- Finn Wolfhard recalls the challenges he faced while making his directorial debut with the horror-comedy Hell of a Summer in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE
- Alongside writing and directing the project, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2023, the actor also stars in it
- Hell of a Summer is in theaters now
Finn Wolfhard says making his directorial debut came with some trials and tribulations.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the 22-year-old actor explains that there were moments when he felt he was not taken seriously due to his age while working on his horror-comedy Hell of a Summer.
“It was a long process. I started writing this movie at 16 … and I don’t know how we got through it,” Wolfhard candidly admits.
“That was the entire process, but we were lucky enough to have amazing people behind us and producers that really believed in us as filmmakers,” adds the Stranger Things star.
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According to Wolfhard, he learned a lot from the first-time experience, and he thinks his young age played more of a beneficial role, rather than a negative one, in making the film what it became.
“Being a teenager — and just having a door shut in your face over and over and over again — you just had this blind optimism, or blind confidence, because you don’t really see what the worst thing that can happen is by sending a script to this person or sending a script to that person and trying to get your foot in the door,” he says. “I think, in a lot of ways, being young really helped.”
However, Wolfhard adds that he now approaches future projects with caution, as he still expects to be met with apprehension among veteran members of the entertainment industry.
“I’m only 22, that’s still very young, and even though I made a film, I’m expecting to still be treated like I’m a younger person that doesn’t really know what they’re doing. But I’m at peace with proving it to people however many times,” he explains. “I think it’s something that gets easier over time, because it just becomes a part of the process, and then, slowly, it goes away, I guess, as you get older.”
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Hell of a Summer, written and directed by Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, follows camp counselors who must survive a masked killer that is murdering them one by one before the start of the summer.
Alongside Wolfhard and Bryk, 25, the Neon-distributed movie — which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023 — also stars Fred Hechinger, Abby Quinn, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Pardis Saremi, Rosebud Baker and Adam Pally.
Wolfhard says he drew inspiration from many horror and comedy influences to craft the film. “Shaun of the Dead was a big influence, because I loved how funny it was, and I loved how character-driven it was. But at the same time, it was also just this great zombie movie,” he says, adding, “I also loved Let the Right One In.”
“And I feel like a lot of stuff from childhood, a lot of teen comedies, a lot of older Seth Rogen movies, a lot of dramedies as well, influenced me,” he continues. “I’m still hugely inspired by shows like South Park or early seasons of The Simpsons. The writing is just so incredible, and it is as good as any movie that comes out.”
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Still, “Scream King” Wolfhard feels at home in the horror genre. He has starred in various horror and thriller projects, from Stranger Things, The Turning and The Addams Family, to It: Chapters 1 and 2 , Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Frozen Empire.
“It’s definitely a genre that I feel comfortable in,” Wolfhard tells PEOPLE. “But, if I were to do another horror movie again, it would have to really depend on the script and the story, because there’s a lot of genres I’d love to tackle, and not only just as someone who wants to write movies, but also someone that wants to act as well.”
“It would have to depend on what the story was,” he adds. “But if I were to do another horror movie, I’d probably want it to be pretty insane or just some original, crazy concept.”
Hell of a Summer is in theaters now.
