Welcome back to week #2 (heh) here at B-Movie Enema’s Camp Crappabuttawipe!

This week, we’re looking at something a little bit different… A horror movie taking place at a camp that is not just new, but more than just a generic slasher film. We’re reviewing 2025’s Marshmallow from director Daniel DelPergatorio and writer Andy Greskoviak.

I think we need to focus right there on that director’s name. Daniel DelPergatorio is a hell of a name for a horror director. That name sounds like he’s Danel of the Purgatory. And… well, what do you know? That’s actually how his name translates from Spanish. That’s fuckin’ rad. What’s also pretty fuckin’ rad is that I already know his work. He served as co-director for the 2009 animated short Tales of the Black Freighter that was released alongside Zak Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen. The Black Freighter story was interwoven into Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen story, but, for very obvious logistical reasons, would not be able to be added to the live-action film’s flow. Still, that’s pretty awesome that DelPergatorio worked on that as his directorial debut.

Greskoviak is a little fresher to the scene. He previously wrote the 2021 zombie black comedy Black Friday that featured Devon Sawa, Bruce Campbell, and Michael Jai White. Marshmallow is a bit more of a serious project than that one. Marshmallow deals with secrets and campfire tales coming to life, which then causes the campers to question their own actual existence. So, some pretty heavy stuff with a throwback to the classic days of horror, taking place out in the great outdoors.

This movie was shot in northern Kentucky, right next to the Ohio River and Indiana border. Production took place during the late spring and early summer of 2023. The premiere was at Panic Fest in Kansas City in March 2025. A few weeks later, it got a brief U.S. theater release before getting picked up for a pretty extensive digital home video release.

The movie captured some pretty decent attention from horror critics. In fact, it is through my co-host over at Film Seizure, Jason Oliver, that I know this was definitely worth a look. So, if this sucks, it’s his fault, okay? I’m kidding. He told me about it, I got curious to look into it, and yeah, I think this is gonna be a good time. So let’s do this thing!

As I get started, just a reminder… This review will get into SPOILERS. So beware. Since this is a pretty new movie compared to most we review around here, if you want to watch the movie before reading further, do so now and come on back afterwards!

The movie begins with a kid lying in his bed having a nightmare about drowning in a lake. He wakes up from the nightmare, and he’s horrified to find that his bedroom is flooded, and it sounds like rain is leaking through the roof onto him and making the flood worse. Soon, he sees that his stomach is erupting with water from what appears to be a pretty nasty gash. The nightmarish opening ends with the title card for the movie.

The next day, the kid tries making some friends with other neighborhood kids, but it doesn’t go well. He’s too small. They are crude and mock him. The kid, Morgan, is lonely. He’s new to town. His grandfather (played by Corbin Bernsen) tries to make Morgan feel more excited about going to summer camp. Morgan feels like he’s being sent to camp, but Grandpa tells him that he met some of his best friends at camp. Besides, you get to screw around (sometimes with ladies), and he’ll get time away from his parents and their lame rules.

…and those asshole kids across the street.

After dinner, Grandpa collapses and appears to die of a heart attack. Before that, Grandpa gave Morgan a pocket knife, which he carries with him everywhere. The morning he leaves for camp, his mom gives him another pep talk about going off to camp.

At Camp Almar, the staff and counselors get ready for the kids’ arrival. These are your run-of-the-mill camp employees you see in a lot of these movies. There’s the one who is a bit serious and something of a taskmaster. There’s the jock who always goes around with his shirt off and pumping a dumbbell. There’s a stoner, a horny chick, and so forth. The whole roster is here!

At camp, Morgan checks in, and gets immediately ignored (and likely later bullied) by one of his roommates, CJ. CJ is the son of one of his dad’s co-workers. When he gets to the lake for welcome orientation, he meets a girl named Pilar, whom he takes a shine to. He also meets Dirk. Dirk is labeled both “Doink” when Kazswar, the head boys’ counselor, can’t read his near-illegible nametag, and “Doink the Oink” due to the few extra pounds he carries. Kazswar is a massive douche. He was the one we saw earlier, always walking around without his shirt and pumping a dumbbell.

I look forward to Kazswar’s grizzly demise.

At the lake, Morgan tells the counselors that he doesn’t swim. In truth, he can’t swim due to his fear of water. I can relate. His nightmares, which plague him consistently, center around water and drowning. The lead camp coordinator, Rachel, and Morgan’s cabin counselor, Franklin, say that if he doesn’t get in the water and do a particular activity, he will lose water privileges for the entire summer. Morgan accepts, and he’s sent back to his cabin. On the way, he’s tripped by CJ. So, yeah… I was right. CJ is a dickhead bully.

