Alternative Character Interpretation: Was the neglect and abuse Amy’s family directed at her the cause or the result of Amy’s psychopathy? The fact that all flashbacks of her childhood are shown before the reveal that Amy is a deranged serial killer set on being Malphas’s vessel (and thus framed in a way that makes Amy seem more sympathetic) make it even more ambiguous.note To be more specific, what form of Antisocial Personality Disorder does Amy have? Is Amy a sociopath— whose childhood trauma from the abuse her family directed towards her turned Amy into the remorseless, sadistic killer she became — or a psychopath— born without empathy or a conscience whose off-screen actions resulted in her parents and brother’s neglect of and anger towards her?
Amy Hughes, a counselor at Camp Stillwater, is actually a remorseless psychopath. As a child, Amy murdered her parents and brother by purposefully closing a fireplace flue, causing the carbon monoxide to suffocate them to death. Becoming enamored by Malphas, Amy manipulated her friend Margot Tate into accompanying her to a party, and personally dropped the latter to her death in order to acquire her position. With Amy's goal being to resurrect Malphas by becoming his vessel, she conspired against the counselors, killing them in gruesome fashions and used their corpses to create a pentagram. Allowing Malphas to re-claim her as a vessel after he was exorcised, Amy hacked the owner of the camp, Deb Carpenter, and Margot's friend to death when she was trying to warn the former. Realizing she couldn't leave the camp due to Holyoke implanting a fragment of his soul into Jessie Tyler, Amy reanimated the corpses of the slain counselors and sent them to kill her. In their rampage, Amy also killed several police officers that were called to investigate, and mimicked one of their voices as a ploy to lure Jessie out from hiding. Despite a tragic backstory, Amy Hughes ultimately proves to be a manipulative, sadisticpsychopath who successfully hid her sinister designs with a smile.
Malphas himself is the demonic instigator behind the dark history of Camp Stillwater. Imprisoned in the lake by Holyoke and his congregation, Malphas elects Amy Hughes as its perfect vessel because of her monstrousness. Driving its followers to slit their throats en masse as part of the ritual, Malphas sadistically taunts the remaining camp counselors before repossessing Amy and assisting her in her attempts to kill Jessie in order to escape the camp.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The Reveal did this for Amy, who was fairly flat and uninteresting as a Final Girl but downright chilling and terrifying as a villain. Not only did Elizabeth Lail's acting improve substantially, but the twist cast her acting before then in a whole new light, coming off less as a boring "good girl" and more as a sociopath pretending to be one.
The webcomic:
Archive Binge: At 370 pages, it's enough to take up a couple hours.
Growing the Beard: Book 2 not only has noticeably better art, but a more focused, centralized plot. A case can also be made for about halfway through Book 1 as things become more character-driven.
Moral Event Horizon: Alan crosses this when he injects his pregnant wife, Lydia, with the zombie serum. If that wasn't enough, he injects the zoo animals with it to build an army, and then zombifies William.
, there's the 'good plan' exchange