Monday, October 31, 2022

October Horror Challenge 2022 #117: "Summer of 84"

I tried watching this earlier in the challenge, but that was the day I decided to film my own horror movie called "The Burning Oven" and I started a fire in my oven when I turned it on, which was a bad time (the whole cabin filled with black smoke and I had to use the fire extinguisher to put out the fire and open the door to air out the black smoke, so it was a big bunch of drama and I never got back around to watching "Summer of 84," so this is round 2 with this movie, and I'll try not to set anything on fire this time.

In this movie, a teenager named Davey Armstrong is a conspiracy theorist who begins to suspect that a neighbouring police officer is a serial killer. With help from three friends, Davey launches a daring investigation that soon turns dangerous.This movie rings true for me because when I was a kid my friends and I were always trying to solve mysteries we were sure were going on around us. This would have been about 10 years after this film is set, in 1994, but the spirit of camaraderie and friendship between these boys rings true to what I remember.

It's a good thing there was no mystery actually going on in my hometown when I was a kid, like the very real murders going on in "Summer of 84," because my friends and I would definitely have gotten ourselves into real trouble, probably worse than the boys in this movie did, if I'm being honest. Everything in this movie is nostalgia of the 80s, but one of the biggest for me is that huge video camera the characters use to try and record evidence. I just watched a movie called "Deadstream" where the main character is livestreaming himself and the handheld cameras he uses are so small compared to the one in this movie. My how time flies and technology marches on.

The friendship between the five boys in this movie rings true, like I said earlier, but it also serves to push the action in the movie along because the characters spar back and forth and spur each other on to keep the action in the movie going. There's not much gore in this movie, but there is one memorable jump scare with some gore and an accurate twist to the movie that feels real at least to me. once you've passed a certain point in this movie, there's some almost unbearable tension that comes from just knowing what's going to happen next, and I almost had a heart attack when a certain point in the movie hit (jump scares like that will always be my kryptonite). Overall this is a solid little period piece and it definitely ratchets up the tension at the end. Give it a shot. You won't be disappointed.

No comments:

Post a Comment