“Killer Camp” Recap: A Head Above the Rest (Plus Hear From the First Victim, EP Steph Harris & Host Bobby Mair)

WIN OR DIE.

It’s summertime in Lithuania and 11 contestants from the UK are excited and ready to have a fun and flirty summer at Camp Pleasant, on The CW’s Killer Camp. The British strangers — Carl, the Prom King; Eleanor, the Diva; Feargal, the Class Clown; Holly, the Outsider; Jacques, the Joker; Nurry Lee, the Music Geek; Rob, the Film Nerd; Rosie, the Jock; Sam, the Rebel; Sian, the Cheerleader; Warren, the Quarterback — are all-in and can’t wait to compete for a cash prize.

Before the games can begin, however, they must make it across the lake to Camp Pleasant to meet their counselor Bobby Mair. After a bus ride and quick pedal to campgrounds, all the campers make it across except for Feargal (pronounced Fur-gul), who seems to have mechanical issues with his pedal cruiser. As they wait for him and chant him on “Lazy, little camper!” the class clown and his boat explode into a big blaze of fire. Yeah, he dead. The group is stunned and speechless. “That looked like it hurt,” Bobby says.

“THIS is Killer Camp,” he reveals. Feargal’s death was no accident — and the group finds out that the killer is one of their own. The killer amongst them has control over a horrendous psychopath, Camp Handyman Bruce, and ordering the horrible murder of whoever the killer chooses. Their job is to find out who the killer is in order to win a share of $15k. If the killer is not identified by the end, he or she walks away with that cash money.

As they settle into their cabin, they try to comprehend what had just happened and why the killer had chosen Feargal as the first victim. What we didn’t get to see was the group hanging out prior. They all pretty much unanimously agree that they really liked him, so his death (more on that later) was a big surprise and a bummer. “I’m so shocked, honestly,” Holly says. “I really liked Feargal. Me and him got on really well from when we first met. But he’s dead.”

At Camp Pleasant Meadow, the group competes for cash in their first activity. In “I Carried a Watermelon,” campers are tied together at the waist in pairs. The object of the game is to walk up a slippery slope and deposit watermelon juice into a large container. If they fill it up high enough, they get $3k in their cash pot. It also should be mentioned that the killer doesn’t want anyone else to win the money, so he or she will try to sabotage this and every game without being detected.

Back at camp, two separate groups — Sam, Jacques, Holly, and Rob & Sian, Carl, Rosie, and Nurry — get to know each other more and discuss possibilities of who the killer among them could be. Of the two groups, they both have one person on their radar. Due to her reaction to the explosion that killed Feargal, her attitude towards going in the water, and her lack of contributions towards the watermelon activity, they’re all keeping a close eye on Eleanor.

In “Shock Horror,” the campers are divided into two groups. The group that successfully builds a log tower without it falling over when time runs out wins. Of course, there’s a twist: Each team has a lever that will deliver an electric shock to each member of the opposing team. The five members of the winning team won’t win cash this time, but instead clues that will help uncover the identity of the killer. If the killer is on the winning team and he or she shares the clue, they will lie about what the clue says to throw off the others.

The winning team members and the respective clues they were given are as follows: Warren: The killer used to collect stamps. Eleanor: The killer’s favorite subject at school was art. Sam: The guilty pleasure of the killer is Avril Lavigne. Rob: The killer’s favorite food is Thai food. Carl: The Killer’s favorite celebrity is Danny DeVito.

The final competition in the series premiere is a battle for safety. The only way to make sure a camper is safe from being killed that night is to win immunity during this activity. On the lake, they all stand on platforms and try to knock each other off into the water using their adorable inflatables. “No punching or kicking, though,” Counselor Bobby says. “We don’t like violence here at Camp Pleasant — unless you’re being killed.”