Later that night, Morgan is sitting at the campfire and sees what looks like a shadowy figure watching. When Dirk sits down next to Morgan, startling him, the figure disappears. Dirk brings two of his roommates, Sam and Raj, and now there are more friends for Morgan as he tries to fit in.

Soon, Rachel begins telling the spooky campfire story about “the Doctor…”

As the story goes, back before the camp existed, there used to be many cabins all over the woods. One of the cabins was the private summer home of a doctor, his wife, and their children. The Doctor had one rule when they were there – they were not allowed to enter the basement. Every night, the Doctor would lock himself in the basement of the cabin. One night, the Doctor’s wife followed him to the basement. She discovered he mutilated people in his basement, turning them into monsters. When the wife tried to escape, he captured her and sewed her and their kids together into one creature. In time, the cabins were all torn down, especially the Doctor’s, and Camp Almar was built on top of those demolished cabins.

If you don’t go to bed when you’re supposed to, you might see the Doctor roaming the woods looking for his lost cabin…

While Pilar checks in on Morgan after he got bullied at the dock, she assures him the story about the Doctor is not real. Camps are dark and creepy places as they are, so it’s easy for counselors to make up stories to help keep the kids in line and not break curfew. In a really sweet little detail, she walks him all the way back to his cabin only to later reveal that her cabin is nowhere near his. She claims that the story about the Doctor scared her so much that she just wanted to walk with him so he wouldn’t be scared.

Later still, Morgan is in the bathroom and hears a strange noise. When he gets back to his cabin, he sees a strange man with a light for a face. Morgan goes to Rachel, who reminds him that he struggles with nightmares. The Doctor is not real, just a spooky story they tell the campers. No matter what he thinks he saw, it was all some sort of lucid nightmare.

Okay, maybe CJ is a dick. Maybe the story about the Doctor is scary. His nightmares are a problem, and he can’t swim, but Morgan’s time at camp takes an uptick on the next day when things start to blossom between him and Pilar. She suggests they go on a reading date when Morgan reveals that he likes to read a lot of books. Before leaving for her cabin’s birdwatching hike, she gives him three Strawberry Starbursts. Dirk, Sam, and Raj tease him about having a girlfriend before they go off to do some fun camp stuff.

After another run-in with CJ that leads to the bully yelling and pushing Morgan, Morgan tries to tell Pilar and Dirk about the encounter. He tells them that he thought CJ was different. He doesn’t exactly know what to base that on, but he was just acting weird and not like he had during the first few days of camp. I mean, I guess the pushing and the yelling weren’t that different, but it wasn’t the normal aggro shit from that turd. Dirk plays it off as puberty. Pilar just thinks that boys are weird.

CJ approaches and asks to talk to Morgan. He apologizes and says that he would like to reset and start fresh. He says he’d like to get to the stuff they haven’t gotten to yet… Like Morgan’s swim test. He pushes Morgan into the water, and while he flails, Raj confronts CJ. This leads to CJ tackling Raj and beating the shit out of him. While underwater, Morgan has a vision of his grandfather reaching for him and pulling him out of the water. Kazswar performs CPR on Morgan, saving him, while the other counselors pull CJ off Raj. As they try to pull CJ away, he violently struggles against it as if he’s possessed.

Morgan’s nightmares seem to focus specifically on water, which ties to his fear of drowning, and a scary version of his grandfather. His grandfather’s last words were, “I can see you now.” That comes up again in his nightmares as his grandfather angrily yells the same thing at him as they sit across from each other at the dinner table back home. Waking up from one of these nightmares, Morgan walks around the campground and sees a strange glowing light inside one of the cabins where supplies are kept. The lights seem to be coming from both another room… and a basement.

When he explores further, he finds CJ on a gurney with his ribcage sawed open and his guts and torso bits that are supposed to be inside on the outside. He also finds other kids on more gurneys. The masked man with the smooth, black, expressionless, featureless helmet arrives and tries to grab Morgan, but he uses his grandfather’s picket knife to stab the scary figure in the foot before escaping.

Morgan goes to wake up Raj, Dirk, and Sam to tell them what he saw. Raj tells Morgan he is done dealing with his nightmares and visions. The Doctor is not real. That’s, of course, when the Doctor approaches behind him and uses a cattle prod to zap him unconscious. As the kids flee and begin to panic, the figure chases after them. He zaps some of them unconscious. Dirk, Sam, and Morgan try to find a place to hide while Rachel and Kazswar try to direct kids to the mess hall for safety.

Morgan and his friends escape and go to Pilar’s cabin to help her get away. At first, she and another girl aren’t so sure the boys are telling the truth. Well, the Doctor shows up and proves what they are saying to be real. They run near the mess hall, but Morgan says he doesn’t think they can even trust Rachel enough to go to the mess hall for safety.

