They should’ve stayed in Detroit…where it’s safe!

By Jason Hink

Hey, eighties kids, remember the first time you saw Friday the 13th and it forced you to seek out more horror movies? And not just any horror movies…I’m talking about the going-out-and-getting-lost-in-the-woods-and-getting-picked-off-one-by-one kinds of horror movies. Of course you remember it. The Friday the 13th franchise is over 40 years old. They even make Friday the 13th homages now. Like New Wave music, these movies technically never went away, but modern moviemakers nostalgic for the best era of these films are attempting the next best thing: setting their lost-in-the-woods slasher in the 1980s.

It’s October, and you know what that means: fall is in full swing, pumpkin spice lattes are back on the menu at Human Bean, and Halloween is on everyone’s mind with the holiday pulling up the rear on the 31st (is it reeeally a holiday? I never get off work for it). With that spirit in mind, Mill Creek Entertainment has released on Blu-ray the 2022 lost-in-the-woods indie slasher Deer Camp ’86, a throwback horror entry from The Rhino, Panoramic Pictures, and Filmfrog, starring Noah LaLonde, Jay J. Bidwell, Brian Michael Raetz, Arthur Cartwright, Josh Dominguez and David Lautman, along with Tina Manera (Joy) and Paul Wilson.

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I remember fondly my friends and family who lived by the the thrill of the hunt. Those cool-weather seasons when they dug out their expensive camouflage hunting gear and firearms and tents and propane stoves and all manner of rugged accessories. Seeing it come together was awesome, and….I never joined in. I’m just not a hunter, not an outdoorsman. Nothing against it, of course; I’m just more of an urban dweller and hunting always felt like…work (I did enjoy the few outings with my dad when I was a kid…in the eighties).

On many occasions, my friends and I hit the town to check out the scene, visiting all the bars and clubs we could, listening to the new club tracks the DJs were spinning in our favorite places, and getting drunk. Getting really drunk. I’m talking…well, you know, that drunk. The kind where you can’t move until at least afternoon or risk throwing up. The kind of outings that make you say, “I’m never drinking again,” the next day. It was days like these when some of my best friends would pass out at 4 a.m. and, amazingly, wake up an hour later, gather up their hunting gear, and answer the door when another friend knocked ready to make the hours-long trek to wherever the hell they were going hoping to land that elk or deer or grouse or turkey. (“It’s OK, I’ll sleep in the truck,” they’d say.) The young adults of Deer Camp ’86 are exactly these people.

Set in 1986 (I wonder what gave me that idea), a group of six friends hit the road to participate in an annual deer hunt in Northern Michigan, a scenario not dissimilar to the real-life adventure I described above. The group’s de facto leader, Wes (Noah LaLonde), is joining the gang for his first hunt in a few years thanks to personal drama, having broken up with his girlfriend whom he can’t get off his mind.

Cruising the backroads in a rundown Chevy Suburban (almost my favorite character), Wes is joined by his friends Karlos (Josh Dominguez), the intense, super-serious member of the group who takes the hunt seriously (he’s also the only member in the group to see combat action in the military); J.B. (Brian Michael Raetz), the drunken a-hole whose Suburban the crew takes on the trip, even if he’s unable to drive it; Simon (Arthur Cartwright), the smart, skeptical one who knows when to play it safe and call it quits; Egbert (David Lautman), the coward, constantly picked on for comic relief; and Buck (Jay J. Bidwell), the chubby schlub smartass who’s quick with the jokes and picks on Egbert a lot (if you see a bear, Buck would be the one you need to out-run).

Does that sound like a crew? Your typical menu of slasher treats for whomever—or whatever—plans to end their trip, permanently, one by one? Scripters Bo Hansen and Riley Taurus feed us a nice diet of disposable characters; not everyone is three-dimensional, but these bros are nicely drawn sketches, a reminder of those slashers of yore when it didn’t matter too much if you knew each character intimately. You only needed to care about a few of them and occasionally be surprised along the way. That’s all we ask, and Deer Camp ’86 mostly delivers on that front.

