2016 October Horror Challenge #88: "The Town that Dreaded Sundown (2014)"

I finally got around to watching the original "The Town that Dreaded Sundown" last year. It was OK, not great, and I actually liked the other film made by the same filmmakers, "The Evicted," a lot better. But I can imagine that if I lived in the town where the real murders that inspired "The Town that Dreaded Sundown" happened, I might feel differently. It's always different when it was a true story.

This movie isn't as much a remake as it us a sequel of sorts, supposedly based on true events that happened in Texarkana, the original "Town that Dreaded Sundown," in 2013. The killer that inspired the original movie has never been caught, and it must have been scary growing up in the town, knowing that you could be living next door to a killer. This movie capitalizes on that fear by having a killer committing similar murders in the town many years later.

This movie creeped me out more than the original did. It's opening sequence is really good. It seems that the new killer is killing people to make them remember that the original movie was based on murders that were real; that real people once died. This movie let's us get to know the townspeople of Texarkana better, and hear how horrible it was for them living in town around the time if the original murders, and how the release of the original movie affected them. It must have been hard, having to be terrified of a killer who was never caught and dealing with the hype of having a movie spreading misinformation and exploit your suffering.

This movie adds more gore, but also throws in nods to the original, even paying tribute to the "trombone killing" scene from the original film. It's probably the most famous scene in the original movie, and is a bone if contention among some people, since it was totally made up for the movie but a lot of people think it actually happened in the original murders because the movie was so popular. I appreciated the moments throughout this movie that give tribute to the original murders ( especially since that seems to be the new killer's whole point; don't forget the real people who died). This movie isn't perfect, but I did enjoy it more than I did the original movie.