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Summer of 84, 1984
Davey (Graham Verchere) lives a quiet life in the suburbs, along with friends Woody (Caleb Emery), Tommy (Judah Lewis), and Curtis (Cory Gruter-Andrew). It’s all newspaper deliveries and late-night meetings in treehouses until Davey comes to suspect that his neighbor, police officer Wayne Mackay (Rich Sommer) is the serial killer who has been abducting teenage boys in surrounding communities. Along with the older girl Davey has a crush on, Nikki (Tiera Skovbye), the crew sets out to prove Mackay’s guilt without arousing his suspicions.
Largely notable for its last act, the departures from convention don’t quite work out on balance with the rest of the film.
Ah, yes, one of those movies where the only part you really want to talk about is so deeply spoilerific that even trying to stay vague feels precarious.
But here goes: for most of its run time, this is a very familiar horror/thriller that hits the beats you’d expect, and yet hits them pretty well. Davey, with his initial suspicions, trying to convince his friends to help him in his quest. The absolute thrill of not only talking to his crush, Nikki, but discovering that she likes him, too. Davey’s parents, enemies of the cause because of course they won’t believe such a conspiracy theory from a son whose walls are covered with clippings about aliens, murderers, and cannibals who live in the sewers.
Verchere is a likable enough lead. Fans of the TV series Monk might give a little cheer on recognizing Jason Gray-Stanford as Davey’s dad. There’s a decent rapport between the boys, and Skovbye is also enjoyable as a woman who is young herself, but who seems so much more grown up by virtue of having just two or three years of age on them. Sommer’s energy in the role of the suspected neighbor is just right. I spent most of the movie wondering if he was guilty or not---the guy sure buys a lot of dirt!--and the film admirably doesn’t tip its hand either way until late in the running.
And then the last act---or really, the last 15 minutes rolls around---and everything changes. I won’t say a word about how, but there is definitely a single moment where it all goes a very different direction from what you would suspect. Does it work? Ehhhhhhh. The problem is not that the ending is bad. Quite to the contrary, I think the ending is very effective. But not only does it not follow from what came before it, 70 minutes is a lot of movie to watch in service of a bait-and-switch. Some last act shifts can wildly change how you see the film that came before it, but that’s not the case here. There is no illumination, no sudden awareness of missed cues or wonderful recontextualization.
It also must be said that the way that the movie looks, the way that it’s shot, all of those technical elements really don’t distinguish themselves much. And this doesn’t change in the last act. Perhaps if the jarring shift had truly altered the very DNA of the film from that point on, I’d have felt differently. As it stands, what happens at the end mainly made me wish that the whole film had been made from the same cloth. That rather than being saved as a surprise, the whole thing had just been a better, more original, more engaging film.
Some extra credit for the last act, but only so-so as a complete package.
Summer of 84, 1984
Davey (Graham Verchere) lives a quiet life in the suburbs, along with friends Woody (Caleb Emery), Tommy (Judah Lewis), and Curtis (Cory Gruter-Andrew). It’s all newspaper deliveries and late-night meetings in treehouses until Davey comes to suspect that his neighbor, police officer Wayne Mackay (Rich Sommer) is the serial killer who has been abducting teenage boys in surrounding communities. Along with the older girl Davey has a crush on, Nikki (Tiera Skovbye), the crew sets out to prove Mackay’s guilt without arousing his suspicions.
Largely notable for its last act, the departures from convention don’t quite work out on balance with the rest of the film.
Ah, yes, one of those movies where the only part you really want to talk about is so deeply spoilerific that even trying to stay vague feels precarious.
But here goes: for most of its run time, this is a very familiar horror/thriller that hits the beats you’d expect, and yet hits them pretty well. Davey, with his initial suspicions, trying to convince his friends to help him in his quest. The absolute thrill of not only talking to his crush, Nikki, but discovering that she likes him, too. Davey’s parents, enemies of the cause because of course they won’t believe such a conspiracy theory from a son whose walls are covered with clippings about aliens, murderers, and cannibals who live in the sewers.
Verchere is a likable enough lead. Fans of the TV series Monk might give a little cheer on recognizing Jason Gray-Stanford as Davey’s dad. There’s a decent rapport between the boys, and Skovbye is also enjoyable as a woman who is young herself, but who seems so much more grown up by virtue of having just two or three years of age on them. Sommer’s energy in the role of the suspected neighbor is just right. I spent most of the movie wondering if he was guilty or not---the guy sure buys a lot of dirt!--and the film admirably doesn’t tip its hand either way until late in the running.
And then the last act---or really, the last 15 minutes rolls around---and everything changes. I won’t say a word about how, but there is definitely a single moment where it all goes a very different direction from what you would suspect. Does it work? Ehhhhhhh. The problem is not that the ending is bad. Quite to the contrary, I think the ending is very effective. But not only does it not follow from what came before it, 70 minutes is a lot of movie to watch in service of a bait-and-switch. Some last act shifts can wildly change how you see the film that came before it, but that’s not the case here. There is no illumination, no sudden awareness of missed cues or wonderful recontextualization.
It also must be said that the way that the movie looks, the way that it’s shot, all of those technical elements really don’t distinguish themselves much. And this doesn’t change in the last act. Perhaps if the jarring shift had truly altered the very DNA of the film from that point on, I’d have felt differently. As it stands, what happens at the end mainly made me wish that the whole film had been made from the same cloth. That rather than being saved as a surprise, the whole thing had just been a better, more original, more engaging film.
Some extra credit for the last act, but only so-so as a complete package.