Marshmallow had its festival debut at Panic Fest, 29 March 2025
Marshmallow, directed by Daniel DelPurgatorio and written by Andy Greskoviak, begins with a wet dream – or rather a liquid nightmare. Little Morgan (Kue Lawrence) is under water, only to wake in a bedroom flooding with water, and then, as he screams, water starts gushing from a gaping gash in his belly, until finally there is a flash to a subaqueous POV shot of Morgan’s grandfather Roy (Corbin Bernsen) reaching forwards.
Morgan is overwhelmed, at least metaphorically. Plagued with traumatic nightmares of drowning (following a childhood accident), and still working through his feelings about the recent death of his beloved grandfather, this shy, anxious boy is being sent, very much against his will, to summer camp, where his concerned mother (Alysia Reiner) and father (Todd M. Friedman) hope that he will at last make some friends, put away childish fears and do a bit of maturing. Camp Almar, after all, is advertised as a place “where hearts, bodies and minds come to grow” – although this haven of co-ed outdoor activities and games is also on a lake, inevitably forcing Morgan to confront his crippling aquaphobia. Depite being equally bullied not just by his aggressive dorm mate CJ (Dylan Friedman), but also by the jocky camp counsellor Kaszwar (Pierson Fode), Morgan manages to find a community of similar outsiders, including Pilar (Kai Cech) and Dirk (Max Malas), and starts to come out of his shell.
The sleepaway camp is a staple setting of cinema, whether for outdoor adolescent rites of passage (where children are freed from their parents’ control), or for vengeful summer slashings (where everyone is vulnerable to slaughter). Marshmallow gets to have it both ways, while also sharing its lodgings with other kinds of film too. For after counsellor Rachel (Giorgia Whigham) has told the assembled children a local campfire myth of a doctor who surgically transformed both patients and his own family into hybrid monsters, Morgan keeps seeing a figure in surgical scrubs and a lamped mask wandering the woodland site in the dark. Although Morgan’s claims are initially dismissed as just another of his nightmares, it is clear that something sinister is going on behind all the sunshine and smiles, turning this camp story into a monstrous genre hybrid sutured together from multiple scenarios (and semataries and Stepfords).
As young Morgan, prepubescent and on the cusp of change, finds he cannot trust the grown-ups around him, not even the camp director Hugh Collins (Paul Soter) or the kindly counsellor Franklin (Maxwell Whittington-Cooper), Marshmallow offers a child’s eye view on some very adult themes, and though soft-centred, ends on a note of bitterness. For here, as the kids, one way or the other, discover (their) nature, or at least learn it from the grown-ups around them, grief, trauma, indignation and deep-seated resentment, no matter how submerged, are bound eventually to resurface.
strap: Daniel DelPurgatorio’s horror sci-fi coming-of-age hybrid lets children find themselves in an increasingly sinister summer camp
© Anton Bitel
