The film opens with a guy and a girl, Bill Anderson and a pregnant Patricia Zemke, running out of gas in the middle of the night on a desolate stretch of forgotten road deep in the woods of Placid Pines. Bill is murdered by a chainsaw after running into the infamous Trevor Moorehouse (camp boogeyman) while going to get gas. After a relatively dark opening, the film does a 180 and becomes some teenybopper pop video with a scene of the next generation of CPP counselors arriving at camp...discussing the "fictitious local psychopath" known only as the Moorehouse figure.
And after arriving at the camp, our entire cast introduced: Dean, Brad, Toby, Julie, Doug, Megan, Drew, Whitney, and Jason (haha)...oh, and Patrick, the counselor, who is later revealed to be Nelson Hammond, a former camper...and a Trevor impostor (or more blatant: the killer). No motive, no real plot...and Billy Loomis' (Skeet Ulrich) famous quote from Scream does not apply, "It's a lot scarier if there's no motive..."
Jason cheats on Julie with Whitney, Dean's ex, and Dean makes Jason leave camp. Everyone thinks Jason is the killer because he's not around. Whitney is killed in pantry with knife.
Brad is killed on the archery range...I guess you can never guess how. And Doug is impaled by a lawn dart in the back...presumably by the real Trevor Moorehouse. Dean is later killed while changing a flat tire.
Surprisingly all murders (except for opening) are played out in broad daylight. I know Ralph Portillo (director) and John R. Stevenson (writer) were trying to capture some reality and primal fear by doing so, but it really took away from the possible suspense that the film may have had.