My Thoughts on Glamping
Lowlifes was one of my favorite horror films of 2024, released by Tubi and it went a bit under the radar I think, and this year they have released Match, which was interesting, so I thought I would give their most recent horror film a try, titled Glamping.
Glamping features an influencer getaway that turns into a nightmare, which seems tailor made for the kind of self-aware, campy slasher that could be fun, but what Glamping delivers is a very slow, occasionally interesting, but mostly empty film that only remembers it’s supposed to be a horror movie once it’s almost over.
We follow Olivia, an influencer whose life is falling apart, and where she’s been passed over for a promotion, loses followers after a messy public incident, and eventually loses her job altogether - not the best luck ever.
Desperate to clear her head and maybe get some content out of the trip, she goes glamping - “glamorous camping,” for those unfamiliar - with her boyfriend and a few friends, and that’s when the masked killer enters the picture - rather, that’s when he eventually enters the picture.
The first hour of Glamping plays like a lukewarm influencer drama about career anxiety and social media burnout, and there are long stretches of conversation that don’t reveal much about the characters, and the tension between Olivia and her boyfriend feels more like filler than foundation.
It’s not that I expected Shakespeare, but you always want/need a little bite - some energy, some unease - but everything just sort of hums along quietly until it finally remembers to do something.
I can see what the filmmakers were going for here, and I think they wanted to mislead the audience, to make us feel safe before pulling the rug out - an old trick, and when it works, it can be great, but here, the buildup is too long and too flat.
There are a few bright spots buried under all the waiting though, and I actually liked Olivia as a character, as she’s self-absorbed but not unbearable, and there’s something sympathetic about her downfall.
Rosemary Idisi plays her with just enough warmth that you want her to find a way out of this mess, even when she’s making bad decisions, but the rest of the group doesn’t leave much of an impression, though, as they mostly fill the space around her, talking, arguing, and drinking, like background noise that occasionally blurts out a line to remind you they’re still there.
For a small production, the visuals are clean and the location has a nice isolated charm, where the woods feel quiet and still, which works once the movie finally decides to be unsettling, but as said, the problem is that there’s nothing to latch onto before that point. You can have a great setting, but if you spend an hour of your film sitting around it doing nothing, the atmosphere fades fast.
When the horror finally shows up, though, things start to click, at least a little, and the last twenty minutes are where the movie actually comes alive. Without spoiling too much, it takes an interesting turn that finally does something clever with the influencer angle.
A lot of horror movies that play with online culture end up feeling condescending or out of touch, but this one has a small flash of insight about how far people will go for attention and how easily that can be twisted into something darker, and while it’s not mind-blowing, but it was at least something.
I wouldn’t say the ending redeems the rest of the movie, but it softens the blow a bit, and it’s almost feels like the director had one really good idea and didn’t quite know how to build the rest of the movie around it.
If Glamping had started closer to where it ended, it might’ve worked better instead of of feeling so stretched - like someone took a solid short film concept and inflated it to feature length without adding enough in between to justify it.
What frustrates me is that there’s potential here, as I do like the idea of using influencer culture as the backbone for a horror story, as it’s a world built on perception, performance, and false intimacy - all things that horror can play with in interesting ways.
Glamping brushes against that idea, but never digs in, as it’s more comfortable showing Olivia cry over losing her followers than exploring what that actually means, and it's clear the film wants to say something about online identity, but it just stops short of doing so.
Glamping is not that good - but those last few minutes might surprise you a bit.
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