A Nightmare, But Not in the Way They Intended
Some slashers are bad in a charming way. Some are bad in a gory way. And then there’s Twisted Nightmare, which is bad in the way that makes you check your VCR to see if the tracking is broken, only to realize it’s the film itself that’s malfunctioning.
Directed and written by Paul Hunt, this 1988 supernatural slasher is what happens when you throw every cliché into a blender and forget to plug it in. It has all the ingredients—teenagers, summer camp, a hulking killer—but somehow manages to be less terrifying than a trip to a Spirit Halloween store in broad daylight.
The Setup: Free Weekend, Paid in Blood
The premise is as lazy as the execution. Laura (Rhonda Gray) receives a letter saying she’s won a free weekend at Camp Paradise, the same summer camp where her developmentally disabled brother Matthew mysteriously died two years earlier. If your response to this setup is “Don’t go,” congratulations—you’re already smarter than everyone in the film.
Naturally, Laura goes. Naturally, her friends join. Naturally, they’re picked off one by one by a killer who looks like the Michelin Man after a barbecue accident. It’s so by-the-numbers you could play slasher bingo and win before the second act.
The Characters: Meat With Dialogue
The cast of Twisted Nightmare is a buffet of stereotypes reheated from Friday the 13th leftovers. There’s the hot couple, the comic relief, the minority friend (spoiler: he dies early), and the tough guy with a rifle who might as well wear a sign that says “Lightning Rod.”
None of them have personalities beyond “waiting to die.” You don’t care who gets murdered next—you just want the film to hurry up about it. Watching them wander through the woods is like watching mannequins rehearse for a Sears catalog photoshoot: wooden, stiff, and vaguely sad.
The Killer: Discount Jason Voorhees
The big bad here is Matthew, Laura’s brother, who supposedly combusted two years earlier because the group teased him about being gay. Yes, you read that right: he literally caught fire. Instead of exploring this bizarre premise, the film just waves it away and reintroduces Matthew as a charred, pitchfork-wielding killer.
He’s less “terrifying monster” and more “cosplay gone wrong.” His mask looks like it was borrowed from a high school production of Phantom of the Opera. His kills are unimaginative, his movements sluggish, and his backstory offensive in a way that’s too stupid to even be truly insulting.
Jason Voorhees may have been a knockoff of Michael Myers, but Matthew is a knockoff of a knockoff, the cinematic equivalent of buying your slasher villain from the clearance rack at Kmart.
The Death Scenes: All Filler, No Killer
Slasher movies live or die by their kills. Twisted Nightmare dies.
Sure, people get impaled, bludgeoned, and strangled, but everything feels limp, under-choreographed, and bloodless. One guy is electrocuted by lightning in a scene so badly staged it looks like the special effects team borrowed a Lite-Brite. Another character is killed with hot stones in a sauna, which sounds inventive until you see it executed with all the intensity of a spa day gone slightly wrong.
The gore is minimal, the camera cuts away too quickly, and the killer seems bored with his own methods. When the highlight is someone being impaled on deer antlers, you know the movie isn’t trying hard enough.
The Native American Curse: Stereotypes on Parade
Because no ‘80s horror movie is complete without lazy mysticism, we get Kane, the Native American groundskeeper, who warns everyone about the land being cursed. His dialogue is a mash-up of clichés about medicine men and ancestral vengeance, delivered with all the subtlety of a fortune cookie.
Instead of adding depth, it feels tacked on, like the writers suddenly remembered they needed a supernatural excuse for the killer’s resurrection. The curse explanation is so clumsy it makes Scooby-Doo ghost reveals look like Shakespearean drama.
The Twist: Surprise, It’s Not a Twist
Late in the film, Laura reveals she orchestrated the reunion to punish her friends for Matthew’s death. It’s a shocking revelation—if you’ve never seen a slasher before, or if you dozed off halfway through and forgot who Laura was.
But wait! Matthew himself returns, charred and growling, and kills everyone anyway. So Laura’s entire plan is pointless, Matthew’s motive is muddled, and the audience is left wondering why they wasted 90 minutes for a “surprise” that explains nothing.
The final barn explosion should’ve been cathartic, but instead it’s just loud. And when the barn magically resets itself in the final shot, you realize the filmmakers weren’t even trying anymore.
Sheriff Goodes: Comic Relief That Isn’t
Special mention goes to Sheriff Elmer Goodes, played by Noble “Kid” Chissell, who shows up halfway through, waves his badge around, and promptly loses his head—literally. His death is unintentionally hilarious, like something out of a parody skit. Instead of tension, it elicits laughter, which might be the most entertainment the film manages to deliver.
Production Values: Bargain Basement Horror
Filmed on location at an actual camp, Twisted Nightmare still manages to look cheap. The lighting is so bad half the film is a guessing game of who’s dying. The editing is choppy, the pacing glacial, and the music sounds like leftover tracks from a Casio demo tape.
The acting ranges from wooden to hysterical, with nobody striking the right balance. Some whisper their lines like they’re afraid of waking the crew, while others shout as if volume alone equals emotion.
Even the dog, usually a reliable horror trope, looks like it wants to quit and join a better movie.
Why It Fails (Besides Everything)
The real tragedy of Twisted Nightmare is that it had potential. A supernatural slasher at a cursed summer camp could’ve been fun. But the film never commits to anything. It’s not scary, not gory, not suspenseful, and not clever. It’s just a parade of clichés executed poorly.
The supernatural elements are vague, the kills uninspired, and the villain laughable. Instead of tension, you get tedium. Instead of thrills, you get yawns.
Final Verdict
Twisted Nightmare is less a horror film and more a collection of outtakes from better ones. It wants to be Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, and A Nightmare on Elm Street all at once, but ends up as none of them.
If you’re looking for scares, skip it. If you’re looking for campy fun, there are better bad slashers out there (Pieces, anyone?). The only nightmare here is sitting through the whole thing.