Franklin confronts the Doctor and asks what he is doing, and pleads with the figure to stop. The Doctor just pushes him to the ground and keeps on walking. The kids make it to the boathouse, where Dirk is excited to have an oar to use as a weapon. Sam and the other girl, Caroline, agree that they should use one of the boats to escape. Pilar points out that this is a lake. Even if they get to the other side, they are still in the woods. Morgan isn’t sure it’s a good idea to split up.

Morgan explains why he will not go with the boat idea even if everyone else goes. Where he and his family lived before moving to their new house, they had a pool. He fell in once and was saved by his grandfather. He basically associates water with losing his breath and being helpless. So, ever since, he’s had no interest or ability to learn how to swim. He tells them to go without him. He won’t stop anyone from getting to safety. Dirk says they will all stick together and not leave anyone behind.

Kazswar enters the boathouse. The kids hide from him until Sam pops out to seek safety. When they leave the boathouse, the Doctor is waiting for them outside. Kazswar hands Sam over to the Doctor and tells him that he’s friends with Morgan.

So… That’s the first couple of twists to be revealed. The Doctor is a sort of real story… At least there is someone who menaces the campgrounds. The counselors and staff are all involved in some way with this figure. This is not just Kazswar. The kids gathered in the mess hall are all zapped by the figure as Rachel helped herd them there for him.

Dirk, Morgan, and Pilar continue to seek safety, but Caroline has split off from the rest of them. She falls down a hill and has a nasty injury from a branch getting stuck in her leg. Still, Caroline is able to limp along to try to find a way out of the camp. Back at the camp, Dirk, Morgan, and Pilar run into Franklin. He gives them a code to the main staff building. There, Morgan tries using the telephone to call for help, but the phone doesn’t work. Morgan finds CJ’s file, which talks about a “malfunction” that makes him aggressive.

The camp counselors regroup, and Rachel figures out that Franklin has aided the kids who are still unaccounted for. Kazswar goes to the main staff building to get the kids. Dirk tells Morgan and Pilar to hide while he deals with Kazswar, who is really pissed off about being hit with an oar by Dirk earlier. So he tricks him and lets him inside so he can hit him again. Unfortunately, he is unaware that Rachel is behind him to zap him. Meanwhile, Caroline gets to the main road and finds a passing cop. The cop returns with Caroline to hand her over to be captured.

After the cop delivered Caroline, Rachel initiates something called “Rollback Protocol.” What’s that? Well, they plan to erase the kids’ memories of what happened that night. Now, you might be wondering, how they can do that… Also, what’s this about CJ having “malfunctions?” Are they robots? Are they Stepford Kids?

Well… Not really. Morgan and Pilar discover that every kid there has some personal file that lists both their Date of Birth (DOB) and Date of Death (DOD). Morgan pieces together that his grandfather’s last words, “I get to see you now,” are about the fact that he gets to see Morgan in the afterlife. Every kid who was sent to this camp, at some point, died tragically. Basically, the kids were cloned and recreated to help their grieving parents. This isn’t the only camp like this in the country, but not every kid is perfectly recreated and adjusts appropriately back into their lives. For example, CJ is not well-adjusted and requires a lot more work to be done, and that’s why he’s so aggressive. It ties back to something one of the staff said about him still having a “lot of work” needed.

Pilar and Morgan confront the camp staff and flat-out ask if they are dead. The guy who appeared to be the main boss at the camp, Collins, explains that they aren’t dead because they were never born. What they are now are “approximations” of what they could have been. Collins doesn’t exactly see them as actual “kids” even though they feel fear and cry when scared. He lost his son some years ago, and all he wants to do is try to help families stay together after a tragedy.

While the rest of the staff work on the kids to erase their memories, Franklin gives Morgan and Pilar all the details. They are not human. They are not robots. They bleed, eat, and drink. They come here every summer for tweaking. They grow a little bit. They go through some form of puberty. They return home a little older than they were when they left. Franklin is a senior programmer, so sometimes he has to play one of the doctors. That outfit that they wear is what they wear when they do their work on the kids. They tell the story about the Doctor to scare the kids into staying in their bunks.

Franklin offers Morgan and Pilar a choice. They can drink some drugged hot chocolate and wake up with no memories of what they learned, or they can remember everything they learned and were told about what happened to them. The next morning, the kids all wake up at camp. Some of the counselors have injuries that they didn’t have the day before, but these are explained away in a not-so-believable manner, but it works because kids are easy to lie to. They’re largely pretty dumb.

Morgan chose to remember everything, but while he decides to go for a swim and overcome that fear, Collins receives a report from higher-ups that the children are glitching badly and more frequently than before. They are becoming violent, and it’s requiring a lot of resources to get the situation under control. As he receives this report, a bloodied Pilar enters his room after killing Rachel and ready to kill him now.

