User reviews

The original TTTDS was one of the earliest slasher films in the genre that even came before (in 1976) popular franchises like Halloween & Friday the 13th and I've always been a fan of that flick for its humor, suspense & docu-drama like narration style & last but not the least the haunting ending. So when I first heard about there will be a new TTTDS, I thought it'd be another pointless, some cash-in effort but last night after watching this new take on T3DS, I'd like to admit...I was pleasantly surprised!!

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (the most frequent director of American Horror Story), this new film is a strange version to categorize as a remake, reboot or a sequel; actually it's neither a straightforward remake or sequel...I'm not sure but I think REQUEL (a sequel-ish remake!) can be a more appropriate term for it. After more than half a century of the actual events of The Moonlight Murders that resulted the very making of 1976 original film, this new story is set on present day at the same town, Texarkana that once again begins to plagued by "The Phantom" murders. Interestingly, the 1976 original film is also very much alive in this movie as a film that we know in our 'reality', as in the film the town now maintains a tradition in every Halloween to show a drive in screening of the original film. So, as the film progress we see a fine blend between this version & the original film where some scenes from the original brought back through a kind of flashback style while also creating some copycat murder sequence in this new one. I liked this approach of providing homage to the original; bring it to an entirely new generation. This new & refreshing kind of take & treatment to this already known & filmed story is the most appreciating part of this version. And overall the film is beautifully shot, liked the camera works, the character development was fine for a slasher flick, but still as a slasher it's not above the clichés as well as it comes with a routine ending & weak motive for the killer which I couldn't find much point to it. And lastly there's another strange part of it and that's the Town itself! It looks like the town hasn't really age after all this years!! May be for the homage issue but though the film is set on late 2013, it still got the 70s vibe almost all over it.

Anyway, there's not much masked killer-slasher flick comes out this days with good or decent budget & film making like this one and still despite some clichés & the ending, as a slasher flick it's pretty good one, IMO.

Some 60+ years since a serial killer left the town of Texaracana in fear the killer seems to be back for more, but one girl will stop at nothing to uncover his identity.

This film is really intelligently shot, it mixes in several scenes from the original film while also creating some copycat scenes with different characters, I really enjoyed it. Good acting all around.

That being said this lost a lot of likability with its death scenes, there are several characters with less then five minutes of screen time, yet they leave us thanking the killer for offing them. you'll notice the mpaa rating says it has strong sexual content, I'm not one to really complain about unneeded sex and nudity that being said the sex scenes were really used to degrade the characters.

Overall this was a nice slasher film, fans of the sub-genre will enjoy it. Not a slasher fan? you should probably pass on it.

Two things they attempted here, one is the usual slasher where a skulking presence moves about in the small town after dark, haunting the whole of space. It offers up the blood sacrifice the genre demands, the Texan locations are nice, a sparse setting for the knife to slash.

But they also had the ambition to not just redo the same horror as every other thing on the shelf but to layer that stage where horror unfolds so that we get the mechanisms that give rise to it. This is a sequel of sorts to the 70s film by the same name that was about the real Texarkana murders that shook the place in the 40s.

So this becomes layered here as events unfolding in a place where gruesome reality of that day is relived each year through fiction, re-entered, thus neutered, through fiction; the original film playing on a drive-in on Halloween night as this one begins. The events aim to relive the original murders so that forgetful spectators will remember again the real impact, this at the behest of a new murderous narrator who fastidiously restages the real thing around town.

The heroine is chosen by him - as the narrative demands - to be the first victim who survives to tell the story, herself an aspiring journalist looking to document truth. So she finds out that it's all happening because a part of the original narrative was omitted in the telling, not given its place in the fiction.

So this is more ambitious than its ilk. One obvious source is Scream. A less obvious is Citizen Kane (don't jeer). The camera tries to swoop into rooms like Welles had it do, there's Kanesque deep focus, even that a journalist is looking to piece together truth from narration we might see as not wholly accidental.

It's not enough to understand Welles as technique he mastered or topics he illustrated though. You must now what for. The filmmaker doesn't so we get obtrusive technique, structure without narrative depth, views without import, in the end it's all strung together in a film schoolish way, and this goes back and even ruins the slasher and sense of place.

It ends with one of the most inane twists.

The original true crime slasher flick "Town That Dreaded Sundown"(1976) directed by Charles B.Pierce was based on true story of a mysterious serial killer called the Phantom Killer,who during spring of 1946 killed five people and wounded three in a small border town of Texarkana.The perpetrator of these heinous crimes was never caught.The new "Town That Dreaded Sundown" remake plays more like "Scream" influenced modern teen slasher flick with plenty of references to the original movie and the Phantom Killer unsolved case.Addison Timlin plays teenage girl who after seeing her would-be boyfriend brutally murdered by masked maniac decides to find who really the Phantom Killer AD 2014 is.The movie-within-a-movie premise is certainly well-played and there are some gruesomely bloody kill scenes.Frozen in time Texarkana is also a nice touch.Unfortunately the final reveal of the killer is disappinting.7 trombone deaths out of 10.

