Director's statement on Final summer

Final Summer is a film that wears a slasher mask, but underneath it carries something far more personal, painful, and emotionally real. On the surface, it’s a throwback to the summer-camp slashers I grew up watching. Beneath that surface, though, the story is rooted in something I lived through — an experience of sociopathic abuse, gaslighting, and psychological manipulation that left a lasting imprint on me.

Most people recognize horror when it’s loud: a jump scare, a scream, a weapon in the dark. But there’s another kind of horror that is much quieter and far more destructive: the horror of losing your sense of reality. The horror of someone twisting their words around yours until you question your perception. The horror of being blamed for things you didn’t do. The horror of being told, over and over, “This is your fault.”

That is the horror underneath Final Summer.

Linnea Krug is not a traditional slasher villain because the real monsters I’ve known never explained themselves, never confessed, never felt guilt. They didn’t monologue their motives. They didn’t reveal a tragic backstory. They hid behind professionalism, authority, and charm. And when confronted with the truth, they would say what Linnea says in the film:
“I’m not doing this. You’re doing this.”

To me, that is far more terrifying than any mask or machete.

Lexi’s journey is the arc of someone trying to navigate a shifting, hostile emotional landscape while trusting her instincts just enough to survive. Mike’s role in the story reflects how easily vulnerable, eager-to-please people can be manipulated into complicity without fully understanding how they got there. The camp itself is a place where trust erodes quietly, until the facade collapses and the truth is revealed too late.

I wanted the violence to feel chaotic and disturbing, yes — but I also wanted it to feel wrong, in the way real violence often does. Not operatic or glamorous, but disorienting. The killer’s “motive” is intentionally unclear because sociopaths rarely offer clarity. They thrive in ambiguity. They maintain control by denying responsibility.

That’s what Linnea represents.

The film is, in many ways, a metaphor for what it feels like to emerge from psychological abuse: confused, shaken, struggling to understand what really happened, and trying to piece together your sense of self. Survival is not triumphant — it’s messy and painful, but it’s still survival. That’s why Final Summer ends the way it does. It doesn’t hand out neat answers because real trauma rarely does.

I made this film as a horror story, but also as a healing process. It let me take something that happened to me — something dehumanizing, confusing, and destabilizing — and turn it into art, into narrative, into something I could look at from a distance. Making Final Summer helped me reclaim that part of my life.

If viewers walk away entertained, I’m grateful.
If they walk away unsettled, I’m satisfied.

If even a handful recognize the emotional truth beneath the surface, then the film has done exactly what I hoped it would.

— John Isberg
Director, Final Summer