victims: I’ll admit the bickering couple in the first chapter had me going. I kind of cared about them and was looking forward to getting into their marriage issues and disconnect as the creepy killer hove into view. The problem is, he appeared too quickly, and before the chapter was out, one character was dinner and the other a future victim who would spend most of the rest of the book chained and tortured in Varias Cara’s hillbilly torture shed, mostly out of sight. Sigh.

The rest of the characters are impossible to truly separate. I can’t remember their names, and honestly, I can’t be bothered googling it or opening my Kindle to find them out. Not even for you dear reader. They’re all the usual stereotype / future killer bait anyway. We’ve got the druggie dude. The preppy/I’m better than you dude. One or two hot chicks. The nerdy kid. The misunderstood guy who waits too long to get the girl. And then one final girl who is, admittedly, a little bit interesting. She is haunted by her dead sister, by the fact that she did nothing to save her sister and said sister’s ghost does make an appearance. She had me somewhat interested.

Then, we have two investigators who have strong armed their way into the woods, looking for the story of the local cannibal (because everyone totally knows he’s there, but no one ever warns the dumb summer people.) Said investigators are also just there to get killed and are way out of their depth. But they give it the old shaky cam try, and that’s why they are there.

We get the usual chase and fight scenes. The killer goes down in a hail of bullets, only to rise again. There is some supernatural weird stuff about ghosts being stuck on these grounds, but that (one original-ish) idea is never pursued further, and then we have our battered survivors, bloodied and hurt sailing off into the sunset. Finally, there is a hint that Varias Caras is, of course, not dead but will be back for endless sequels.

Sorry y’all, this has been better done in the movies. Now, I’m not a fan of slashers (my book club chose this one), but as far as slashers go, this one is so busy standing on the shoulders of giants that it forgets to be anything more than mid-grade fan fiction. Not recommended.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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