It might be cheating a bit to put two movies from the same directorial team on one list, but I don’t care. Summer of ’84 is easily the best horror movie I have seen this year, and maybe one of the best I’ve seen in many years.
To say that things were different in America in 1984 would be a massive understatement. The cold war was still a thing, Coke II wasn’t a thing yet, synthwave music was still strong, VHS tapes were king, and kids in close-knit neighborhoods were just allowed to play wherever and whenever they wanted. Davey and his three closest friends, Woody, Eats, and Farraday spend their time goofing around with each other every day. Dreading the start of school, “reading” adult magazines, lusting for the hot older girl (Nikki) in the neighborhood, and playing “Man Hunt” with a larger group of friends at night. It’s a typical suburban neighborhood from the 80s in just about every way.
Davey is the neighborhood paperboy and his dad works for the local news station. Between the two of them, there isn’t much that goes unnoticed around town. Davey starts to see a pattern that kids are turning up missing in the local area and things become more serious as the missing kids get closer to him. One night Davey’s dad is called in late as the news breaks. Turns out all the missing kids are part of a larger problem and the police are putting out the word that there is an active serial killer in the area. With all this info, Davey starts to become suspicious of his neighbor Mr. Mackey. The rest of his friends think he is seeing connections that don’t exist especially since Davey is prone to believing in conspiracy theories. However, when some of the theories start to make too much sense, they rally behind him and search for the answers they need no matter the risk.
As a child of the 80s, I know when movies are playing it up for the judge, so to speak. Having said that, Summer of ’84 plays this up hard, but I don’t care. The setting for the film, the dialogue, the music (oooh the music) are all as much an equal part of the cast as any of the actors on screen. I don’t know that I have connected so hard with a movie and a group of friends since The Goonies. I can remember being a young kid and spending my days wandering around the neighborhood (which was a relatively large area) just going from house to house playing with kids and then moving on. We used to play flashlight tag in a good friend’s neighborhood and it was exactly the way the movie portrays their game of “Manhunt”. Maybe that’s why this film sticks with me so much.
Also, it cannot be overstated how well this film does pacing and building up tension. It’s a lot like the original Alien movie. The xenomorph is on-screen maybe ten minutes of a runtime of almost two hours. By the time of the reveal at the end, I was so balled up emotionally that I was equal parts ready for it to happen and scared I had gotten it wrong the whole time. The viewer’s mind is as much the enemy in this film as the actual serial killer. It says a lot about the realism of a film to know that there are almost ZERO special effects, camera tricks, or any other practical application of “movie magic” to be had and the film not only is fine but is better for it.
I’m not sure the last time I watched a movie where I thought I had figured it out three different times but was still never really sure. Over the runtime, I thought that I knew where it was leading me and where the misdirection was. I thought for sure I knew what was going to happen and then it didn’t. That doesn’t even account for the ending of the film. I kept checking the time left in the movie thinking how the hell were they going to fill the space. By the time credits rolled I was so unsure of its ending, (which I will NOT spoil). What I will say is that it is dark, depressingly so. Also, even as much as I really enjoyed this film and the sum of its parts, I hope they NEVER make anything more with this story. To do so would betray everything it sets up and also I don’t think they can ever deliver something that would live up to the ending of this film. I didn’t think I could find a movie that would come out so clearly as a “winner” this year. I could nitpick some things like how Eats’ character is only given any real emotion at the end that reveals his rebellious behavior, or how parts of the “epilogue” don’t really jive for me, but that’s just looking for things to pick on. This movie is wonderful. When the movie started I thought I knew how it would end, and how I would feel about that ending. However, when the credits rolled I was gutted, and could not have predicted the raw emotion I was actually going to feel.
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