Naman Shrestha
In Lifetime’s ‘Dead Girl Summer,’ we get acquainted with two college friends — Avery and Jade — who decide to indulge in a bit of nostalgia by returning to their childhood summer town. Apart from reliving old memories, they also intend to catch up with an old friend named Will. In an unexpected turn of events, what was supposed to be a memorable summer turns into a nightmare when Jade vanishes all of a sudden under mysterious circumstances.
Soon, Avery notices that her friend’s disappearance is eerily similar to a tragedy that took the life of their late friend, Mia. Now, she realizes that someone is behind the sinister plot and is making them relive the traumatic summer. Helmed by Patricia Frontain, the mystery thriller drama film focuses on several important as well as realistic themes of abduction and murder, both of which are unfortunately prevalent in society.
Dead Girl Summer is the Product of Ashley O’Neil’s Imagination
Written by Ashley O’Neil, the script of ‘Dead Girl Summer’ might have a few elements based in reality but the plot in general is a work of fiction. Mysterious murders and sudden disappearances in quaint towns are not uncommon in the real world; so by building a tale based on those themes, the screenwriter added a sense of realism to the narrative. Moreover, in the world of cinema, there have been plenty of other projects that revolves around friendship, the murder or disappearance of one of them, and the suspense surrounding the perpetrator’s identity.
The 1997 slasher thriller film, ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer,’ checks all the boxes as the Jim Gillespie directorial also follows a group of young friends in a small coastal town. When they get involved in a fatal accident of a man, they promise to never speak of the same to anyone else. About a year later, when they reunite for the summer, they are stalked by a masked hook-wielding killer, who haunts the friends and claims his victims one by one. The mystery behind Mia’s murder and Jade’s disappearance in ‘Dead Girl Summer’ is parallel with the suspense behind the maniac’s identity and motive in the Jennifer Love Hewitt starrer. Apart from a few similar traits of the characters in both the films, another mirroring aspect is that they both are set in the summer and in a small town.
The Nathan Hope directorial, ‘Elsewhere,’ also shares plenty of similarities with the Lifetime thriller. The 2009 crime mystery movie is about a teenager who goes missing while meeting men online. Worrited about her whereabouts, her best friend takes matter into her own hands and spearheads the investigation. In 2015, mysterious deaths and disappearance gripped the small town of Chillicothe in Ohio. A total of six women reportedly vanished, four of whom were found dead, between May 2014 and the summer of 2015. Five of them were Charlotte Trego, Tameka Lynch, Wanda Lemons, Shasta Himelrick, and Tiffany Sayre. As the investigation was going on, the detectives suspected that it was the work of a single serial killer. Despite all the similarities and comparisons, the fact of the matter remains that ‘Dead Girl Summer’ is not based on a true story.
Read More: Dead Girl Summer: Filming Locations and Cast Details
