Slightly disturbed and painfully shy Angela Baker is sent away to summer camp with her cousin. Not long after Angela's arrival, things start to go horribly wrong for anyone with sinister or less than honorable intentions.
Sleepaway Camp keeps defying every possible expectation of how a slasher movie is supposed to behave. It isn’t really scary or atmospheric, but the implements of death... are exceedingly gruesome and unprecedented.
80
IGN
Unnamed
You may argue whether it’s “good”, but damn it if Sleepaway Camp isn’t a super fun, crazy and, most importantly, an incredibly memorable movie
50
Slant Magazine
Ed Gonzalez
Seriously, watching Angela (and to a lesser extent Ricky) being targeted throughout the film is like watching a group of shrill brats shooting rocks at a baby bird—if it wasn’t so obvious that everyone’s non-stop cruelty was in service of some big-reveal, or if the performances weren’t so damn preening, the film would be completely intolerable.
Writer-director Robert Hiltzik tries to mask the poorly staged murder scenes and lousy effects with a perverse sense of humor, but it doesn't work. Some scenes, especially one involving a girl and a curling iron, are simply irredeemable.