Marshmallow is a surprising sci-fi thriller. I really didn’t know anything about this other than a few pictures and the poster. Beyond that, I knew there was a sci-fi element to it, but nothing more. I am not surprised that it is good. I think from early on, there was an attitude about the movie that showed it took itself seriously, but not in a way that could potentially fall on its face with goofy, over-the-top characters.

Sure, we had a lot of archetypes here. The sympathetic camp runner. The good-looking and kindly lead camp coordinator. The jock. The “token” black guy. The horny girl screwing the jock. We’re all here, kiddos. The first few scenes at the camp do have a hint of Friday the 13th in terms of the “adults” playing the staff. It’s a comfy feeling. Hell, even in non-horror camp movies, you still have a lot of these archetypes.

That even extends to the kid characters. The most important kids are Morgan (obviously), Pilar, and Dirk, but each of them plays a role that feels natural to any movie about kids going to a camp. Morgan is the sensible one. Pilar is the love interest. Dirk is the chubby ride-or-die buddy.

There is a lot of care in making this movie feel like it belongs with the other camp films, especially in horror. But it also has enough self-awareness in certain areas too. The aforementioned “counselors” screwing around with each other is the first example we see. The personalities of the kids with the younger, kind of nerdier kids being picked on by the older bullies is another self-aware element. Then, the last would be the comment made by Pilar herself. She says that camp is inherently scary and spooky. That’s kind of a nod to leaning in on the whole element that this is a horror film taking place at a camp. It also nods to how she will make the camp especially scary later.

Frankly, the movie shines in the ultimate concept. Just earlier this year, there was a movie called Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die that actually has an element to its plot dealing with a specific character that has some of the same DNA as the big reveal of this movie. In that, while largely about a potentially world-ending AI, a woman loses her son in a school shooting. She’s contacted by a company that will “recreate” her son so she never has to lose him. Of course, what is created, as best described in this movie, is an approximation of her son. The subject matter in Have Fun is handled in a more satirical way, but it gets to the heart of the potential darkness of the twist of this movie.

Now, I’m not a parent. I wouldn’t know the pain a parent would feel losing a child. All things considered, I’m still among that majority who expect to bury their parents instead of being buried by them. That said, if a child, especially one younger than, say, 20, dies in an unexpected way, it could have a horrific effect on parents. Illness is one thing. That’s sad enough, but you normally have some sort of fighting chance to try to survive for as long as you can. However, if you say goodbye to your child in the morning, only for them to never come home again, you are stuck with all those things you never got to say or experience with your child.

You’d think there would be a way to try to heal. Sure, it wouldn’t be immediate. Along the way, you might divorce or pick up bad habits. The hope is that there would be some moving on from the tragedy. But what if you experience both the death of the child and the rest of their life? I cannot imagine that would be healthy at all. You’d know you feel that you failed once, and you’d always be looking at the face you felt you let down in the biggest way possible. You’d know you are lying to that kid about their existence. Sure, it’s not a direct lie. The kid wouldn’t be asking if they were a robot or clone or whatever. But you’d be lying by omission. They aren’t the kid you raised to a certain age and had to replace. It’s a dark concept.

Then, the end of this movie reveals that Morgan chooses to remember all he learned the night before. While it seems he is unburdened by the fear of water and drowning, it would seem that he might always have some concept that he isn’t “normal.” He may act as such, but he’s not who he thinks he is. It’s hard to even fully consider what memories he has. Would he be able to reconcile emotions? Would he ever question if he truly loves his parents unconditionally, as most children would at his age? Can he reconcile that whatever he feels about anything is truly his own feelings about it, or would he question if it was something his parents wanted his programmable brain to think or feel?

Marshmallow is a unique film. It’s a simple concept in a recognizable genre. That said, the movie conjures up a lot of questions. What’s the morality around this program that the parents take advantage of? What do these creations think or feel? Are they really their own emotions and thoughts? Then there’s a satirical question that could be raised by a plot like this one… What is the actual value of children if you could replace them after a tragedy?

I definitely recommend Marshmallow to curious audiences.

Next week, we have what else? Another camp movie. This is Camp Crappabuttawipe after all. We’ve seen a horror comedy and a horror sci-fi flick. Let’s take a break from the horror genre for a few weeks. Let’s do another time-honored genre. Next week, we’re going to do a camp movie that is a coming-of-age film that focuses on two girls from different sides of the track who become friends. Join me in seven days for Little Darlings.

Until then, I’m gonna go to Camp Almar and order up a ten-year-old version of myself so he can see what a disaster he grew up to be.