Interview: How Billy Bryk, Finn Wolfhard, and Fred Hechinger Found the Contemporary Sincerity of Their Coming-of-Age Slasher Comedy ‘Hell of a Summer’

Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk are nearly half as old as the first Friday the 13th movie, making them promising candidates to overhaul the iconic 80s horror franchise template for a Gen-Z audience. The pair’s co-directed summer camp slasher send-up-cum-homage Hell of a Summer (the feature directorial debut for each) takes the masked-killer-in-the-woods set-up and sketches in the details with personalities distinct to the 2020s, wearing a winking grin as it fleshes out the new types of stereotypical teens that can be inserted into a slasher movie to be sequentially picked off. No longer is it the simple jocks, nerds, stoners, and final girl. Now it’s the TikTok makeup tutorial girl, the vegan, the occult and astrology-obsessed, the hypochondriac—even Bryk’s own cool-guy character Bobby is partially defined by his insecurities.

Taken from that perspective, Hell of a Summer is a slasher update that sees some sense of humor in an anxious new age filled with personas that, in some ways, haven’t gotten any less self-obsessed. It follows Jason Hochberg (Fred Hechinger) who, at 24, is a wide-eyed, aggressively earnest camp counselor past his adolescent prime and out of step with his teenage peers, but who can’t let go of his beloved summers at Camp Pineway. He arrives at camp for a counselor’s weekend before the kids arrive, with the assorted crew of other counselors partially filled out by Bryk, and Wolfhard as Chris. Jason is merely doing his best to plan some meaningful activities for the weekend, as well as sort out his feelings for co-counselor Claire (Abby Quinn), when bodies start turning up murdered. Suddenly, we’ve got a horror throwback primed for young adults raised on the internet and the films Hell of a Summer reveres alike: your usual horror suspects, but also coming-of-age and romantic comedy genre-benders such as Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead.  

While on their theatrical tour for Hell of a Summer, I caught up with writers, directors, and stars Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, along with star and producer Fred Hechinger, to discuss directing from an actor’s perspective, crafting empathetic contemporary teenage personas, and which of them would stand the best chance in a slasher scenario.

Trace Sauveur: Rapid-fire ice-breaker: Which one of you is surviving the longest in a summer camp slasher situation?

Fred Hechinger: Well, we’ve kind of agreed that Matthew Finlan, who plays Ezra in the movie–

Billy Bryk: Well, he said which one of us. 

Hechinger: Oh, the three of us!

Bryk: But yes, I agree, Matthew Finlan.

Hechinger: He’s been established as the most likely to…

Bryk: MLTS.

Hechinger: Right, exactly.

Finn Wolfhard: What is that?

Bryk: Most likely to survive.

Hechinger: So yeah, him in terms of our cast, because he’s just really outdoorsy and all that stuff. For us…

Woflhard: I feel like it changes day-to-day. Actually, I think I’d last… not a very long time. But to be honest, the whole reason I think we could survive is because we wrote this movie and our characters are kind of cowards that run away and don’t die. So I feel like that’s what would happen in real life.

Bryk: It was a real challenge for me to be playing that. Like it was so against my type.

Wolfhard: Right.

Bryk: It just goes to show my range as a performer, really. 

Wolfhard: Yeah, it was like we were playing the opposite versions of ourselves.

Sauveur: There’s a very valid strategy to being a coward in this scenario. 

Hechinger: Cowardice goes a long way when it comes to a slasher movie.

Wolfhard: I do think in some ways we would step up in our own way, like in the movie. We would all care about each other and try to save each other’s lives, but in our own sort of cowardly way.

Sauveur: Can you guys speak to how this little tour you’re running for the movie right now has been going? What’s it been like getting new audience reactions to the film? I know it’s been quite a while since it initially premiered at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). 

