The Town That Dreaded Sundown

A remake of a film that acknowledges the original's existence (and even implies it what an insensitive film to make) - now there's an interesting idea. Or at least a bold idea. It's not the first film to have done it, I know 'The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)' in 2011 played around with the same concept and I'm certain it would have been done before that. For some reason though it just leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It's like a different form of breaking the fourth wall. If you acknowledge the existence of film inside a film that's fine, it obviously happens all the time. But to directly acknowledge the series of films you are currently making just cheapens the whole experience and makes me wonder why I should care. To be fair though the film itself didn't really make me care anyway.

The whole thing is a bit of a mess. The victims are stupid, the cops are possibly even dumber and the kills feel rushed and never go on long enough to build any real suspense. Numerous times we are introduced to characters only moments before their imminent death. There are two flaws with this, one being that we can be certain that they are going to be victims because suddenly out of nowhere they have been awkwardly brought into the film like lambs to the slaughter, and secondly because we couldn't care less for the characters. We have no connection with them. Similar films like 'Scream' at least put some time and effort into the one scene their victim may have in an attempt to make us feel compassion for the character. That one scene can be enough if done right, but it certainly wasn't here.

The 'whodunnit' side of things is done well enough, I certainly didn't pick it. That's really about all this has going for it though. They really kept the runtime short at 86 minutes. I feel even another five minutes could have done the world of good just to extend some of the kill scenes and build characters a fraction more. It's certainly not unwatchable, but in a genre that has been quite stale for a while now is this adding anything new? I wouldn't have thought so.

Well they sure managed to keep that old image from back then, thus giving this movie a more realistic look, helping the viewer connect easily with the story. I for one got to say that I enjoyed it!

Am surprised to see a hand bunch of good actors gathered here, just check out the list, you'll see what I'm talking about, so you can expect good acting. They kept a very realistic portrait of the town, the people, the church, pretty much everything looks old, older than everything else because it is a tired town, one that has been through a lot of terror already and it barely healed properly. The story moves slow, but the killings go on and on, no gore, a little nudity, still powerful images come with every kill. Those looked indeed like authentic psychopath murders with psychopath reason behind them.

I think I said enough, I don't wanna tip you off on anything so I'll just recommend you to try it. It's a good homage of the classic cinema. I haven't seen the original, I hear it is also quite brutal, probably I'll try that one too, soon enough I hope. So without comparing them, my opinion is that The Town That Dreaded Sundown stands tall for a horror/slasher remake.

Cheers!

The original TTTDS was one of the earliest slasher films in the genre that even came before (in 1976) popular franchises like Halloween & Friday the 13th and I've always been a fan of that flick for its humor, suspense & docu-drama like narration style & last but not the least the haunting ending. So when I first heard about there will be a new TTTDS, I thought it'd be another pointless, some cash-in effort but last night after watching this new take on T3DS, I'd like to admit...I was pleasantly surprised!!

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (the most frequent director of American Horror Story), this new film is a strange version to categorize as a remake, reboot or a sequel; actually it's neither a straightforward remake or sequel...I'm not sure but I think REQUEL (a sequel-ish remake!) can be a more appropriate term for it. After more than half a century of the actual events of The Moonlight Murders that resulted the very making of 1976 original film, this new story is set on present day at the same town, Texarkana that once again begins to plagued by "The Phantom" murders. Interestingly, the 1976 original film is also very much alive in this movie as a film that we know in our 'reality', as in the film the town now maintains a tradition in every Halloween to show a drive in screening of the original film. So, as the film progress we see a fine blend between this version & the original film where some scenes from the original brought back through a kind of flashback style while also creating some copycat murder sequence in this new one. I liked this approach of providing homage to the original; bring it to an entirely new generation. This new & refreshing kind of take & treatment to this already known & filmed story is the most appreciating part of this version. And overall the film is beautifully shot, liked the camera works, the character development was fine for a slasher flick, but still as a slasher it's not above the clichés as well as it comes with a routine ending & weak motive for the killer which I couldn't find much point to it. And lastly there's another strange part of it and that's the Town itself! It looks like the town hasn't really age after all this years!! May be for the homage issue but though the film is set on late 2013, it still got the 70s vibe almost all over it.

Anyway, there's not much masked killer-slasher flick comes out this days with good or decent budget & film making like this one and still despite some clichés & the ending, as a slasher flick it's pretty good one, IMO.

The original true crime slasher flick "Town That Dreaded Sundown"(1976) directed by Charles B.Pierce was based on true story of a mysterious serial killer called the Phantom Killer,who during spring of 1946 killed five people and wounded three in a small border town of Texarkana.The perpetrator of these heinous crimes was never caught.The new "Town That Dreaded Sundown" remake plays more like "Scream" influenced modern teen slasher flick with plenty of references to the original movie and the Phantom Killer unsolved case.Addison Timlin plays teenage girl who after seeing her would-be boyfriend brutally murdered by masked maniac decides to find who really the Phantom Killer AD 2014 is.The movie-within-a-movie premise is certainly well-played and there are some gruesomely bloody kill scenes.Frozen in time Texarkana is also a nice touch.Unfortunately the final reveal of the killer is disappinting.7 trombone deaths out of 10.

I never expect too much from a slasher as it's not the most succesful genre but in this case it was a pleasant surprise. I didn't see the original movie from 1976 so I can't compare both of them but this version was certainly good enough to keep me entertained. The acting wasn't bad at all at that from the whole cast. There was a fair amount of decent slashing scenes, all done very professionaly and the mystery keeps you guessing till the end. A good movie for this genre.