Low budget, but well done. A nice, original twist on a classic trope that was very well presented. There's good acting, along with the classic campy nonsense. A decent "monster". And some really interesting plot twists I didn't expect. An enjoyable little film.

Professor Roland Bumgarner (Roland Baumgarner) is married with a child and one on the way. Pretty co-eds throw themselves at him and he doesn't mind. He is best known for his fictionalized version of the Merrymaker Campground murders. Anita (Larisa Oleynik) and Poppy (Christine Donlon) Bishop are the owners of the infamous campground soon scheduled for a re-opening after a seven-year hiatus. Burl Wolf (Don Frye) is the rough step-father. There is also a Mexican woman (Whitney Davis) who was recently attacked. Jonathan Murphy plays a Bigfoot blogger like Dana Carvey as he searches for Sirquatch.

What is clear is that the folks who work at the campground are hiding something. That is the only real mystery outside of some minor twists. And even with that, there are limited options.

The film created great characters. At one point I" disliked" all of them because they were all rascals. The main problem was the scriptwriter (Jonathan Murphy) didn't know what to do with these characters once he spent all this time to create them.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

A summer camp in the northeastern USA is reopening after it was shutdown 15 years earlier due to the mysterious deaths of a couple girls. The author of the book that made the camp famous is invited out for the celebration (Christian Oliver),but people start dying again. Larisa Oleynik & Christine Donlon run the camp while Don Frye plays their stepfather. Erin Daniels appears as the author's wife.

"Animal Among Us" (2019) is an Indie horror in the summer camp murder mold à la "Madman" (1981) and, of course, the 80's "Friday the 13th" flicks. Unlike those movies, however, it's less of a slasher and the last act is twistier, which some criticize as "convoluted."

The average rating on the internet is excessively low and simply not accurate. This is a well-made low-budget camp slasher with defined characters, an atmospheric score, a fairly compelling mystery and all-around proficient filmmaking for what it is. There's a bit o' humor, mostly surrounding the campy Bigfoot-hunter, but otherwise it's a relatively serious murder mystery taking place at a summer camp.

On the feminine front, Christine Donlon has a striking face & eyes while Whitney Davis is an alluring Latina. Jasmine Dustin, Camryn Molnar and Gracie Young are also on hand (the latter two in very brief roles) but more coulda been done with them.

The film runs 1 hour, 30 minutes, and was shot in Lebanon, Ohio, about 25 miles northeast of Cincinnati, with some scenes done in Los Angeles.

GRADE: B-