Cruel Summer

Cruel Summer is about a young autistic boy named Danny trying to get some peace by going camping on his own. Meanwhile three other teenagers Nicholas, Julia and Calvin are searching for him to take revenge for something that he has apparently done.

This was a hard watch and the fact that it apparently is based on true events makes the whole thing even worse. On one side you watch Danny just being happy that he has some time on his own being camping and texting his parents how much fun he has. You have calm and peaceful music and really start to empathize with him.

On the other hand you have the three teenagers and follow them through their daily shenanigans searching for Danny. You can immediately tell that Nicholas is the driving force. He is an absolute douchebag and you wish nothing good for him. Julia is just a follower that does everything that Nicholas says without thinking twice. And then there's Calvin whose the only one with a backbone, he questions Nicholas deeds and his search for revenge on Danny. This creates a strong contrasts dependent on who is on screen and how you feel about these characters.

A little bit over half way through the movie they find Danny and start harassing him. It starts off slow but their behavior gets worse by the minute. Like I said this was a really hard watch and definitely was able to set free some emotions. But the movie really takes a time before it starts going. It explores our characters which for me started to get boring after some time. The movie felt longer than it is and with 80 minutes runtime it already is a pretty short movie. However I enjoyed watching it and therefore I think it's underrated. [5,6/10]

So it's based on a true story. Loosely based on from something I remember about a handicapped boy being tortured.

This film was just basically 3/4 of scummy people being scummy, no interesting plot whatsoever, 1/4 horrific torture and violence. The end.

It didn't even make sense other than the main nasty character just felt like going after this autistic boy because he was a complete and utterly psychopath? Because he could?!

The story would of been better told by having the horrific incident in the middle and the legal outcome and the effect on his parents to complete the story's end.

For me it was just horrific to watch and it very much felt like violence for violence sake. I didn't enjoy it, neither could I respect it as a film.

I gave this film a 9 due to sentimental reasons. As a parent of an autistic child, this film brought out the cruelty of human beings and also the vulnerability.

The acting by the three stooges at times was a bit meh, but the acting of Danny was spot on.

I hope the film shows awareness towards people who are a bit different. Autism isn't a disease.

The film also shows those individuals as bullies. This is reality folks.

A short film which shows the good and bad in people.

This film implies it's based on a true story which I think is dishonest. It's loosely "inspired" by a few different notable violent crimes. Presenting it as based-on-a-true-story is a cheap way to make their movie seem more legitimate. The main characters are trashy and uninteresting. No depth. No real emotion. To the reviewer favorably comparing this to Bully and Boys Don't Cry, you are either part of the film crew or completely ignorant when it comes to filmmaking and story telling. This film is somehow managed to be pretensious and trashy at the same time.

Like another reviewer said, I suspect the producer's intention was a cash in on gratuitous violence, rather than exploring the story and making a commentary. I do not mind tragic movies, but this was not done right in my opinion. Inasmuch as it's based on a true story, this movie must be very hurtful for the relatives of the protagonist.

Distasteful cinema and a missed opportunity. It just left me angered at the filmmakers as much as the evil characters depicted. The latter were too simplistically portrayed. None of the actors were actually bad though.