Camp Hell

Every summer, children from a strict fundamentalist Catholic community in the suburbs of New Jersey attend Camp Hope, a secluded retreat hidden deep in the woods where the curriculum centers on sin and salvation. The head priest, Fr. Phineas McAllister, Bruce Davison, leads the lessons, pressing the idea that every thought and action carries the weight of sin and that temptations of the flesh must be acknowledged and controlled.

At the heart of this rigid world is Tommy Leary, Will Denton, a boy already haunted by the recent death of his grandfather and preoccupied with what lies beyond life. His innocent relationship with his childhood crush, Melissa, Valentina de Angelis, grows more intimate, and the two slip away into the woods for a private moment.

Melissa is caught and sent home, and the priest uses the incident to sharpen his grip on Tommy, turning moral panic into a real‑life torment as the boy begins to sense a demon haunting him. The atmosphere at Camp Hope thickens with fear, and the boundary between faith and superstition blurs as Tommy’s mind starts to fill with unsettling possibilities.

The priest’s methods intensify, blending psychological manipulation with spiritual drama, until the boy’s fear crystallizes into a palpable presence. Tommy’s world tightens around him, and the line between demonic belief and personal terror becomes dangerously hard to distinguish.

In a brutal culmination, Tommy confronts the priest in his cabin, a clash that drives him toward a suicide attempt. The emotional car‑crash of that moment leaves Fr. Phineas McAllister [Bruce Davison] with a grave stroke, and the community is left to decide whether to pull the plug, watching as the priest spends the rest of his life in a persistent vegetative state, eyes wide open, haunted by the events he set in motion.

On the drive home from the hospital, Tommy finds a note Melissa had given him telling him where to meet her again. He rolls down the window and tosses out a copy of Dante’s Inferno, and as the page skids along the road, a powerful image of a demon seems to emerge in the darkness ahead.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:57