The Worst Horror Movie - with the Creepiest Horror Movie Ending

The horror genre is, unsurprisingly, loaded with scary endings. You have Jack Torrance staring into the camera through an impossible old photograph in The Shining, the heartbreaking murder at the break of dawn in Night of the Living Dead, and the iconic final jump scare of Carrie all helping to cement the legacies of the films they come from.

However, there are a lot of great movies with endings that just kind of happen - or even worse, decent films that completely fail to stick the landing. This, like the former category, is highly subjective, but movies like Scream 3, Halloween Ends, and The Village have all been subject to criticism at one point or another largely for how they handled their disappointing conclusions.

The film I'm talking about today is almost the exact opposite of this phenomenon. Somehow, despite having one of the most unintentionally funny, technically poor, and narratively incoherent buildups in horror history, it also has an ending that scared me worse than any movie in recent memory. This legendary picture is none other than Robert Hiltzik's masterpiece Sleepaway Camp, a film that needs to be seen to be believed.

If you've heard of Sleepaway Camp before, you'll know exactly where I'm going with this, and I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments when you've read mine. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, please read on - or watch the movie for yourself (unsurprisingly, it's not hard to find for free).

The Story

Until you get to the conclusion, the story beats of Sleepaway Camp aren't too out there. After experiencing a sailing accident as a kid that killed her father and brother, the mostly mute and traumatised Angela Baker lives with her aunt and her profane cousin Ricky. Both have been sent to camp for the summer, and the kids and counsellors alike start bullying Angela, with Ricky and his friend Paul having to leap to her defence - meanwhile, a string of creative murders, all shot obscuring the identity of the killer, take place in the background, while seedy camp owner Mel attempts a cover up.

Also worth noting that Felissa Rose as Angela is an absolute cutie pie

This is by far the least compelling part of the film, so let's move onto:

The Silliness

For the most part, Sleepaway Camp is a highly generic slasher movie with amateur production values - fortunately, it also has one of the most insane scripts ever put to screen. Beyond the ending, it helps its reputation that Sleepaway Camp is one of the most perennially quotable films of the 80s, owed in part to the bizarre deliveries these lines are given by the stars of the movie. Just a few of the best include, in no particular order:

• ‘She’s a real carpenter's dream! Flat as a board and needs a SCREW!'
• ‘Eat shit and die, Ricky!’ 'Eat shit and live, Bill.’
• ‘Yo Angela! Why are you so fucked up?’

Many more could be listed, but they'd be nothing without the incredible deliveries of the actors behind them. The clothes in the movie also fall into this category of delightful camp - between Judy's pink shirt emblazoned with her own name to some of the tiniest outfits I've ever seen on a male actor onscreen, there's a lot of Halloween costume potential here.

Much can be learned about male fashion from this movie

Even the kills, though generally well executed (pardon the pun), have some absurd and elaborate premises behind them, from shaking a wasps' nest into a toilet cubicle after locking the victim inside or stabbing someone implausibly through a shower wall to inserting a curling iron where one should never insert a curling iron. Rarely do these moments scare; instead, they serve as a demonstrator of some decent special effects makeup, and usually as another opportunity for a laugh. I could go on about more moments like this - including one where the (not) killer is accidentally revealed thanks to the magic of high definition - but it's time for us to move on to:

The Scariness

To be fair to Sleepaway Camp, it does have some moments early on that are, if not outright scary, at least unsettling or squirmy. The aforementioned curling iron kill is the most infamous in the movie for good reason, and Aunt Martha's appearance in the second scene of the movie is fantastically bizarre in a way that greatly enhances what's to come.

Spoiling the ending of the movie? No, that won't do at all…

But if anything, I think what makes the ending to Sleepaway Camp so damn frightening is that you genuinely don't believe the film has the capability to scare you - it's the cinematic equivalent of a lousy Halloween haunted house in a small town that inexplicably becomes Exorcist levels of frightening in it's final room. 

After a series of murders and a decreasing number of suspects, it's eventually revealed that - surprise - Angela Baker is the killer. But this isn't the only reveal: the real Angela was killed in the boating accident that kicked off the movie, and odd Aunt Martha raised her brother as a girl to replace her. This forced gender swap, and presumably years of Martha as her caregiver, appears to have done a number on poor Angela's psyche, leading her to butcher her way through increasingly less justified murders at the camp, culminating in the decapitation of her love interest Paul. But these details are basically unimportant; it's their presentation that renders the moment so horrifying.

Angela stands alone in the darkness, Paul's body at her feet, completely naked with her mouth almost impossibly wide open. Featuring an uncanny plaster mask of a teenage girl with her mouth agape on an adult man's body, animalistic growls and over the top strings making up the soundscape, a slow pullback of the camera with minimal lighting, and the eventual colouring into a sickly green, every component of the scene's creation feels hand picked to make you feel that something is deeply, deeply wrong. Not since I saw the  'Blink’ episode of Doctor Who as a child had I felt so unsafe watching a film - fight or flight had been fully invoked, just by the right combo of sounds and images on a 40 inch screen in my living room.

Searching for this image was genuinely a test of my bravery even now

It's important to note when discussing this film, particularly its ending, the problematic trope of a trans serial killer. This has lead to the film becoming a popular object of study in queer horror circles, being commented upon by many trans critics, some who are able to enjoy the film and others who find it understandably offensive. For instance, while Willow Maclay has  derided it as an insidious example of transmisogyny, Kat Blaque argues that even with its problematic centre, it can still be studied as a relic and enjoyed as a fun slasher.

From my position as a cis woman, I can't strongly argue that there's nothing in this analysis, but I can definitively say one thing: if this reveal were shot, scored, dressed and acted in exactly the same way but with an AFAB body at it's centre, I doubt I'd find it any less terrifying. As James A. Janisse of Dead Meat breaks down in his Kill Count for the movie, it's a perfect storm of filmmaking choices, and I don't think it's reliant on the shock of a gender nonconforming character for its horror (intentionally or otherwise). 

So…should you watch it?

Between some incredibly offputting characters (the pedophilic chef fortunately gets taken out early on) and the questionable nature of its ending, it's hard for me to recommend Sleepaway Camp as a great piece of art, but I also don't think I'd want to change anything about it. If you enjoy total schlock and/or want to be genuinely unsettled by an ending that will burn its way into your brain forever, then I can't recommend it highly enough.

Get ready to see this when you shut your eyes at night!

Personally, I watch Sleepaway Camp pretty much every Halloween, often with a new friend who hasn't heard of it and has no clue what horrors lay within (though I give them some fair warning - I'm not a total monster).