A remake of a film that acknowledges the original's existence (and even implies it what an insensitive film to make) - now there's an interesting idea. Or at least a bold idea. It's not the first film to have done it, I know 'The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)' in 2011 played around with the same concept and I'm certain it would have been done before that. For some reason though it just leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It's like a different form of breaking the fourth wall. If you acknowledge the existence of film inside a film that's fine, it obviously happens all the time. But to directly acknowledge the series of films you are currently making just cheapens the whole experience and makes me wonder why I should care. To be fair though the film itself didn't really make me care anyway.

The whole thing is a bit of a mess. The victims are stupid, the cops are possibly even dumber and the kills feel rushed and never go on long enough to build any real suspense. Numerous times we are introduced to characters only moments before their imminent death. There are two flaws with this, one being that we can be certain that they are going to be victims because suddenly out of nowhere they have been awkwardly brought into the film like lambs to the slaughter, and secondly because we couldn't care less for the characters. We have no connection with them. Similar films like 'Scream' at least put some time and effort into the one scene their victim may have in an attempt to make us feel compassion for the character. That one scene can be enough if done right, but it certainly wasn't here.

The 'whodunnit' side of things is done well enough, I certainly didn't pick it. That's really about all this has going for it though. They really kept the runtime short at 86 minutes. I feel even another five minutes could have done the world of good just to extend some of the kill scenes and build characters a fraction more. It's certainly not unwatchable, but in a genre that has been quite stale for a while now is this adding anything new? I wouldn't have thought so.

I never expect too much from a slasher as it's not the most succesful genre but in this case it was a pleasant surprise. I didn't see the original movie from 1976 so I can't compare both of them but this version was certainly good enough to keep me entertained. The acting wasn't bad at all at that from the whole cast. There was a fair amount of decent slashing scenes, all done very professionaly and the mystery keeps you guessing till the end. A good movie for this genre.

Well they sure managed to keep that old image from back then, thus giving this movie a more realistic look, helping the viewer connect easily with the story. I for one got to say that I enjoyed it!

Am surprised to see a hand bunch of good actors gathered here, just check out the list, you'll see what I'm talking about, so you can expect good acting. They kept a very realistic portrait of the town, the people, the church, pretty much everything looks old, older than everything else because it is a tired town, one that has been through a lot of terror already and it barely healed properly. The story moves slow, but the killings go on and on, no gore, a little nudity, still powerful images come with every kill. Those looked indeed like authentic psychopath murders with psychopath reason behind them.

I think I said enough, I don't wanna tip you off on anything so I'll just recommend you to try it. It's a good homage of the classic cinema. I haven't seen the original, I hear it is also quite brutal, probably I'll try that one too, soon enough I hope. So without comparing them, my opinion is that The Town That Dreaded Sundown stands tall for a horror/slasher remake.

Cheers!

Post-modern take on the 1976 film of the same title, which was based on a series of murders that occurred in Texarkana on the Texas/Arkansas border a few decades earlier. The first film is frequently referenced but setting the story aside, the two have little in common. The original could sit comfortably in the video nasty genre, while the 'remake' is a stylistic tour-De-force with sound and photography that give off an art film vibe. The acting is solid in part thanks to veteran character actors Ed Lauter Gary Cole (the arms expert in The Good Wife). Although using a few genre tropes, this is not your average slasher flick. It's a scary movie but not a Scary Movie.

I remember the movie from 1976 and had no idea there was a 2014 movie until I saw it on Amazon Prime. Having found nothing else interesting to watch, I unfortunately began to watch. BIG mistake.

This one was very predictable. You always knew when the killer was going to strike...down to the second. Hardly any suspense. But even in a bad movie, I expect things to be at least somewhat believable. For a town that had suffered multiple murders at night, why, in the last few minutes when Jami and her grandmother are leaving town, is there no police presence on the streets? Nowhere. Come on. That's some BS. And who goes on a trip from Texas to California and leaves at night? That's quite unusual....you leave first thing in the morning, which coincidentally is the SAFEST time of the day in Texarkana. For a town that "dreaded sundown" you sure couldn't tell it...they were out and about all the time after dark (except for the police, of course).

The sex scene seemed to be thrown in just for the hell of it.....sort of out of place even for a slasher film, which I guess is what this one was?

I was so surprised that five established actors actually participated in this POS. Now I wish I had that hour and a half back. Pass on this one, folks.