Before heading out to their cabin in the woods, the boys hit up the town’s bar—another tradition—to let loose before the big hunt takes place the next morning. (Drunk before the hunt? Another parallel to my personal story I began with.) While there, cute-boy Wes, still harboring his broken heart, strikes up a flirtation with the pub’s bartender, Star (Tina Manera), an attractive Native American who doesn’t mind the attention. She’s also skilled at keeping a gang of rival hunters at bay when they become assholes, including their cocky, prick leader Buford (David Rubin).

The boys eventually depart with tubby Buck behind the wheel, filling in for drunken J.B., and arrive at their destination, a cabin in the middle of nowhere that’s owned by an acquaintance. After some close calls on the initial hunt the following day, the boys are put on notice when the town sheriff (Paul Wilson) visits and alerts them to a gruesome murder—a violent slaying reminiscent of murders from from the recent past, and the lingering mystery of a few women who remain missing as evidenced by a highway billboard the boys drive by. When strange things start happening and the body count starts to rise, who’s to blame? Wes and his drunken gang of tired hunters? That a-hole Buford and his gang? Or something…more sinister?

One of the fun things about watching a film set in 1986 is spotting the visual cues and props that set the tone and blur the “reality” that we’re actually viewing a movie made in 2022. Setting Deer Camp ’86 in the middle of nowhere with the characters needing only to wear hunting attire keeps the illusion mostly intact (and the budget down) as things like trees and wood cabins and hole-in-the-wall bars don’t change much over time. The producers do a good job here of keeping everything authentic-looking to the era—at least visually…

On a few occasions I was pulled out of the illusion, like when a character in Buford’s gang is called out for wearing a Confederate flag shirt. In 1986 I was 10 years old, and every kid had a Confederate flag design lying around somewhere thanks to TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard—usually on their General Lee toy car, often on their Dukes school lunch pail, occasionally on their Bo Duke Halloween costume. For a beer-drinkin’, cussin’, tobacco-chewin’ team of deer hunters in ’86, I’d expect half of them to be wearing a shirt like that.

Also, some of the dialogue rings…I dunno, 2010s broski. The prime example of this is when one of the gang tells a sad Wes at the campfire to burn the photo of his ex he carries in his wallet before exclaiming, “Bros before hoes!” Was this something 20-something dudes said back in 1986? I’ve been a club DJ for decades, and it’s a phrase I heard pretty heavily in the late ’00s and early 2010s. But again, I was only 10 in 1986, so who knows….

And the smokers…where are all the damn cigarette smokers? I want to see smoking in the bar, smoking at the cabin, smoking in the bathroom, smoking in the car, smoking everywhere! I want to see two-thirds of the cast lighting up at least as much as my grandma did in the 1980s! I want plumes and clouds, man! I wanna see it so smoky that I’m complaining I can’t see what’s happening on screen!

But I don’t watch an indie production like Deer Camp ’86 to be wowed by its perfect period correctness. It’s overall enjoyable thanks to good pacing by director L. Van Dyke Siboutszen and the over-the-top antics of Jay J. Bidwell’s Buck character. Bidwell is clearly having a great time and Siboutszen allows Bidwell to stay loose and let it all hang out. Some of the jokes miss, but many land and Bidwell’s comedic performance takes the movie up a notch for me. The 1 hour, 25 minute-runtime is also perfectly rendered here, as Siboutszen never gets too bogged down with the mystic elements that could have been drawn out (and bored us all to death).

Mill Creek’s 1080p HD widescreen Blu-ray has no special features but does include English SDH subtitles. Younger movie-watchers, hunters and non-hunters alike can safely add Deer Camp ’86 to their Halloween-season viewing if they’re up for a facsimile of what kept mom and pop in business during the VHS rental boom of the 1980s.

Jason Hink is a writer, editor and content producer. Sign up for his Email Newsletter here. For more of Jason’s reviews, visit here.