THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (2014)

Studio:       Image Entertainment
Director:    Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Writer:       Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Producer:  Jason Blum, Ryan Murphy
Stars:     Addison Timlin, Veronica Cartwright, Gary Cole, Edward Herrmann, Joshua Leonard, Denis O’Hare, Anthony Anderson, Ed Lauter, Travis Tope, Spencer Treat Clark, Wes Chatham

Review Score:

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Summary:

37 years after the original film based on the Moonlight Murders of 1946, a new Phantom Killer stalks the town of Texarkana.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

October 31, 2013 – While Reverend Joseph Cartwright hands out flyers condemning the film to moviegoers, Jami Lerner leaves the annual screening of “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” at the Twin Star Drive-In with her boyfriend Corey Holland. The couple parks on a Lovers Lane and is assaulted by a man wearing the same hood as The Phantom Killer from the film. Corey is seemingly stabbed to death. Sackhead tells Jami, “this is for Mary. Make them remember,” and lets her go. Jami stumbles back to the screening before being taken to the hospital where she reports her story to Sheriff Underwood, Chief Deputy Hank Tillman, and Deputy Claiborne Foster.

November 26, 2013 – Sackhead decapitates Corporal Daniel Torres before killing Torres’ girlfriend Kendra Collins at the Sleepy Time Motel. Sackhead calls Jami from Corey’s phone with another taunt. Deputy Foster is assigned to guard Jami’s house, where she lives with her grandmother Lillian.

November 27, 2013 – Mayor Collins from the Texas side of Texarkana and Mayor Holdridge from the Arkansas side hold a joint Town Hall meeting at the Perot Theater with law enforcement and concerned citizens.

Texas Ranger “Lone Wolf” Morales arrives at the Bowie County Sheriff’s Office to head up the investigative task force on the new Phantom Killer case. Jami begins her own research into the 1946 murders and strikes up a romance with Nick Strain, who works as a researcher in the archives at City Hall.

Jami receives a threatening email purportedly from Sackhead and takes it to the authorities. She also shares her suspicions that the new murderer is perhaps related to the original Phantom Killer. Jami theorizes that it may be the son of original suspect Benjamin Sewell, but Tillman interjects that Sewell’s son is dead.

Jami and Nick attend a vigil for the new victims at Alamo High School. Someone dressed as Sackhead arrives at the vigil and is quickly shot and killed by an armed Marine. The person turns out to be Paul Mason, a frustrated college kid who knew he would be shot and used the disguise to commit suicide.

Sackhead murders a young gay couple in a sign graveyard. One of the young men is killed with a knife affixed to a trombone in a recreation of a scene from the 1976 film.

Jami tells Nick about how her parents died while driving her home from a slumber party as a little girl. A prank involving the urban legend of The Phantom Killer frightened Jami so badly that she begged her parents to pick her up early. Nick tries to kiss Jami and she angrily kicks him out of her car.

December 24, 2013 – Morales and Tillman arrest Reverend Cartwright at the Texarkana Fellowship Church when the email Jami received is traced back to him. While not the killer, Cartwright admits that fear created by the new murders has been beneficial for bringing new parishioners into his congregation.

Sackhead shoots Tillman and a woman he brought home from a local bar inside Tillman’s house. The woman crawls outside where Sackhead butchers her and ties her up like a scarecrow.

Nick apologizes to Jami and they make up. He then tells her about Charles B. Pierce, Jr., the son of the man who directed “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” who still lives in Texarkana.

Nick and Jami visit Pierce’s son on the beached boat where he lives. Pierce tells them about Hank MacReady, The Phantom Killer’s final victim who was never publicized by the media. Throughout her life, MacReady’s pregnant wife Mary remained bitter that Texarkana did not honor her husband’s memory as part of The Phantom Killer’s legacy. Pierce speculates that MacReady’s unidentified grandson is the new Phantom Killer.

Lillian insists that she and Jami get out of Texarkana and stay in California for a while. The night before leaving, Nick and Jami have sex. Sackhead then kills Nick on his walk home.

Before leaving with her grandmother, Jami gives her file on MacReady to Deputy Foster. While stopped at a gas station, Sackhead murders Lillian and another man before giving chase to Jami. Jami stumbles upon Nick’s dismembered body, positioned on train tracks in the same manner that MacReady’s corpse was discovered.

Two men in Sackhead hoods capture Jami. The first Sackhead reveals himself to be Deputy Foster, who is actually Hank MacReady’s grandson out for revenge. The second Sackhead turns out to be Corey Holland, who faked his death and committed the murders with Foster so that he would be remembered by history.

Foster shoots and kills Corey. He then prepares to kill Jami and frame her as Corey’s partner in crime, setting himself up as the hero. However, Jami recovers a dropped gun and shoots him. In the aftermath, Jami leaves Texarkana to attend college.

