The river runs red with blood at Camp Stillwater as we began DEAD OF SUMMER many years ago with an honest-to-god posse tracking down a mystery man and demanding to know what he did with “them”. Them, of course, being the multitude of corpses we see floating in the water.
Then it’s the 1980s and the counselors of Camp Stillwater (all former campers there themselves) are returning to the camp, along with the newbie, Amy. She seems hesitant and we soon see that the episode is littered with flashbacks to this strange young girl arriving at a new school. Something is bizarre and ominous as her mother tells her to be sure to fit in so that she can “succeed this time”.
Deborah Carpenter is the new camp director who has sunk everything she has into reopening it after it shut down years before. She wants to make things special and warns the counselors that there are only three days until the gates open and the camp returns to business. And groundskeeper Dave is an old relic of the camp and he’s very creepy. He’s also delivering ominous warnings to Amy that she has “no idea what this place is” as he warns her to leave one night.
As the counselors bond over the fire (see the sneak peek below), one of the campers brings up a serial killer, which leads the others to bring up scary stories. One of the boys points out how isolated they are in the woods and how easy it would be for someone to kill them. Of course, this will soon come to pass as horrible things start to happen at the camp.
A dead and gutted deer is found in the woods, creeping out the girls. Amy thinks that it was Dave who did this and tells Deborah that he threatened her the night before. But Deborah doesn’t think anything is wrong. Soon, however, she can’t deny that something is happening at Camp Stillwater. Ghosts are spotted in video cameras and Amy finds a dead body in the lake. And while no one but the viewers seem to notice that the trees are leaking blood, it’s clear that there is evil in this forest.
DEAD OF SUMMER premieres tonight (June 28) at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on Freeform (U.S.) and ABC Spark (Canada).
