The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)

Directed by: Charles B. Pierce

Written by: Earl E. Smith

Year Released: 2014

Sub Genre: Slasher

Cast: Addison Timlin, Veronica Carthwright, Gary Cole, Anthony Anderson

The year is 1946 and the town of Texarkana is in shambles.

There is a killer among them stalking and murdering young couples who are looking for privacy in secluded areas.

After many arrest attempts and investigations, the killer, better known around Texarkana as the phantom, had evaded police and lived free among the townsfolk.

The phantom has since become something of a legend, even inspiring a film under the title of "The town that dreaded sundown" which is played at a drive in once a year for Halloween. That is until, the phantom strikes again.

I'm going to start off by saying that the idea of this film is seems somewhat exciting on paper but is a little too close to a Scream sequel for my liking. This comes from the use of a film being one of the main focuses inside the actually movie.

Now, if you don't understand what I mean, here is a quick, possibly confusing look at what they did: Take a film from back in the day. Use said film as if it was created specifically for use in this movie and then proceed to build a new story around it using the same kills as displayed in the original.

Sounds like it could be interesting right?

Well think again!

The use of the original film in this movie ruins a lot of scenes that had the potential to be enjoyable but ultimately lost all it's effects thanks to the scenes of the original film being shown before hand.

The biggest issues I had were the miss use of the excellent supporting cast they had available to them including Anthony Anderson, who's role could have easily been thrown out as it did not have an actual affect in the narrative in any way.

And of course, I can not forget to mention the unfortunate use of bad special effects throughout the movie.

A portion of the time a very obvious display of CGI was used in a car murder scene to show off blood spatter on the windows. The effect was done so poorly that even in darkness you could tell it was added in.

This was not my only gripe with special effects.

A good portion of the film had use your usual practical effects for the bloody murder scenes which looked good. However, in a flash back scene where the lead characters parents die in a car crash the blood effects look ridiculous and absolutely fake. Basically looked like someone came up with a paint brush and put a few lines of bright red paint on their bodies and figured nobody would notice.

Hell, they way they placed the bodies on the outside of a rolled over vehicle (one laying on the top of the car and the other next to / half under the vehicle) made no sense on it's own. How poor of a driver do you have to be in order to not only flip a vehicle on it's side, and have every passenger tossed outside the vehicle without even smashing a window?

Moving on!

Easy to watch but even easier to stop paying attention to at most times. This would make it very difficult to follow had the story had any complexity to it at all.

Conclusion:

This is something good to watch if you are bored or need something playing in the back ground while you're busy doing other things. It could also be good a starter horror film for someone above the age of majority but I would not suggest it for anything more than that.

2 out of 10

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