The Town That Dreaded Sundown (The 2014 Film)

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)

Runtime: 86 minutes

Directed by: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Starring: Addison Timlin, Veronica Cartwright, Anthony Anderson, Travis Tope, Joshua Leonard

From: Several different companies, including the returning Orion Pictures

I watched this Monday night soon after the original. I ended up liking this more than the '76 film, although the final act of this was unfortunate. The Letterboxd review is below:

Last night I watched and reviewed the original The Town That Dreaded Sundown, from 1976. I rated it as average as even though it's one of the first American slashers and the scenes with the killer were well-done, the odd pacing and awful humor tank it. All I knew of this polarizing film is that it treated the 1976 movie as canon and in fact in that universe that movie is shown in the town of Texarkana, Arkansas each year, which is actually true to real life.

Turns out, the 1976 movie is important to the plot here. A person dressed just like the killer from the '76 flick starts killing people and he tells a young lady named Jami (Addison Timlin, who I thought did a swell job) that he wants people “to remember”, which is explained by the end. Jami tries to investigate the murders herself in a heated atmosphere where the theme of religion and sin are present, while falling in love with a young dude she meets up with.

For the first two acts, I was enjoying this. The meta aspects were odd at times but they weren't overdone or obnoxious. The same goes for the gore and sex, which were definitely more abundant than in the original and yet they weren't excessive. The odd aesthetic of there being many 70's, 80's and 90's artifacts around despite this being set in 2013 was a little strange and yet I just went with it. The cast of familiar faces (Veronica Cartwright, Anthony Anderson, Gary Cole, Ed Lauter, Edward Herrmann) does help. It was filmed well; I am talking about such things as cinematography and camera movement.

Then... the final act hit, and things start to fall apart and go off the rails. I can't reveal why without going into massive spoilers but the film does several things which I felt ruined the goodwill built up in the first two acts. Also, the overall story doesn't always make a whole lot of sense by the end. I think it's a shame but of course you may feel different if you see this yourself. And it is reminiscent of a certain famous horror film from the 90's which other people have brought up but I won't.

At least the movie wasn't a turkey, as I had feared beforehand it could be. And, it is more progressive when it comes to such things as sexual orientation, even if that involved minor characters.

Horror fans out there, you may very well check out this and the original if you haven't seen either yet. Also, considering that some of the recent horror I've talked about here recently have either inspired some to add films to their wishlist or they get their share of likes, I think I should try to watch then review more horror from the past few years.