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Review:

When director Charles B. Pierce and his screenwriter Earl E. Smith put their heads together in 1976 to bring Texarkana’s notorious “Moonlight Murders” to the big screen, they couldn’t commit to a true crime police procedural, sensationalized slasher, or cornball comedy.  Rather than settle on one direction, or come up with a seamless tone to blend all three, the pair dispensed with concerns for consistency and lumped every semi-formed idea together to create the genre-bending midnight movie oddity “The Town That Dreaded Sundown.”

So when it came time for director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to collaborate on the 2014 follow-up, it’s no wonder that they remained true to that schizophrenic spirit by Frankensteining an unusual amalgamation of their own.  Under the Sauron gaze of uber-producers Jason Blum and Ryan Murphy, Gomez-Rejon and Aguirre-Sacasa made a movie that is part sequel, part remake, and part meta-fiction, yet so vague about defining its combined DNA that it is undeniably “The Town That Dreaded Sundown.”

In a nifty twist last employed to similar effect by “The Human Centipede II,” 2014’s “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” takes place in a world where the preceding film not only exists, but also plays an integral role in the storyline.  It’s Halloween 2013.  The town of Texarkana has more or less embraced the pop culture appeal of Charles B. Pierce’s original film by staging annual showings of “Sundown” at the local drive-in.  College hopeful Jami isn’t much of a throwback horror enthusiast, however.  She drops the hint to her beau Corey and they trade their spot at the screening for a quieter one on Lovers Lane.

Before Corey’s hand can go all the way up Jami’s skirt, an uninvited guest arrives.  Corey takes a knife to the back and Jami locks eyes through a sackcloth hood with an all-new incarnation of the infamous Phantom Killer.  This madman has a message for the townspeople before embarking on a new spree of terror, and he wants Jami to herald his arrival.

“Sundown” does its damnedest to be as erratically eclectic as its predecessor in every regard possible.  The film is set in 2013, yet the wardrobe and set dressing are clearly meant to replicate seventies chic.  The 1976 movie plays a part in the plot, yet several characters have identical names and roles, e.g. “Lone Wolf” Morales and “Spark Plug.”

Texarkana’s border-blending duality is also addressed with curious geography.  Virtually every time onscreen text identifies a location, it is specified as falling on the Arkansas half of the map.  The majority of the murders seem to take place there, too.  Yet the only law enforcement officials we spend any time with hail from the Texas side of things.  Sheriff Rutland from the Arkansas jurisdiction appears in a Town Hall meeting, but is conspicuously missing from actual investigation activity.

Maybe that is because the movie already has too many lawmen in its kitchen.  If I were unfamiliar with the first film, I’d point out the unneeded excess of having Ed Lauter play a sheriff, Gary Cole play a deputy sheriff, and Joshua Leonard play a deputy, only for Anthony Anderson to show up as a Texas Ranger who quite literally does not do a single thing to meaningfully advance the investigation or the story.  Except that is exactly what the same character did in 1976.  Although at least Ben Johnson featured in that movie’s finale, whereas Anderson merely duplicates the real Phantom Killer’s m.o. by inexplicably vanishing without a trace.

Aping the original’s chameleon personality, “Sundown” 2014 alternates between self-aware style and absent sense on coin toss whims.  But it seems to do so knowingly, as if daring to be caught red-handed so it can offer, “that’s how the original did it!” as a “get out of jail free” card.

It’s tough to say with total certainty if “Sundown” 2014 is in on the joke of intentionally mirroring everything that was structurally faulty and rhythmically disjointed about “Sundown” 1976, but I think that it is.  For one thing, the script comes from Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who is no stranger to putting smart spins on nostalgia with a simultaneously respectful and rebellious spirit.  While the 2013 remake based on his “Carrie” adaptation may have been a polarizer (review here), Aguirre-Sacasa’s unlikely mix of adult horror with iconic characters in the comic books “Afterlife with Archie” and “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” is endlessly entertaining and wickedly inspired fun.

I’ve also heard rumors of retooling suggesting that the weird way the “Sundown” climax shakes out is not what the creators originally intended.  Thinking about how the film was caught with a number of its Blumhouse brethren in a purgatory of unreleased uncertainty, I’m inclined to believe that some editing ideas born post-production may have been retrofitted into the release.

That would at least explain why the film trades on its slick cinematic style to make a confusedly limp attempt at adding a whodunit element.  Gary Cole and Edward Herrmann are just two of the actors featured in close-ups giving shifty-eyed glances.  Though since there is no question about the masked killer being a blue-eyed young man, one wonders why bother with hollow bait for a red herring?

Perhaps having that freedom to bound all over the place is the beauty in being a sequel/reboot/companion to a movie that was never reverentially cherished in the first place.  It’s not like following in the footsteps of a John Carpenter contemporary classic or a Hitchcock masterpiece that comes with inherent enmity from a fervent fanbase determined to lambast before the first frame even films.  “The Town That Dreaded Sundown” is indecisive about its purpose and inconsistent in its approach.  Ironically, that makes it completely consistent with Charles B. Pierce’s 1976 oddball entertainer as a suitable slasher that makes up in cult charm what it misses in meaning.

Review Score:  60

Click here for the review of the original "The Town That Dreaded Sundown."

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