Oh boy, where to start with ‘The Campus’, last year’s indie entry sharing the same concept as ‘Happy Death Day’ is a genre mash-up offering an incoherent, yet at times blood soaked spin on the Groundhog Day plotline.
Synopsis:
Robert Wainwright dies after breaking his deal with the Devil, passing that debt onto his estranged daughter Morgan. She soon finds herself in a never-ending cycle of terror as she is brutally murdered then resurrected over and over again, each time losing a piece of her soul. Now she must discover why this is happening and break the deadly cycle in order to escape.
Without divulging too heavily on the plot above, things start off as hectic and puzzling pretty much out of the gate when Morgan’s first round of death comes about. With literally zero context she is fending off attackers even having success in taking a couple out before her demise – why? I’ll tell you why because “Bitch I’m from Glendale”, oh right that’s settled then.
On the whole Rachel Amanda Bryant as Morgan takes the majority of the screen time whom for the most part does a stand-up job, the same can’t be said for every other character in the film who just aren’t performing on the same level.
Whilst the plot does seem to offer (and I say this lightly) some form of intrigue it’s the other elements that drastically let the overall down, there’s no denying its bloody enough, 26 gallons of the red stuff are reported as being used and I can believe it. Normally it would be getting bonus points for at least excelling in one area however it doesn’t deliver an impact – the addition of poorly executed CGI moments are quite the let down.
It’s just all a bit daft, oddly masked killers, zombies, the devil, ghost like apparitions, director J Horton has clearly tried to pack as many different genres into the runtime but this is a pick ‘n’ mix gone wrong!
Overall if the Groundhog Day theme to horror is your thing you might be able to get on with The Campus, besides there are so many genres on offer here maybe one will take your fancy. Personally nothing was working, I couldn’t invest in Morgan at all, the dodgy CGI detracted from the films fairly genuine dark feeling and the plot at times is just a mess.