Campfire Tales 1997

In the 1950s, Jenny, Amy Smart, and Eddie, James Marsden, share a kiss in a car at a scenic viewpoint as a radio broadcast warns of a madman roaming the area. Jenny grows increasingly nervous, convinced someone is watching from the woods, and urges Eddie to drive them back to town. They end up at a drive-in, where Eddie steps away to order a milkshake. When he returns, he notices a hook hanging from the car’s passenger door, a chilling detail that foreshadows danger to come.

In the present day, Cliff, Jay R. Ferguson, is driving with his girlfriend Lauren, Christine Taylor, her little brother Eric, and their friend Alex, Kim Murphy as Alex, after a concert. Cliff is intoxicated and weaving along rural roads, which leads to a crash near an abandoned church foundation where they kindle a campfire to pass the time. To cope with the fear, they begin trading a series of spooky campfire tales, each one unfolding as a separate story within the night.

The Honeymoon tale follows Rick, Ron Livingston, and Valerie, Jennifer MacDonald, as they honeymoon through Nevada in an RV. A local warns them to move, but they stay, only to be haunted by a lurking creature. As Rick briefly leaves to fetch something at a gas station, he discovers the local’s body and is attacked, injuring his vocal cords. Valerie, meanwhile, is menaced through the sunroof and fights back with pepper spray, before a panicked alarm blares. When the police arrive, she steps outside to confront the horror, only to find Rick’s gutted corpse hanging upside down from a tree, his wedding ring scraping against the RV’s roof in a chilling farewell.

The online horror story—People Can Lick Too—puts Amanda, Alex McKenna, in an online chat with a predator posing as a young girl named Jessica, a persona brought to life by actor Jonathan Fuller. With Katherine, her older sister, away at a conference, Amanda is left alone in a house that grows increasingly ominous. The tension peaks when a dog’s corpse is found under Amanda’s bed, a disturbing scene punctuated by the chilling message appearing on the mirror: “People can lick too.” The predator’s influence surges as a figure you can’t quite see seems to reach out through the screen, and Katherine returns home only to face tragedy as the danger closes in.

In The Locket, Scott Anderson, Glenn Quinn, takes shelter at a rural farmhouse and encounters Heather Wallace, Jacinda Barrett, a mute young woman who communicates by writing on a chalkboard. Heather hints at ghosts in the house, but the horror becomes brutally real when Scott discovers a room filled with blood and a severed head tossed into a well. Heather’s father appears, an axe raised in danger, and the pair flee together on the motorcycle. As they ride away, Scott opens a locket around Heather’s neck and finds a photo of them both dressed in old-fashioned clothes; dawn reveals Heather with a neck wound, and her head oddly lands in Scott’s lap, suggesting a time-loop or tragic fate tied to the locket.

After the stories conclude, Cliff reluctantly resumes the road, only to watch as Lauren, Eric, and Alex vanish from the scene and their campfire vanishes with them. Paramedics swarm the area, reassembling parts of the night into a surreal revival tableau: Rick and Valerie from the Honeymoon, Scott from The Locket, and the mother from the Amanda/Katherine narrative appear as rescuers trying—and failing—to revive Cliff. The eerie sequence culminates with a final car approaching the wreck site, and a hook glints from an open window, leaving the implied menace to linger in the night.