Unsurprisingly, Eleanor and her parrot are first to fall just seconds after the game starts. During the game, Jacques remains realistic about his low chances and points out his physique showing he’s not athletic enough. “However, I am enjoying the view,” he says about watching Warren and Carl battle on the platforms. There was an injury during the game. Sian had landed wrong on one of the platforms and blood started running down her leg. After a few rounds, it came down to Sam and Warren, Duck versus Turtle. With Warren’s tactical thinking, it was he who triumphed and won the first immunity of the season.

At the campfire, Bobby and the campers talk about how their day went and who they got along with. “Nurry, I feel like she’s a really good friend,” Holly shares. “Agreed,” Carl adds. “I think she’s really coming out of her shell.” When asked about how she feels about not having immunity, “I’m pretty scared, to be honest,” Nurry replies. She feels at risk, as they all should, aside from Warren and Carl, who were gifted immunity by Warren.

“Once upon a time,” Bobby starts storytelling to the campers at a campfire, “two British campers named Nurry and Eleanor went for a walk through a wood at night.” The story continued with creaking trees and whistling winds and the two getting on separate segways and parting ways on different routes. Camp Handyman Bruce was having his own fun and set up razor wire at head height between two trees on one of the routes. With Eleanor being the only one returning to the campfire unharmed, Bobby officially announces that it is Nurry who is dead having her head sliced off.

“I absolutely loved it!” Nurry Lee says of her experience on Killer Camp. “It was a unique experience for everyone. It felt like we were characters plunged in a real-life story but the plot was already written out for us. It was incredible!” She also says that she was “shocked” when she learned that Camp Pleasant wasn’t at all what it seems. “I was expecting a twist, but nothing like that. It was exciting though.”

As we saw at the campfire, there was a lot of love shown toward Nurry, a 24-year-old pianist from Bath, England. And for some, her feelings were mutual. “I think I got on with pretty much most people there, it was quite a small group,” she says. “However, there were definitely people I would never have ever encountered on the outside world. In the brief time I was there, I got on with Holly well, Rosie and Feargal.”
 
When trying to decipher who the killer among them was, and what traits she looks for, she says she looked for who would be a good liar and someone who would be charming enough to make close friends and alliances. “They had to gain people’s trust and move suspicion away from them.” Her only tactic to try to survive the show, which ultimately didn’t work was to “try and stay close to the people I didn’t think the killer was. It was hard though because everyone was suspicious of everyone!”

PopWire was able to get some Killer Camp scoop from creator and Executive Producer Steph Harris and Camp Counselor and host Bobby Mair.

Because his death early on in the beginning was intentional and part of the reveal that the campers were on a different kind of show, Feargal didn’t need to go through the extensive casting process as the others did. “Absolutely they were not actors,” EP Harris tells us of the campers. “They were genuine members of the public.” However, she does reveal that in Feargal’s special case, “he wasn’t actually an actor; he was a member of the production team. He took a role where we had him very much playing a part for that short time.”

As host of a killer competition reality show, there can be many fun, exciting things one can experience on the show. For Camp Counselor Bobby Mair, his favorite part(s) of Killer Camp is at the end of every episode. “I got to tell the story of which campmate was being murdered,” he says. “Two campers would go on a walk and one would come back. So I would tell a whole story about one of those two being murdered and people would cry. I would be telling this story and people would be crying and asking me to stop. It was like a Shakeseparian monologue. In the edit over that, they cut a reenactment of their murderers. That was definitely the coolest part.”

Coming up with all the scary stories about how the campers are murdered was a collaboration between Mair and the production team. Though he didn’t get to come up with the elaborate, gory details himself, he was able to add a bit of his finesse to the way he presented them. “I’m a standup comedian outside of hosting Killer Camp, so it came quite naturally to me telling these stories. Largely it was the production team’s vision of how the vibe they were going for. There were specific shots they needed to hit in the reenactment that would go along with my stories, so I could improvise a little, but in general, it was quite scripted.”

Killer Camp airs Thursdays at 9pm on The CW.