If there ever was a beautiful disaster, it's Sleepaway Camp. Almost everything about the production is of poor quality; yet, there is an undeniable charm and hilarity to it's end result. The kills are creative and the ending will stick with you forever.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2022

While the film will forever be remembered for its shocker of an ending, there's still an interesting conversation going on about the effects of bullying and abuse on a child that allows the film to rise above some of its more shallow slasher peers.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 17, 2022

The film has undergone a significant reappraisal in recent years - for many this is no longer a homophobic and transphobic text. Despite the creative team having zero intentions to that effect, Sleepaway Camp has been appropriated as a trans revenge film.

| Jul 28, 2022

Sleepaway Camp survives as the kind of not-exactly-“good” movie that is somehow kinda great, memorable and eccentric within a formulaic genre context.

| May 23, 2022

While Sleepaway Camp, from writer and director Robert Hiltzik, is far from the best horror film, it is proof that sometimes the payoff at the end is worth the entire venture.

| Jul 31, 2021

Director Hiltzik is so focused on creating a twist ending that he forgets to design an actual conclusion, leaving behind a number of loose ends and unresolved plot points.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Sep 7, 2020

The big, infamous end reveal actually suggests the screenplay's focused on psychological damage inherent in enforcing gender roles on children.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 28, 2019

An atypical slasher movie that blurs the lines between high and low art, good and bad acting, male and female, proficiency and ineptitude, sophistication and primitivism.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 23, 2018

A slog through teenage nightmares that has the gall to assume anyone is interested in social commentary, especially when it is all formulated by ideas carbon-copied from more talented filmmakers.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 30, 2017

The story of Sleepaway Camp is pretty much everything you'd expect from a slasher movie and nothing you'd ever expect, which is what makes Hiltzik's campy and disturbing summer camp tale still one of the more memorable horror movies ever made.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 7, 2016

The justly-famous closing image is one of the most baffling and incongruous climaxes in a genre known and celebrated by devotees for its WTF factor.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 28, 2014

The movie won't be everyone's cup of tea, but for those with a strong interest in cinematic scares, it is most definitely a gutsy picture that deserves to be seen and discussed.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 28, 2014

There are great films and then there are magical films, glorious oddities that pop up sui generis out of nowhere. Sleepaway Camp falls squarely into the latter category.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 27, 2014

Take out the twist, and the film could piggy-back off of her into a stilted and tasteless but nonetheless unique exploration of sexual awakening.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 23, 2014

[Blu-ray Review] From the awesome newly commissioned cover artwork, to the terrific A/V elements, to a slew of new bonus content going above and beyond the call of duty, this is nothing less than a dream release. Buy it. Like, now.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 22, 2014

A definite eighties gem with a twisted mystery that really is rather brilliant in countering any resemblance toward "Friday the 13th."

| May 21, 2014

Capaz de despertar risos graas ao estilo datado (vide figurinos), ao roteiro ridculo e direo capenga (o acidente que abre a narrativa genial neste aspecto), merece crditos pelo plano final, que simultaneamente hilrio e perturbador.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 26, 2010

Not a particularly effective movie... [but] it is an exceptionally memorable one - one that lingers in the brain, disturbing and discomfiting.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Aug 25, 2009

[ Sleepaway Camp] is...a gritty, sleazy Grade-Z rip-off of what Sean Cunningham and the gang more or less perfected over at Crystal Lake.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 29, 2005

Still the finest Sleepaway Camp, if only because of its memorable final shot.

| Original Score: B | Jul 21, 2005