A Restless Spirit on an Endless Flight: Canadian Filmmaker Avalon Fast’s Enchanting CAMP

CAMP 

(Avalon Fast, 2025, Canada, 111 minutes)

Echoed voices in the night 

She's a restless spirit on an endless flight.

--Don Henley and Bernie Leadon, "Witchy Woman" (1972) 

Throughout the current decade, the under-30 set has been making a hell of a mark on horror, led this year by 21-year-old Kane Parsons' mindbending Backrooms--released before he was legally able to consume alcohol--and 26-year-old Curry Barker's pitch-black Obsession, both of which topped the US box office before making significant inroads in other territories. 

There are other examples, but that one-two punch left the industry reeling--and eager, no doubt, to sign more talented boy wonders with fresh ideas.

By contrast, their female counterparts have made more of an impact at film festivals and indie cinemas with work that's overtly queer, remarkably collaborative, and reminiscent of riot grrrl in both attitude and approach--none of which is intended as a knock on Parsons or Barker, who established their DIY bonafides by way of YouTube before savvy studios came calling.   

Right: Fast and Alexandra McVicker in The Serpent's Skin

Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay, 21, is currently in production on her seventh feature, and Canadian actor/director Avalon Fast, 26, appeared in her film The Serpent’s Skin, in addition to 32-year-old Canadian filmmaker Louise Weard's Castration Movie Anthology. More recently, Fast appeared in and has been working on a documentary about New York filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which opens in Seattle in August (Mackay and Schoenbrun, an elder stateswoman at 39, also appear in Weard's sprawling anthology). 

Fast was all of 19 when they shot their directorial debut, Honeycomb, and 22 when it premiered in 2022 (it's available on Blu-ray and streaming exclusively through their website). Their dreamy, surrealistic followup, Camp, premiered at last year's Fantastic Fest, where it won the Next Wave Best Feature, and in the end credits, they thank every one of the trans filmmakers listed above. I missed the film when it premiered at this year's SIFF, so I was happy to see that it plays Northwest Film Forum in July. 

Camp, which is anything but campy, begins with its protagonist in a terrible place, which gets worse before it gets better--or does it? Not everything is what it seems, and nor does Fast provide a definitive answer to that question. "Worse" is indisputable, but "better" is in the eye of the beholder.

Emily (newcomer Zola Grimmer, low-key in an Aubrey Plaza kind of way), a college dropout, is having a less-than-stellar time at a house party when a few partygoers suggest a game of truth or dare. When Emily shares her biggest regret--that she accidentally killed a four-year-old when she was 16--it really brings the temperature down. It also helps to explain why she's been flailing and failing ever since.

The rest of the party isn't any more fun. Except for her best friend, Charlie (Giselle Morison), Emily finds the people--and even the drinks--boring. With her deadpan affect, Emily seems like someone who finds most things boring, though excitement, of the least desirable kind, has a way of finding her. 

On the ride home, Charlie, the passenger, takes a snort of Emily's coke--and promptly dies. Emily is horrified. (Later in the film, she explains that the coke appeared to be laced with something lethal.) She isn't a murderer, but it's the second time her actions have inadvertently led to a casualty.

Right: Fast as seen by Fast

These are fictional characters in a fictional scenario, and Emily isn't a stand-in for the filmmaker, though the sense of loss is rooted in reality, since Fast took inspiration from a close friend with whom she grew up on Vancouver Island (much like Blue Heron's Sophy Romvari). Maia died in an automobile accident when she was 19, leaving Fast spiralling. As she told Letterboxd's Katie Rife, "Honeycomb's not about me. CAMP isn't about me. There are parts of me in there, but both films are about watching the world around me."

Afterward, Emily tells her dad (Mike Tan) that she isn't necessarily suicidal, but she worries, with some justification, that she's a danger to others. He suggests she become a counselor at a camp for troubled kids. Maybe she can do them some good. With no other options, she takes his advice, though she's concerned that it's a "God camp," and she isn't a believer. 

