As the days get longer and the weather gets warmer, it’s clear what’s finally approaching: Summerween. First coined in the Disney Channel show Gravity Falls, created by Alex Hirsch, Summerween is a summertime celebration of Halloween. “The people of Gravity Falls love Halloween so much they celebrate it twice a year,” summarises Grunkle Stan, Dipper and Mabel’s grumpy, greedy and fun loving great uncle. The phrase has gained much traction online since Gravity Falls, which premiered in 2012, was added to Disney+, with young people on TikTok carving watermelons instead of pumpkins with their friends in the summer.
Summerween is officially celebrated on June 22, but it’s essential to prepare for the festivities in advance and get oneself in the Summerween spirit. Otherwise, as the legend goes, we risk being eaten by the Summerween Trickster. To adequately prepare our readers for Halloween round two, we have prepared a list of our favourite horror films set in the summertime.
I only learned the term “Summerween” a couple of hours ago, but to me it suggests a particular atmosphere: hazy, nostalgic and evocative; basically, the perfect teenage summer in a beautiful setting which just happens to be ruined by a serial killer, demonic entity or some other force that’s trying to kill you. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) doesn’t quite fit the bill: from the very beginning, it is horrible; the landscape is foreboding, the heat feels oppressive, the characters don’t seem to enjoy each other’s company, and it only gets worse from there on. Summer in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not blissful but sweaty, smelly and scorching.
This is not an original opinion, but it really does feel like stumbling across a snuff film, like something you shouldn’t be watching (I once persuaded my younger brother to watch it while he was drunk on Christmas day and afterwards he was like, “why did you make me do that…”) But it is set in summer, it is one of the greatest horror films ever made, and the final shot – of Leatherface dancing with his chainsaw as the morning sun burns red behind him and the final girl escapes on the back of a truck – is startlingly beautiful. If ‘Summerween’ can’t encompass such a masterpiece, you can keep it. (JG)
Friday the 13th (1980) isn’t a great film – it’s schlocky even by the standards of the slasher genre – but it does have a spooky, campfire story quality which makes it perfect for Summerween. Drenched in sunshine for much of the runtime, Camp Crystal Lake is such an idyllic setting that when I first watched it I found myself desperately yearning to be a camp counsellor in the early 1980s, wearing denim booty shorts, drinking alcohol and having premarital sex on shift – right up until the characters start getting brutally murdered anyway. Jason Voorhees – the lumbering, hockey-mask-wearing killer that people associate with the series – isn’t actually in this one, so for a more representative Friday the 13th experience (and a more entertaining film), I’d recommend watching the second, third or fourth instalment instead. (JG)
I first watched IT (2017) in the winter (not the summer), with my two best friends in preparation for IT Chapter Two, its shamefully inadequate successor. I was so terrified while watching it (I do not have the stomach for horrors) that I instinctively yelled for my mum even though I was miles away from home in my university town. Beyond being extremely frightened by Bill Skarsgård’s incredible performance as Pennywise, the friendship between Bill, Richie, Eddie, Ben, Stanley and Bev melted my heart. I always think back to that scene in the film where they go to the lake, wrestle and swim together. It’s one of the more sobering moments in the movie, which reminds you of the possibilities of summer and being with the ones you love, even while an ancient, trans-dimensional, malevolent entity is following you. (HJ)
Sleepaway Camp (1983) has earned a reputation as something of a queer cult classic. As well as the skimpy clothes worn by its male characters, this is due to its notorious twist ending, which – at the risk of giving it away – has been both critiqued as transphobic and reclaimed by some trans writers as more nuanced and ambiguous. Cultural theorist Cael M Keegan, for example, has argued that it is really “about the horror of being forcibly and incorrectly gendered by others” and “should be considered a good trans film.” Proceed with caution, then, but Sleepaway Camp might provide an interesting debate about gender as well as trashy summer fun. (JG)
I am a big sucker for the Fear Street franchise (2021), but I’d argue that part two is the best of them. Taking inspiration from Sleepaway Camp and Friday the 13th, it is set in the 1970s at a summer camp called Camp Nightwing, where evil, wonderful, neurotic and rebellious Shadyside teens try to figure out where they stand in the world, while simultaneously being terrorised by a serial killer. As Ziggy (played by Sadie Sink) presciently puts it, “bad things always happen to Shadysiders”. The young people’s summer of fun turns into a bloody (and romantic) fight for survival. (HJ)
