Glamping (2025) review: Cold hot tubs & lukewarm thrills

Welcome to Knockout Horror. It’s time to dig deep into the back-catalogue of everyone’s favourite free streaming service, Tubi, today as we are reviewing slasher movie Glamping (2025).

Another Tubi original?

As you can probably guess, this is a Tubi original and released towards the end of October. I was so busy that month that I completely forgot to check it out and review it. Tubi is, if nothing else, generous when it comes to fans of low-budget horror movies.

“It really feels as though horror directors genuinely believe that the whole influencer thing is strong enough to prop up a ruthlessly hollow plot.”

The story follows social media influencer Olivia (Rosemary Idisi) as she heads on a glamping trip with her closest friends. What initially seems like a great opportunity to unwind and make some killer content, quickly turns into a nightmare as a masked person appears and begins stalking the group.

Tubi’s obsession with influencers

Tubi are absolutely obsessed with social media influencers. It feels like they chuck out at least a couple of horror movies every year focused on the subject. I never really feel as though they quite manage to nail the formula, though. Their movies always lack that very specific feeling of authenticity.

Tubi’s influencers never seem like the type of people who would ever hit it big in the already oversaturated world of internet fame. They are neither extraordinary or particularly noteworthy. They just look like middle of the road actors who you could easily walk past on the street and not think twice about.

I’m not trying to be mean by saying that, either. It’s just that there is something very specific about young people who make it big online. Whether it’s looks, an outlandish personality, cringe-worthy behaviour, or simply a particular type of presentation. There’s always something that pushes them over that line of anonymity and into worldwide relevance.

Glamping is no exception. The cast here are just a group of very ordinary people who don’t have a single lick of believability as influencers. They are plain, unremarkable, and appear a bit too old to be playing the characters they are playing. Still, with that being said, the whole influencer thing is a bit of a horror cheat-code for getting into the meat of the story.

It explains away our character’s motivations for being where they are, it adds an element of modernity thanks to the constant reference to “live chats”, and it can serve as a vehicle for a potential killer’s motives too.

Cold Hot Tubs & Old Clichés

Another way the whole influencer thing factors in is offering up a few ways to swerve and subvert the viewer’s expectations. This plays into Glamping in quite a big way. It’s a movie that seems to be, ostensibly, a basic slasher. Albeit with a few comedy elements thrown in for good measure. It definitely uses the subject to pull the wool over your eyes a little, though. Despite the upcoming plot pivot, it’s not nearly enough to save it.

It’s almost a satirical take on the genre with just the slightest meta-bent that hints at a cast that are, at least somewhat, aware of their slasher movie predicament. The lead up is ruthlessly dull, though. It takes ages to actually get to the action and all of that preamble is punctuated by on-screen text conversations and allusions to the character’s online notoriety.

It’s the same old same old. Our protagonist wants to gain more followers and believes that this glamping trip is the key. That means the viewer is going to be ruthlessly bombarded with a whole bunch of scenarios that you have seen before over and over again. Only without the silliness and titillation that made similar 80s slashers weirdly enjoyable.

Hanging out, doing shots, taking selfies, relaxing in a hot-tub that’s not actually on because the sound would overwhelm the frankly terrible microphones, and friends falling out over ridiculous bullshit. It’s so familiar you could swear you went to school with its older brother.

Please… No More Influencers

The vanilla cast makes it incredibly difficult to actually engage with, or care about, their glamping shenanigans so there is very little to grab a hold of. It really feels as though horror directors genuinely believe that the whole influencer thing is strong enough to prop up a ruthlessly hollow plot.

I can’t even begin to emphasise just how old this is getting. If you watch the occasional horror movie, you probably won’t notice it too often. If you watch religiously for the sake of reviewing, this is a theme and presentation that is absolutely done to death and rarely works.

We have Livestream, #MissingCouple, Chateau, House on Eden, and Clickbait: Unfollowed in just the last year that have taken this approach. That’s only the movies I could be bothered to review, as well. There are far more that I didn’t cover while the site was in a down-period early this year. Glamping feels old and derivative right out of the box.

“Hanging out, doing shots, taking selfies, relaxing in a hot-tub that’s not actually on because the sound would overwhelm the frankly terrible microphones.”

The words “influencer horror” are starting to inspire a tiny hint of dread in me at what’s to come. At this point, I’m not sure how you can really innovate around this subject. Outside of things like Influencer and Deadstream, it’s getting very difficult to actually bring something new to this horror theme. Glamping is certainly not going to be the film to change that.

Too Little, Too Late

So, how about the kills? Well, they are also pretty dull and derivative. It’s over an hour before anyone even bites the dust. The killer shows up and, at first, it all plays out like a low stakes game of cat and mouse. The masked assailant seems rather incompetent and more interested in scaring than maiming. This does play into the story later on but it makes for some seriously boring viewing.

That first kill leaves us with twenty minutes to clean up the mess and wrap things up in a nice little bow. Needless to say, that’s going to require some serious exposition dumping and that’s exactly what you will get. We see a couple more kills and a bunch of backstory in about ten minutes of screen time before the race to the big reveal.

Said “big reveal” is something of a story saver but it is also extremely predictable if you have been following the plot up until that point. A big unnecessary diversion early in the film basically clues you in on what is about to happen making it feel somewhat underwhelming and incredibly disproportionate given the situation.

It’s nice to be somewhat surprised but I can’t really say that I cared all that much. Pacing is such an enormous issue here that I had already checked out by the mid-movie dry humping scene. On the plus side, Glamping looks fine and Niki Koss’s direction shows promise. It’s not glaringly low budget and I thought the setting was okay.

Sound production is poor, something which is becoming a recurring issue in horror these days. Acting is about what you would expect for a movie like this. Again, generic characters who are completely unbelievable as social media influencers but are, for the most part, fine as actors. It’s all just so forgettable. I wish the actual movie was nearly as exciting as that awesome front cover.

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