Bryk: It’s amazing. It’s such an old-school way of promoting a movie. I mean, we just love the idea of taking it around, showing it places and bringing this bus around. It feels of the era of the movies that we really were inspired by to write this movie. So it feels like the perfect way to be showing it. And yeah it has been a little while so it’s awesome to have some distance from that initial premiere, which felt like such a sprint to get there. We’ve just been trying to enjoy it as much as possible. The crowds so far have been awesome. 

Wolfhard: The tour aspect is funny because even though we’re not a band, it’s sometimes like…you know, we’re three 20-something guys on a couch and it just feels like we’re answering boy band questions. It’s very funny. But it’s been great.

Sauveur: As for the movie itself, horror comedies often struggle to toe the line between self-awareness and genuine story and character development. How did you manage to stay emotionally grounded in Hell of a Summer, especially while playing with slasher genre tropes?

Bryk: That’s a great question. That was our goal from the beginning: for everything to feel grounded, and all the comedy to come from the characters, and for it to feel like these are weirdly realistic, valid ways of responding. Because I think something that often happens in these movies is you set up these characters and then when the kills start happening those character traits sort of fly out the window and it just becomes priority number one to survive. And that didn’t feel really accurate to real life to us in a way. There’s something funny and sad and true about the fact that when people are in peril and in danger, they’re still themselves, they’re still worried about how they’re being perceived, especially teenagers who are really insecure. 

So to answer your question, I mean, all the humor really felt like it had to be grounded from the characters and then elevated for the horror situation around it. Finding that balance of never getting too upsetting, never going too far with a kill that we couldn’t come back and have a fun, sort of cute, romantic scene between two people. And then to that same point, never getting absurd to the point where it felt like the stakes weren’t real and that these deaths weren’t really impactful and important.

Sauveur: How did you approach playing with contemporary teen stereotypes, especially contrasted against Fred’s character? There’s a real earnestness in his awkwardness and that “aging out” tension as he guides the viewer through this story.

Hechinger: To me, there’s something really funny about the scariest and most suspicious trait is being earnest and seemingly genuine. In his bones, Jason wants the best for everyone and wants to see the best in everyone. And it immediately was very funny to us that that was such a suspicious thing to all these other characters. And then another thing that Billy was speaking to that I think was really important for every character was that they can’t help but be themselves for better or worse. It’s certainly true of Jason that how he reacts to the killing is that it escalates his worldview and his belief in people. I think it’s just true of every character that their eccentricities don’t go away. This ensemble is such a wonderful group of actors. It was really thrilling to see everyone become their characters in unique ways. Noelle (Julia Lalonde), for instance, even though she’s a goth character, there’s a brightness to her that I think is true to people we know who are goth, but that I don’t think I’ve seen in a movie before. Everybody in the movie was both a type in the way that when you’re in a group dynamic, you’re kind of forced to be a type, and also ultimately still eccentrically themselves, and isn’t really a type at the end of the day.

Bryk: I think also, just in terms of the writing process, writing any character trope is going to just be filtered through our own experiences and our own perspective as young people. So I think we couldn’t help but develop a contemporary element with each character just because these are the people that we know. And it’s like, jocks are still jocks, but also the jocks we grew up around are just a little bit different and a little bit more specific in funny, small ways that would differentiate themselves from a jock from an 80s movie. But, broad strokes, there are really a lot of similarities. That’s something we talked about a lot, that Gen-Z isn’t all that different from other generations. And I think that there’s a big mistake in filmmaking with this unnecessary divide of being like, “Well, I don’t understand this generation. We have nothing in common.” And our idea was that you actually have a lot in common. These movies that you grew up loving about coming of age, we grew up loving those as well. Those are still relatable to us now. So these are young characters but I think that these experiences would be very relatable to people who were teenagers or young people at any time.

Wolfhard: And even just with the Jason character being so earnest and nice—we live in a time where everything is so sort of winky and cynical. There are obviously films that aren’t like that but there are times where a lot of popular films or media can be kind of, you know, too meta or too winky or whatever it is. So like just the idea that the one time someone’s actually earnest everyone’s like, “Ew, what the fuck’s wrong with you?” And I don’t know what that is. 

