The Mad Man Next Door

Hey, did you know that the '80s are like, totally IN right now? 

Observe the many new horror movies to prove it.

Quick Plot: Davey is a 15-year-old Cape May paperboy with big dreams of becoming the next Spielberg. Until now, suburban life has proven to be fairly uninspiring. Thankfully, local news reports the first interesting thing to ever happen to Davey and his trio of misfit friends: someone within the island is abducting and murdering teenage boys.

For Davey, this is a chance to shake up evenings of manhunt with something actually worth being hunted. Things get especially exciting when he suspects his neighbor, Officer Mackey (Rich Sommer of Mad Men) as the killer. Knowing it will be a tough sell to the adults, Davey and his pals devote their titular summer to collecting evidence (with occasional pauses to spy on the sexy former babysitter next door).

Directed by the Turbo Kid team of François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell, Summer of 84 (and yes: I'm annoyed we don't get an apostrophe) feels heavily indebted to the current wave of nostalgia sparked by Stranger Things. That's a good and bad thing. Sure, it's fun to remember the horrors of faces you might know showing up on milk cartons and the freedom of riding your bike around town without adult supervision, but then you realize writers Matt Leslie and Stephen J. Smith (born respectively in 1980 and 1981) don't actually know how teenagers talked in 1984, and you become incredibly distracted searching for the probable (and many) anachronisms.

The other glaring issue in Summer of 84 is that it toys with its tone, constantly playing with exactly what kind of horror movie it wants to be. What starts as a lighthearted romp suddenly turns into a truly cruel finale, only to then slightly lighten up with no serious mediation in its denouement. Tonal shifts can certainly be used to good effect, but in Summer of 84, it just ends up feeling mean. Much like most visits with Freddy Krueger, the fact that our killer is most likely doing terrible, presumably sexual things to his underage victims is never given any real weight. That would be fine if Summer of 84 wanted to stay in a fluffier realm, but when it ends on such a devastating note, the nature of the entire film just feels inconsistent. 

High Points

Though the quartet of wildly different boys doesn't necessarily fit well together on the page, the young actors have nice chemistry with each other, and the moments where they actually serve as loyal, unquestioning friends are easily the film's best strength 

Low Points

Look, I'm all for including female characters in boys' stories, but if you're going to throw in a token girl, can you first take a few minutes in your writing room to figure out who she is? Maybe it's just that one of the kids is played by The Babysitter's Judah Lewis, but the whole "slightly older dream girl who knows all of your references and exists for no reason other than to be cool" is so over. It doesn't help that the character of Nikki is handled so clumsily, showing up at random moments and being sent off without any resolution. 

Lessons Learned: the 1980s Edition (cumulatively culled from the recent rash of '80s-infused horror movies)

Old meatloaf smells like werewolf crap

Hot blond babysitters love nothing more than flirting with sensitive smart younger teenage boys

All parents are absent and terrible

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, a lot of horror fans seem to love Summer of (')84, and I'm not here to say anyone is wrong. While I was entertained (and incredibly frustrated) while watching, it's a film that has soured significantly for me the more I've thought about it. It's on Shudder, and probably worth a watch just for you to make up your own mind.