One of the definitive films of the 90s slasher boom, I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) has the perfect setting for a Summerween movie: a coastal fishing town which is either gloriously sunny or draped in fog. The last gasp of a time when slasher films starred future A-listers rather than people you never hear from again, it’s also got a great cast, featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr and Ryan Phillipe (they don’t make teen heartthrobs like that anymore!) Centred around a group of teenagers who accidentally kill someone while drunk-driving (or do they…?) and then hide the body, it’s an enjoyable murder mystery as well as a tight and suspenseful horror film. (JG)
Ryan Coogler’s passion project Sinners is currently the highest-grossing original film of the decade and the most critically acclaimed film of the year. In my humble opinion, it’s also the best vampire movie since Twilight. But more than just a vampire slasher, Sinners is a history lesson on the American South, as well as a timeline of modern music. Set in Mississippi in 1932, Michael B. Jordan plays identical twins Stack and Smoke who spend the first hour of the film preparing to open a juke joint for the local Black community, though it’s not long before Jack O’Connell – the blood-sucking devil incarnate – tries to break up the party. Even if you only watch it for the scene involving a chorus of vampires performing an Irish jig, it’s worth it.(IVD)
I’d argue that BODIES BODIES BODIES (2022) is a quintessential Summerween flick. Made specifically with the chronically online in mind, it follows a group of obnoxious friends who hate each other, yet decide to wait out a hurricane together in what they describe as a “hurricane party”, which descends into paranoid madness. The film is outrageously fun and has so many memorable lines. For example, when Bee (Maria Bakalova) tells the group her mother has borderline personality disorder, Alice (Rachel Sennot) replies, “Oh, my god. I’m so sorry, that’s really serious. Mental health is a really serious issue. I mean I’ve never actually said this to anyone but… I have body dysmorphia.” Alice did, in fact, graduate from the Hannah Horvath school of self-obsession. A romp! (HJ)
Social media has given certain films (I’m looking at you, Challengers) a very long and annoying lifespan. Pearl (2022) received a similar treatment when it was released, with fan cam after fan cam made of Mia Goth screaming “I’M A STAR”. My annoyance at social media aside, I think this is an incredible film. From Pearl humping a scarecrow, her heated arguments with her mother to the monologue she gives her sister-in-law at the end of the film, it is a stunningly horrifying and affronting movie about a daughter and her mother (to me anyway). It is terrifying, bright, gruesome and hopeful – all wrapped into one. (HJ)
Midsommar (2019) is an obvious one to add to our list, it is quite literally a horror film (an excellent one, might I add) set during the Midsummer festival – nothing screams Summerween more than this film. A deteriorating relationship, a violent cult in rural Sweden, and group screaming sessions with the girls – what more could you want? (HJ)
While most of the films on this list are American, The Wicker Man (1973) presents a more British vision of summer, albeit an uncharacteristically sunny one. This folk horror classic follows a repressed and devoutly religious police officer who is summoned to a remote Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. In the week leading up to May Day, he is increasingly unsettled by the pagan activities of the inhabitants, before the film draws to its terrible conclusion. Rather than being a disposable slice of summer fun, The Wicker Man is strange, beautiful and haunting, and there would be no Midsommar without it. (JG)
The Lost Boys (1987) is about two brothers who move to a fictional seaside town in California, where they are alternately menaced and seduced by a gang of very gay-looking, leather-clad teenage vampires led by Keifer Sutherland. It’s not very scary (unlike Friday the 13th, it’s not really trying to be) but it’s an enjoyable romp with a fun soundtrack and its setting, with its boardwalks, beaches, arcade games and fairground rides, really feels like summer. While pop culture vampires tend to be brooding, Keifer and his pals are having a blast – why waste your eternal youth moping over Kristen Stewart when you could instead commit petty acts of public disorder and ride a bad-ass motorcycle? (JG)
The Final Girls (2015) is a horror-comedy about a teenage girl who gets sucked into a cheesy 1980s slasher film in which her mother, who in the real world recently died in a car accident, starred as an actress. It’s a pretty light and easygoing watch, which plays around with genre tropes in a similar way to Scream, but I found it unexpectedly poignant as the lead character teams up with the younger, fictional version of her mum. I’d recommend this one if you like horror films but don’t really enjoy being scared. (JG)