Bryk: And part of that also comes from my dynamic with my family. My brother’s a very earnest, very sweet guy, in a way that I am so not comfortable with. So we’ll be out for dinner, and he’s like, “Let’s go around the table and everyone says something you love about the other person.” I’m like, “Dude, fuck off. What the hell?” And then they’d break me down and force me to try to do it. And I started, like, crying at the table. I don’t want to process those emotions. There’s a lot of people who feel that way. And there is something so funny about being weirded out by someone just being kind and nice and speaking their truth, and Jason is sort of the epitome of that.

Sauveur: I’m interested in what you brought up, Billy, about these two disparate generations not being all that different from each other because that was ultimately what I took away from the movie. Despite these characters having a little bit of a different sense of specificity to them, they’re still going through that same sense of coming-of-age. And even though the movie takes playful jabs at Gen-Z stereotypes—like the influencer, the astrology girl, the vegan—it never feels mean-spirited, and they all have their own moments of vulnerability. I’m thinking of things like Billy’s character, Bobby, and his moments of insecurity, like the bike stunt scene.

Bryk: It’s really rewarding to hear you say that because being able to have fun and sort of make fun of these characters while coming from a place of love and a place of like… these are people who are funny and that we just have a lot of sympathy for. There are elements of Bobby which I love making fun of, but I also think that there’s something really sweet. He’s just so insecure, and there’s something funny and endearing about that to me. We never wanted to feel like we were talking down to the audience either. There’s stuff that we can just acknowledge, but we never wanted to feel like we were finger-wagging at anybody. We just wanted to use all of those elements as a way to add a little bit of texture and color to the movie and also explore that in a way that felt funny to us.

Wolfhard: And the characters that survive, without giving too much away, I feel like all of them, in some way, end up doing the right thing. And no matter how selfish or self-involved any of our characters are in the end, and this can be up for argument too, but I feel like everyone does the right thing in their own way.

Bryk: Anyone can be heroic in their own way. That’s kind of the main idea of the movie. And even with my character and his arc of being someone who’s very insecure and sort of tries to weasel himself out of every situation, and who talks a big game but can never back it up—the idea for his arc is that he doesn’t step up in the way that he wants to step up, but he steps up in the way that’s needed of him. That is something that was cool to me, and even if he doesn’t really notice what he does because he’s still preoccupied with other stuff, I thought that was a sweet little button to his story.

Sauveur: When directing your fellow actors, did your experiences as actors shape the way you gave notes or directed specific scenes? This question goes for you too, Fred—did you notice a distinct approach from Finn and Billy that helped you as a performer?

Hechinger: I think they’re masterful at making a comfortable space for everybody in terms of the acting of it. I guess it’s chicken and the egg—like if they hadn’t acted maybe they would still be able to do that but because they’re such good actors and beforehand they’ve worked on different sets, there’s no way that that doesn’t contribute to their experiential understanding of what can feel like a freeing set versus what can feel like a stifled set. And so yeah, that was a big thing. Something else, I think by design, taking over the summer camp was a really intelligent way of making a first film because it meant, from a practical standpoint, if it started raining, we could move from the archery area into a cabin and switch to another scene in a very agile, quick way without losing a day of filming. And so I think there was a real understanding of the practicalities of a film set so that they could prioritize the more important storytelling aspects rather than getting lost within production issues.

Bryk: Yeah, it’s really helpful having acting experience as a director. And for any director, I think there’s real value in acting a little bit or just trying to put yourself in those shoes. And then on the flip side, I think as an actor I was always interested in filmmaking, so I always was wanting to think about things as a filmmaker—never trying to insert myself into it where I was unwanted but just being aware of it. I kind of can’t help but see them together in some ways. And when I’m reading a script as an actor or as a filmmaker, it’s the same instinct. It’s all about, what does the story need? And then you just figure what you need to do in order to help achieve that. But I definitely felt comfortable in my role. 

