#26: The Murderous Summer Camp

139 11 2
                                    

How many of you guys have heard this familiar story before? A bunch of teenagers are sent to a summer camp, usually one with a checkered past or in the middle of some thick woodlands. These teenagers are completely unaware that this summer camp has hidden dangers, almost always being a murderous serial killer bent on revenge. Usually this serial killer has just freshly escaped jail to the inconvenience of the teenagers but to the convenience of the plot and is bent on some type of revenge. The teenagers are stupidly unaware of this until it is too late, focusing too much on romantic endeavors or skinny dipping in the large, polluted lake. Hence, the killer has no problem slowly but surely killing everyone but the final girl, a trope I talked about many parts ago. Because the final girl has strong plot armor or is some type of Mary Sue, she takes the killer down herself, ending the cycle of murders at least until some type of sequel brings the serial killer back somehow.

If you answered something in the realm of Friday the 13th or the ninth season of American Horror Story, then you are not alone. This exact plot formula has been the cheap basis for many horror stories, reused so many times by this point that the story synopsis brings a huge amount of annoyance to most horror fans. Many, including myself, see the whole premise by this point to be a cheap way for writers to create a typical horror plot without having to try being creative in many ways. Everyone knows about this type of storyline by now and quite honestly, most people, even non-horror fans, are completely sick of it.

The reason many people are sick of these plot lines besides the predictability is that the storyline is plagued with a huge chunk of clichés. There is always the virgin character, who like in the worst horror stories survives the serial killer thanks to a lack of intercourse that most of the other teenage characters realistically are naturally curious in exploring. Then there is the final girl trope, where always a female character, usually a Mary Sue, is the one to always take down the killer.  The cast of characters when looking for the killer stupidly spilt up into groups or wander the woods nearby alone, basically wearing signs on their backs that say "kill me".  If someone tries to escape, they always try using their cars, which for plot convenience have run out of gas or have extreme engine trouble.  As a result of the stranded car, the killer is able to sneak up from behind and take another victim or two.  Finally, there is the low IQ of most of the cast, always depicted in trope characterizations that depending on their roles in the story are killed in a certain order.

  I could list even more clichés this plot line creates, but doing so would probably fill up five pages worth of writing and require me to really go off topic.  For those curious on what those other clichés are, basically it is everything I have pretty much covered in the past with more tropes I have still yet to cover such as being low brained enough to wander the woods alone or have any type of romantic relationship in the plot.  Surprisingly, the advice Randy Meeks gave on surviving a mass murderer in the movie Scream actually rings true for the clichés usually found in killer summer camp stories.  If even that is not satisfactory enough in expressing how cliché fueled these types of stories are, then I challenge you to watch one movie related to the topic and list for yourself everything you have seen covered in multiple horror stories.  Trust me, the list is going to be extremely long.

  The only way I can foresee fixing the clichés of the murderous summer camp storyline is to completely reinvent the entire plot.  At this point, doing anything similar to past stories is going to annoy audiences and be far from original.  You have to write a new type of story that will engage audiences from the first page. 

  Instead of teenagers being the main characters, you could have college students or even regular adults be the main cast members.  The summer camp should have a clean record, and only be the source of the killings due to bad luck.  Having a killer bent on revenge would be a bad idea, and in its place the killer could be just crazy or even animalistic.  No final girl should exist, and instead some if not all the characters can survive the plot.  The murderer can either be permanently killed in the end or for a more realistic take, have them captured by police and then put in jail following a trial.  Heck, you can even have the children in the camp be the ones creative enough to take down the killer, representing an element of the plot that almost never ends up being addressed in these types of stories.

  Put your creative hats on and really get to work on fixing the problems of this type of storyline.  Perhaps your story will be the one to breathe new life into it.

 

Fifty Horror Clichés That Need to Die in a FireWhere stories live. Discover now