There are some scenes here that are truly awesome and really entertaining. Despite the clichés, some of the death kills and chases are well done and pretty inventive (although having not seen the original, not sure how inventive after all). The acting is decent, and it really feels like an old-school slasher, for obvious reasons. The problem is that it tries to get into the backstory a little too much, ultimately deflating so much of its momentum. Its first act is definitely its strongest, what a shame it couldn't sustain itself. For horror fans, it's somewhat decent and maybe many will love it. But it does show some talent from Gomez-Rejon, who has proved to be the best director of American Horror Story

anyone into masked killers killing people and revealing their identity at the very end, you can't go too wrong here.

Although the killer uses a gun a bit too much, and there's no decent death scenes in here, there's enough for slasher fans to give this a watch, I liked the way that pretty much as soon as the killer is revealed, unlike most other films where they talk or chase each other for another half an hour, this one just concludes pretty sharpish.

has a bit of a surprise at the end... makes no sense, but might be a pleasant surprise for people who spend the whole film guessing who the killer is.

it's no scream, but if you like one you'll like the other

It kept me interested for a while with the mystery aspect, but pretty terrible other than that (1 viewing)

From one of the directors of American Horror Story, expect some uniquely and beautifully shot that makes this film rise above other recent slasher films. While the twist climax may seems pretty silly with a decent storyline but thanks to the cinematography, the directing, and the music that all comes together really well making it an interesting slasher flick to sit through. The GORES here are quite impressive, brutally bloody, and intensely done enough to gleefully satisfy horror fans. The killer here is also pretty creepy with some jumpy cheap SCARES here and there. Overall, this is a meta-sequel to the original film that's beautifully shot with smart concept and enough bloody kills making it one of a better horror films that's worth checking out this year >>B<<

Greetings from Lithuania.

"The Town That Dreaded Sundown" (2014) is kinda generic horror slasher flick. There isn't anything special, although plot kinda tries to make it a bit original and insert some movie within a movie story. Acting is also generic, nothing special. The only thing in this movie good was cinematography - there are some truly good shoots, and overall cinematography is very good, much better that the material itself.

Overall, "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" is OK flick for some one viewing if you have seen better genre's flicks and you have absolutely nothing else to do. It's bloody and a bit gory and has couple of jump scares, everything else is very generic and quickly forgettable.

Hate to tell the truth but whether or not you personally "liked" a film does not necessarily qualify you to review it.

This reviewer was hosting horror festivals when the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD came out, and the hardest thing to do in a horror flick is be subtle.

But this director has mad skills. And can do subtle.

The framing in many of the scenes is incredible, there are times you almost feel the characters on-screen are the only people left on the face of the earth.

And Gomez-Rejon also is shrewd enough to get more mileage out of Addison Timlin's face than a Prius.

And a nice face it is. I counted over 50 closeups and then stopped counting. Her character is the glue, the connection, for this story and she is set up as a shy girl who (quote) never gets asked out.

Which is why this story is fiction and not a documentary.

And you the viewer get to watch the whole story through her eyes.

The juxtaposition of the new movie and the "old movie" only makes my point -- putting this film alongside Whedon's Cabin in the Woods for cleverly deconstructing a tale from within the story arc itself.

Good directing, cinematography, unique fun idea, and even the acting wasn't too bad! BUT it was just a bad movie due to the cheesy screenplay & almost the actors not even taking it serious. Still think it's worth a watch, and oddly enjoyed/noticed the cool cinematic type shots/angles. I mean it's no award winner, but as cheesy as it was I noticed a lot of positives with how it was filmed. Had a lot more potential, but just fell shy due to the corny-ness and almost like no one was taking it serious ha BUT besides all that negativity.... I liked it and actually exceeded my expectations. Nothing special but nothing "terrible"

This movie starts off with a voice-over speaking about how what your about to see is based on a true story, which is all bs of course, in real life this movie is based on the 1976 movie with the same name which was indeed based on a true story, but only loosely.

The characters in this movie are all fictional however taking place in current date and it's more of a sequel than it is a remake as the original movie play a big part in this movie in terms of it's legend and the fact that the first murder occur in a annual screening of the movie.

All that really doesn't matter in the end I suppose as long as the movie entertains, which it really does not.

It's incredibly boring (even the many sex-scenes in it are boring), and to say that it's filled with clichés is a understatement; THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (2014) is a cliché first and a movie second.

I actually expected a decent movie when I saw Anthony Anderson and Gary Cole was in it, but they are not in it all that much.

Anthony Anderson who I personally think is one of the funniest comedians plays a serious role this time, and when I say serious I don't mean dramatic I mean that his sheriff character appears to have a stick up his butt and wouldn't know a joke if his life depended on it. Pure and simply he's boring as a piece of wood in this one, and has the charm of it as well.

Gary Cole is not much better, he seems incredibly bored through out and that's all he does.

But the rest of the (unknown) cast is not that much better.

Okay music though but that doesn't help this uninspired waste of film whatsoever.

If you like really boring horror movies with poor from point a to point b story telling and a cast that look like they'd rather go to Pizza Hut than to make this movie, then yeah maybe this is for you, if you prefer your horrors to entertain than watch something else.