10 Best Summer Camp Horror Movies

If you had to make a quick list of locations that classic horror movies most often use, the likelihood is that Summer Camps would make it onto that list.

It’s something about their promise of sun-soaked fun and treasured childhood memories that makes summer camps the perfect settings for some very unpleasant events.

The juxtaposition of the naivety and safety of childhood against the gore and horror of the slasher sub-genre makes this trope such a winner as well.

Whether it’s the campers themselves or the sleazy counsellors being terrorised, we just love to see a bit of murder happening amongst the wholesome wooden cabins and sparkling lakes.

Sadly, if you browse through a compilation of every summer camp film, you will be met with an abundance of trash - but amongst the mess you may find a few gems.

In this list we’ll take a look at some of the better offerings: from your well-known classics through to some lesser-known pieces.

We’re not talking incredible, mind-bending horror masterpieces here, but under the ‘summer camp horror’ umbrella there are still a few flicks that promise a fun watching experience in spite of their own flamboyance - and sometimes because of it!

As is tradition with teen slashers, this film opens in an 80s' summer camp with two horny campers sneaking away into the bushes, only to be murdered for their trouble. Just to mix things up, however, we are then quickly hit with a huge time-jump twenty-four years into the future.

Now in an early 2000s setting (and oh man is it dated massively by the characters' terrible noughties outfits), we see four friends driving through the same area before breaking down as the night descends on them. They are taken into the nearby Camp Hiawatha where everything appears to be firmly stuck in the 80s, and they soon discover that the whole place is stuck in a time loop around a horrific night-long massacre.

Faced with not only surviving the night but also finding a way to escape the loop, the quartet must find a way to break the cycle before they each take their place in the murderous repetition.

Everyone loves a time-loop, and when you add a bit of slasher fun and a classic summer camp setting into the equation you’ve got the perfect easy-watching horror experience.