It isn't, exactly. The train lets her off in the middle of nowhere. She walks through a field until she finds a sign that says CAMP, which seems foreboding, though the other counselors, like her pot-smoking roommate Sophie (Cherry Moore), are welcoming (Fast shot on location at Camp Horizon in Alberta). Camp leader Dan (Austyn Van De Camp) is all about God, but the others, with the exception of Jo (Sophie Bawks-Smith, who appeared in Honeycomb), don't seem to care, and the non-believers accept Jo into their fold. They just want to party as soon as the campers go to bed. 

Things seem normal at times, but at other times, they don't. 

Emily loses time, can't tell the difference between waking life and dreams, and sees visions of people who may or may not be there. It's as if the train brought her to a place suspended between the physical and spiritual realms, not least since the ride itself was pretty bizarre. Enhanced by composer Max Graham's rumbling score, Fast and cinematographer Eily Sprungman, in her first feature, encourage the confusion through mists from petroleum jelly-smeared lenses, slowed-down motion, and light sources that glow like sparkling stars.

Sensing a kindred spirit, Emily offers support to Eden (Izza Jarvis, another newcomer), a morose girl with a punk vibe, but the mercurial child, who possibly represents a version of her younger self, alternates between grateful and resentful. There's also the sense that the other counselors, including Sophie and Clara (Alice Wordsworth), aren't telling her everything. 

When the women meet in the forest at night and make wishes, for instance, they proceed to come true. Does that make them witches? Does it make their wishes spells? Yes, as it turns out, it does, though Fast avoids much of the stereotypical black-robe-and-broomstick iconography around witchcraft. 

Emily goes with the flow until she realizes there's a cost to the spells, though not as bad as the price Bear pays when he makes a monkey's paw-like wish in Obsession, a truly horrifying film that leaves a sadistic aftertaste. CAMP has elements of horror, but Fast doesn't fully embrace the goriest end of the spectrum. 

To Emily, the other women are a little vampiric, even if she genuinely enjoys their company, especially Clara, a romantic foil who started out as a camper before she grew into a counselor. The others, who have also known each other for years, include Nev (Lea Rose Sebastianis) and Hope (Ella Reece). 

Though some critics, women especially, have described the ending as happy, I wouldn't go that far, and that isn't intended as criticism of the film or its admirers. It's great to find your tribe, and to be accepted for who you are, but when your happiness involves the misery of others, it isn't exactly a happy ending for them. I also read that realization as a metaphor for adulthood, since it's nearly impossible to live life on your own terms without hurting other people along the way, no matter how hard you try not to.

I would have also liked to learn more about their varied backgrounds, since the actresses are all so compelling, especially Moore and Wordsworth, though we do learn that Sophie had a baby, and appears to have given it up for adoption. Grimmer, by contrast, plays a more recessive character, though she's never less than fully engaging, especially relative to her inexperience. 

Like Emily, I was confused at times, and I couldn't always tell when this was intentional on Fast's part and when they were just throwing bizarre--if visually intriguing--ingredients into the mix simply because they could. 

Both CAMP and Honeycomb have been compared to Sofia Coppola's directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides, an impressively faithful adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' haunting 1993 novel, and Fast hasn't disavowed the comparison, citing both Coppola and Greta Gerwig as inspirations.  

I get the Virgin Suicides comparison, since Fast's features revolve around groups of girls, but I was reminded more of the the dreamy, surrealistic coming-into-female-power films of French directors Lucile Hadžihalilović (Innocence) and Léa Mysius (The Five Devils). If Avalon Fast conjures up more questions than answers, CAMP casts a captivating spell all its own. 

To quote actor/director Vera Drew, another friend and collaborator, "This movie feels like a smear of time and space in a way that so few movies do."

   

Editor's note (that's me, I'm the editor): Avalon Fast appears to have switched from she/her to they/them between the release of Honeycomb and CAMP, though several recent reviews and interviews use the former. 

CAMP is out now in limited release, and opens at Northwest Film Forum on July 25. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma opens at the Uptown on Aug 13. In years to come, maybe the two films will screen together. 

Images from Dark Star Films (Zola Grimmer and Alice Wordsworth and the coven in their element), Film Threat (Alexandra McVicker and Avalon Fast in The Serpent's Skin), and Fast's Twitter/X profile picture (self portrait).