VOD Catch-Up: Avalon Fast's "CAMP" is a Spooky, Entrancing Campfire Tale

by Joanna Sodeman-Taylor

If you’re anything like me, you walk away from the Oscars each year under an absolute fugue state against all new films. If it was made in the last decade, then no thank you! When it comes to 2026 features, I’ll be spending the summer doing what I do best: catching up on new releases I missed in theaters as soon as they hit VOD. So let’s start with a relatively deep cut, recommended by my good friend and one-time TFE contributor Patrick Gratton and available for rental in the US as of this past weekend.

CAMP is the second narrative feature from Avalon Fast, a Canadian writer/director/producer/editor/actress with a prolific repertoire of short films and a well-received debut in the form of 2022’s Honeycomb. Fast’s acting credits include roles in Alice Mao Mackay’s The Serpent’s Skin, Louise Weard’s Castration Movie Pt. i, and Jane Schoenbrun’s upcoming Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and her ambitions fit comfortably within this cadre of palpably queer, genre-bending directors. I’m automatically fascinated by any artist who describes their oeuvre as GIRL HORROR like Fast does, and CAMP’s uncanny, blossoming synthesis of aching grief and encroaching danger fits that description as easily as it defies it...

CAMP opens at a sad, shitty college party, specifically during a game of truth or dare where a partygoer can’t even think of a dare to inflict on a listless young woman she barely knows named Emily (Zola Grimmer). Instead, she asks for a truth. What’s her biggest regret? After some evasiveness, Emily decides to answer honestly, either because she’s looking to scare the others off or hoping for anyone to extend an olive branch she desperately needs. Emily talks about a bummer of a freak accident she had no control over, and her fellow partiers meet her with an awkward silence and therapyspeak dialogue about whether this is a safe space for her to share this information. “But I’m here if you need me!” reassures the person who asked the question in the first place, and would you believe we never see her again?

Before the night is over, Emily experiences a far more personal loss on the way home from the party that leads her to move back home, drop out of school, and cut off all contact with the outside world. At her father’s behest, (Mike Tan, whose parenting style reads more like a very involved clinician), Emily signs up as a counselor at a summer camp for wayward kids, located in a secluded forest campsite familiar to many a slasher, in the hope she’ll find a productive outlet for her feelings and a meaningful reason to get out of bed. Only on the train ride over does Emily learn the summer camp is a Christian outfit, and she spends the trip steeling herself for a theologically-bent spin on the same isolation she felt in college.

Fast doesn’t make the lord’s disciples the threat Emily or the audience are primed for. While head counselor JB (Aiden Laudersmith) is interested in embodying God’s teachings, he never presses her about her faith, and welcomes her with open arms. Even more surprising is how quickly Emily is taken into the fold of several female counselors - namely her bunkmate Clara (Alice Wordsworth), plus Hope (Ella Reece), Rosie (Cherry Moore), and Nev (Lea Rose Sebastianis) - all of whom register as young women going through shit who are trying to find the same community and solace she is. They’ve all been counselors for at least a couple years, with some of them taking on the role after attending camp as troubled youths themselves. Their friendship is quick and bountiful. They tell Emily honestly her sense of foreboding wasn’t entirely misplaced, yet even when something goes wrong, these sisters hold each other up.

Throughout these introductions, Fast establishes a real gift for tonal liquidity, starting from a baseline of raw, accessible emotion and imagery that allows shifts in mood and perspective to be immediately palpable. The bored discomfort of the opening party gives way to a different kind of tense anticipation once Emily arrives at camp, yet CAMP is just as receptive to the kindness Emily is shown and the camaraderie she fosters with the other women. These warm feelings don’t erase the guilt, but they take up enough space to make this place worth surviving for. Eily Sprungman's cinematography and Gordon Allen's sound design don't reinvent the wheel of dreamy, hard-edged campfire tales, but they help maintain a look and style that feels wholly unique.

To imprint my own experiences on the movie for a second, it’s a very a happy reflection of the caution and excitement I feel whenever I get dolled up to go to the local gay bars, abstractly paranoid and carrying my own baggage into the establish, only to have a great time and meet other queer folks who I’ve since helped run errands and shared birthday cake with. Emily experiences a similar kind of weight lifted from her shoulders, though the guilt she carries is never fully extinguished. Not only that, it’s met with some very new anxieties, some around being a good counselor for an androgynous youth who clearly resents being at camp (Izza Jarvis). Her bigger fear is whether anything she’s built can be safely taken into the world when she leaves. If she leaves.

Fast manifests these terrors with animated inserts, audiovisual hallucinations, radical changes to CAMP’s framing and color grading. Not all of Fast’s flourishes landed for me, but even when her ambitions escape her a bit, it’s so clear they’re integral to the film she’s trying to make rather than flaunting a portfolio. I’m not surprised at the kinds of films CAMP is being compared to in reviews, yet they all feel insufficient to what Fast has achieved, how many cliches she's circumnavigated with ease. I’m especially grateful to how Fast complicates Emily’s newfound community without vilifying them or falling into familiar tropes of backwoods spellcasters. The mystery of what exactly is happening here is so potent, without forsaking the energy of a hangout film. CAMP soon stops bothering to orient the women around anyone but each other, forgoing any shortcuts to sisterhood through gendered violence or religious persecution. Their bond is more porous than that, and it emerges as more authentic, more queer as a result.

In style, tone, and story, Avalon Fast ensures CAMP is a more evasive, entrancing film than you might expect from a microbudget genre flick set in the middle of nowhere. Literally until the last shot, CAMP keeps you guessing about a unified theme, and in an era where horror films are happy to spell out their message as soon as possible, that’s a refreshing approach.

CAMP is currentll available to buy or rent on most major streaming platforms, including the Letterboxd video store.