Wolfhard: Yeah, me too. I think that there’s a certain kind of… maybe a certain kind of sensitivity, or a way of speaking, or shorthand that I think actors like to hear from directors. And I’m sure we messed up many times, but I do feel like overall being directed by someone who understands acting really helps because it makes you feel like you’re really with each other and that you are on the same team. You’re making something together rather than directing something like, “You stand there and do this.” As an actor, I feel like a lot of times that’s what it is. And that can be great in its own way, but sometimes knowing what it’s like to be an actor and having the language, or just knowing what it’s like to be on that side of it, really does help. 

Bryk: The only weird thing is giving a scene partner a note. We got over that, but there is just something… like when you’re acting with someone and you have to be like, “That was great. That was so funny. I need you to do it this way.” 

Wolfhard: I think everyone got the memo, though. 

Bryk: No, yeah, I don’t think it was weird for them, I think if anything was weird for all of us. It feels like you’re doing what you’re not supposed to be doing with experience as an actor, but as a director, it’s the most important thing you’re supposed to be doing. But the cast was amazing. So there was no issue ever.

Sauveur: Obviously, Friday the 13th is a big reference point for this, but were there other specific slashers or films in general that influenced Hell of a Summer or your performances?

Hechinger: A lot of the inspirations that we talked about were also comedies and coming-of-age comedies, and then certain horror comedies. Shaun of the Dead is something that we’ve discussed a bit. Because even though slashers are, of course, a foundational inspiration, in many ways, to me, this is a character-driven coming-of-age comedy that takes place at a slasher camp. And so that was done by a lot of the filmmaking, but in terms of how we thought about the characters and the scene work, that wasn’t really the reference from that side of it.

Wolfhard: Well, yeah, because we were trying to make the scenes feel so grounded, weirdly the things that we would reference wouldn’t be slashers because there are a lot of slashers that are pretty campy and fun and really great, but aren’t as grounded. And so the stuff that we’d reference in scenes where we’re dealing with kind of slasher beats or kills were weirdly completely different genres like comedies. Or if there was a kill going on, but then there was also this kind of beating heart in the scene, like a scene between Jason and Claire and there was still something scary going on, our mind was not on giving notes to try to make it feel more like a slasher movie, it was usually to try to make it almost like a romantic comedy or a romantic drama. And that’s kind of what informs the horror, and the horror feeds back into that.

Bryk: And then also because the setting is so classic in so many of those slasher films from the 80s, there was something to be said for us wanting it to feel a little bit like those movies without feeling like we’re trying to emulate those movies. We shot digitally. We didn’t want to do a film emulation thing where we’re trying to cheat film. The process is getting better, but I just don’t love the look. So instead it was like, okay, what can we take from those movies to achieve this similar warmth and coziness that a lot of them have even in the darkness, but then update that so it’s not ultra-grainy? But even the way that we’re lighting scenes and the way that we’re thinking about the blocking is sort of drawing inspiration from the way those films felt. And then even in the sound design it was, how can we be processing these sound effects to have that kind of timeless quality? There was this cricket noise we kept looking for—you’ll watch an older movie, and there’s this really warm, textured cricket ambiance. I wanted to feel like we’re in Stand By Me without us knowing that visually, we just feel like it. So there was a lot that went into those decisions to try to evoke a similar feeling of watching it but almost in a subconscious way. We almost wanted the audience to feel it and not really notice why. And then, like, the first Halloween, and how that movie is blocked and lit is just so genius, that stuff is exciting as well.

Wolfhard: And even running some music cues through a tape machine, or specifically I think there was this analog plug-in actually that we used that was still digital and ran it through, you know, just to give it some kind of texture.

Sauveur: Awesome. Thanks for talking to me guys, and congrats on the film.

Hell of a Summer will be released only in theaters on April 4, 2025 by NEON.