John Carpenter’s Halloween is one of the most successful independent films of all time. Its budget ($300,000) to box-office results ($70,0000) made it the most profitable movie for a long time. It arguably started the slasher boom. It certainly helped create many of the tropes of the genre and spawned numerous imitators.
Friday the 13th was one of those imitators. Its massive success solidified the tropes, and it spawned its own imitators. The Burning is one.
I was far too young to have seen Halloween, Friday the 13th, or The Burning in theaters. But the success of the first two films meant I did see them years later on cable TV and home video. But The Burning was not so successful and thus didn’t get repeated on late-night TV. I don’t recall ever seeing it in the aisles of my local video stores. Which either means they didn’t carry it, or possibly that the VHS cover just wasn’t that memorable.
But lately it has been showing up in my feeds. I see it nearly every time I browse through my streaming services for something to watch, and it pops up regularly on my Bluesky and Reddit accounts. I don’t know why that is, except that we are probably all unknowingly led by the algorithm.
Presumably, The Burning is cheap to buy the rights to, which leads all the streaming services to put it on their services, presumably around this time of year. And then it adds that to the recommended lists of horror nerds like me. Some of us watch it, and then we talk about it on social media, which makes more people watch it, and that tells the algorithm to recommend it more, and the circle continues.
The Burning was also the first film credit for a young Jason Alexander, and Holly Hunter has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it role. No doubt that adds fuel to the algorithmic fire.
I finally watched it, and it’s not bad.
Like Friday the 13th, this one is set at a summer camp with a bunch of horny teens. Unlike it The Burning’s camp doesn’t have a horrible past. That would be another camp not far from Camp Stonewater. In our opening scene, we see some campers play a prank at the other camp. This is five years before the events of our story really begin. Camp Blackfoot is run by Cropsey, an alcoholic arsehole whom the kids all detest. Their prank goes wrong, and Cropsey finds himself burned alive. He doesn’t die, but is grotesquely mutilated. Five years later, he gets out of the hospital and starts chopping up kids at Camp Stonewater (Blackfoot having been shut down after the incident).
At Camp Stonewater, we get the usual nonsense with the usual assortment of characters. There is the awkward nerd, the buff jerk trying to make it with the hot girl, the attractive counselor and his girl, and the jokester (Jason Alexander). Plus an assortment of others playing pranks, sports, and generally goofing around.
It is all more or less done well. There is nothing new here, but the characters are enjoyable enough. There is a lot of stalking by the killer in the first half. The now-common view of things from the killer’s POV from behind some bushes and the like happens quite a bit. That amuses me. The killer stalks these kids for like two days before he does any killing. Funny to think of this burned-up man standing around in the trees all that time just spying on them.
The older kids (who make up our main cast and get rid of most of the extras) go on a long canoe ride for a couple of days. That’s when the killings begin. The killings are pretty good (the effects were done by Tom Savini). Who lives and who dies is a little surprising. And the conclusion is pretty cool.
I’m using faint praise because this isn’t a great movie. It isn’t as good as Halloween or the original Friday the 13th, but it is better than a lot of slashers, and if you like the genre, then this is well worth watching.
