The Acting (Unintentional Vs Intentional) *Spoilers About the Ending*

Sleepaway Camp is my favorite film of all time.
The acting has always been strange to me. It feels like it's on the stage. I love it more because of this, how exaggerated it is and how beautifully childlike it takes murder at a camp. It glosses over the fact that there are pedophiles, jerks, Meg/Mel and JUDY here with it's classical music. The music is not from 1983 (aside from the CREEPY radio tunes you here and the ending, which are haunting). It's as if the film was going for a dated look at the very start.

Now for the acting again. I have always thought that this was just ridiculous but a product of its time. When I stop to think about all of the other slasher films from 1979-1989, and I've pretty much seen them all (no joke), NONE of them contain characters that are THIS over-dramatic. But in Sleepaway Camp, EVERYBODY is like this. Does that strike you as odd? How did this film manage to find so many unknowns that not only act in the same fashion as everybody else, but do not act like anybody from the 1980-1985 slasher genre. I conclude that they MUST have been told to act like this from the director. Acting may be the whole giveaway to what this film is about.

Now, the ending we see that Angela was Peter, the brother in the beginning, and the actual Angela was killed in the boat wreck. But for the whole film Peter has "acted" like Angela. Transgender people are often forced by society to be the gender based on the sex that they were born with. They have to act like something that they're forced into. This film reaches the masses by reversing the gender repression, where somebody (Peter) is being forced by their Aunt to be the gender that they were NOT born with. That's absolutely genius.

The Aunt acts all happy even though "but when my husband left" "oh goodness no, that wouldn't be good at all"... The camp acts like everything is fine even though people have been murdered. Like it's all fine even though it isn't. Judy acts like she's all tough when really she's insecure. Everybody is acting to the point where we know they're acting. The film is about the act, about the deception and the facade that one goes through to hide the truth. This is why despite it feeling silly, I believe that Sleepaway Camp was completely intentional. Too many things fall into place perfectly for it to be one big mistake.




I review horror films at: http://www.oh-the-horror.com/
1000 with pics!