Finn Wolfhard is trading interdimensional travel and demogorgons for more traditional horror tropes, notably a summer camp terrorized by a masked killer. Hell of a Summer marks Wolfhard's feature directorial debut alongside frequent collaborator and fellow actor Billy Bryk. Neon is distributing the campy slasher flick this April. On Wednesday, the distributor shared the official red-band trailer and teaser poster.
Along with co-directing and co-writing the movie with Bryk, both stars also act in the ensemble film that features Fred Hechinger, Abby Quinn, D'Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Pardis Saremi, Rosebud Baker, and Adam Pally.
Hechinger plays 24-year-old Jason, a long-time attendee-turned-camp-counselor at his beloved Camp Pineway. The trailer paints Jason as an outcast who can't seem to let go of his best years at camp, with his mother chastising him for continuing to attend and the younger teen counselors ignoring him in favor of partying and sex. But Jason has much bigger problems ahead of him than being ostracized by teenagers, namely a killer sporting a devil mask stalking the campground and "brutally picking counselors off one by one."
The first trailer paints Hell of a Summer as a very modern slasher with plenty of cheeky nods to classic horror movie tropes and popular summer slashers like Friday the 13th, hence the main character being named Jason, an obvious nod to our favorite hockey mask-wearing killer.
Dialogue and character-wise, Hell of a Summer seems to share DNA with Bodies Bodies Bodies, another timely slasher flick fluent in the language of Gen Z.
Wolfhard is no stranger to the horror genre, having grown up on the massively successful Netflix series Stranger Things (the final season of which is set to release sometime later this year) and starring in It: Chapter One. He and Byrk have worked together on several projects, including Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Wolfhard's short film Night Shifts. Wolfhard and Byrk produced Hell of a Summer alongside Hechinger, Michael Castigan, Jason Bateman, and Jay Van Hoy.
Avid horror fans might also recognize Hechinger as the character Simon in Netflix's Fear Street trilogy, but he had a breakout year in 2024, having starred in several notable films like Nickel Boys, Gladiator II, Kraven the Hunter, and Thelma.
As you can see by the pull quote on the above poster, Hell of a Summer is already receiving high praise from critics, with Collider going so far as to call it "one of the most entertaining" slasher films of the decade.
Hell of a Summer will begin playing in theaters on April 18.