Plot Summary
If you spent your teenage summers at a youth camp, you’ll no doubt relate to this movie. It will be especially relatable to you if you had a crush on a boy/girl you wanted to get closer to before the summer’s end.
In Camp, this is the case for Jake (Brendan Meyer), who has a crush on Maya (Mychala Lee). But unfortunately for him, she has her eyes on another boy, Ezra (Ian Nelson), who is keen to spoil Jake’s chances of a possible relationship.
Jake isn’t the only boy on camp whose heart is set aflame by a member of the opposite sex as a geeky young lad named Howard (Teo Halm) is interested in a girl named Angela (Annalise Basso).
In this ending explained article for Camp, we touch upon Howard and Angela’s relationship while also asking the question: What happens between Jake and Maya?
How does Jake meet Maya?
On the first night at Camp Pearlstein, the teens sit around a campfire where Counsellor Mike tells a chilling story about a Nazi ghost. This story is rather inappropriate, considering the camp is for Jewish teens, but we won’t debate the problems we had with Mike’s storytelling here!
Not many of the teens are listening to Mike anyway. Howard is more interested in talking to Angela, while Jake is keen to get to know Maya a little better.
Howard and Angela hit it off, even though she reminds him that he was horrible to her the year prior.
Unfortunately for Jake, his conversation is interrupted by Ezra, who leads Maya away when she asks him if he knows where she can use a phone to call her dad.
The phone is in Hulk’s cabin – Hulk being the boy’s dorm leader and not the green guy from the MCU! When Ezra takes Maya into the cabin, assuming it’s empty and hoping for a little bit of nooky, the two are interrupted by Hulk who ruins Ezra’s plan.
What happens between Howard and Angela?
While Jake struggles to get to know Maya better, the opposite is true for Howard who gets closer to Angela. When the other campers are playing a game, the two of them sit to the side and talk to one another. Howard takes this opportunity to kiss Angela on the cheek. He’s a little bit embarrassed by his own forwardness but Angela doesn’t mind one bit, as she then kisses him squarely on the lips.
Howard falls head over heels in love with Angela, something that Ezra notices and makes fun of. He calls Howard pathetic for wanting to go out with a girl like Angela, who he considers a “freak.” But despite Ezra’s taunting, Howard stands up for himself and continues his starry-eyed relationship with his girlfriend.
Little does Howard know, however, that Ezra stands in the way of his relationship with Angela.
What does Ezra do?
Ezra secretly takes pictures of the girls while they’re undressing in their cabin. He later shows these to Howard and brags about what he’s done.
A short while later, Howard lets slip to Angela about Ezra’s sleazy activities and she then lets the camp counsellors know.
Ezra isn’t only taking naughty photos. When he and Maya manage to get some alone time, he secretly films their sexual encounter. When Ezra shows the video to Jake the next day, the two get into a fight, which is broken up by Mike who walks in on them scrapping.
The next day, Maya wants to sit with Ezra, but he no longer wants to spend time with her. All he wanted was one night of passion and now that he has ticked that box, he wants nothing more to do with the heartbroken girl.
There’s more heartbreak to come…
Is there a happy ending for Howard and Angela?
Everything was going well for Howard and Angela but after the photo incident, a wedge is formed in their relationship. That wedge is Ezra, who becomes the topic of conversation when Angela accuses Howard of being his “follower.”
The two get into a heated argument, which ends when Howard pushes Angela to the floor in anger. This marks the end of their relationship, as while Howard is apologetic for his actions, she isn’t willing to listen to what he is saying to her.
At the end of the film, Howard watches Angela being driven away in a car, presumably by her mom.
As this was their last year of camp, it’s unlikely that Howard and Angela ever met each other again. Howard is brokenhearted, but as he got physical with Angela, he only has himself to blame.
What happens between Jake and Maya?
Jake does his best to spend time with Maya throughout the movie, at one point asking her to name her 5 favourite things about camp. She lists her favourite things but sadly, Jake doesn’t make her list.
Jake might not be the center of her world but she is at the center of his. He even goes to her dorm when it’s empty and fantasizes about her while lying on her bed. He’s caught mid-act by Counsellor Jane who sends him to the rabbis for an embarrassing conversation about masturbation.
After discovering that Ezra has been taking photos of the girls, Counsellor Mike comes to his cabin and asks for his phone. However, he doesn’t have it as moments before, Hulk (who previously told the boys about the naughty Polaroids he took as a teen at camp) took it from Ezra so he could hide the evidence.
Later, Jake searches Hulk’s cabin for the phone but he is caught by Hulk, who chases him out. When Maya overhears two of the girls talking about Jake’s brave attempt to find the phone, she’s impressed by his courage.
In the movie’s final scene, she goes into the cabin herself and finds the phone. She then runs out to tell Jake she has found it.
The movie then ends, which is a tad frustrating considering we don’t know if she and Jake ever get into a relationship.
So, how can we interpret the ending? Well, the two of them did likely get together, as Maya realized that Jake was a nicer guy than Ezra due to his willingness to put himself at risk for the girls. Admittedly, Jake was also caught masturbating on her bed, so he’s almost as sleazy as Ezra! But despite this embarrassing faux pas, we think the two of them probably did get into a relationship after the movie’s ending.
But what do you think happened? Did Jake and Maya end up with one another? Or should we not care one way or the other? After all, summer camp romances rarely last forever, so perhaps there was no chances of them ever having a happy life together anyway!
Read More: Camp Movie Review