What at first appears to be a baffling creative choice in the 2014 version of The Town That Dreaded Sundown rapidly reveals itself to be among its greatest assets: In the world of this remake, the original 1976 film exists. Obscure compared to most of what Hollywood revives and reboots these days, that source material is referenced throughout as the authorities and various townspeople discuss it; many even watch it.
While this film is fictional, the crime spree it depicts has real-life basis: In 1946, a serial killer dubbed The Phantom of Texarkana (among other catchy names) had the border regions of the Lone Star State and the Natural State gripped in a state of shock. His five murders went unsolved and became cemented in cinematic immortality for the ’76 Sundown, a cheap but effective (and profitable) project for hick-pic director Charles B. Pierce (The Legend of Boggy Creek) that wades in docudrama and horror thriller without fully committing to either. The remake has no such identity crisis, pushing all its chips to the corner of the felt marked “slasher.”
In its meta take, the Texarkana residents commemorating the murders’ 65th anniversary are panicked when a copycat killer — potato-sack headgear and all — begins offing good-looking youngsters who dare give in to their hard-R impulses. Our parentless Final Girl (Addison Timlin, Odd Thomas) survives and investigates.
By acknowledging not just the true-crime element, but Pierce’s real-life film, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (the Sundance-anointed Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (2013’s Carrie remake) are allowed to have their devil’s-food cake and eat it, too; technically, they’re not recreating Sundown’s kills with contemporary gore galore (near-iconic death-by-trombone scene included) — they’re commenting on them, right?
There is no correct answer. Love or loathe the execution (pun not intended), there is no denying it’s different. Gomez-Rejon calls the shots with considerable style; they pop with gorgeous color. He also ably captures the heavy humidity of the region’s sticky summer nights. If only all horror remakes could convey half as much. —Rod Lott