While attending this year’s Sundance Film Festival, I was honored to catch the new slasher classic, SUMMER OF ’84, and wow. Fuck. I mean. Fuck. Seriously. This is some of the best horror content that I’ve seen in a long while that’s actually worked!

When creating a restoration of the 80’s horror movie genre style, it’s difficult to translate into a movie. I have to give props because 99% of the time it fails and SUMMER OF ’84 did not. Better than “Stranger Things.” Yah, I said it. Better than IT. Yah, I said that too. Even if you check out the trailer, it doesn’t do this new classic horror movie justice.

Directed by François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell, they are the geniuses who also brought us Turbo Kid (2015). Both of these films are from two very different genres, but they both work! Shocking, I know. Looking at this as a filmmaker, I am impressed.

The SUMMER OF ’84 is about a lonely police officer with way too much time on his hands, I mean seriously, he needs a hobby, played by Rich Sommer, who is suspected of being a serial killer by the next door neighbor’s kid, played by Graham Verchere.

Rich Sommer plays the perfect vintage villain and he scares the shit out of you so get ready to run to the bathroom. Verchere and his 80s character defined friends get into a bit of trouble while discovering the secrets in their little suburb of cookie-cutter houses.

Matt Leslie and Stephen J. Smith, the screenwriters of SUMMER OF ’84, made a piece of genre movie perfection and I can’t wait to see more from these guys! And I can’t forget the director of photography, Jean-Philippe Bernier, who not only shot this visually mind fuck of a horror film but also created a score for it, that all you horror film synth nerds will fall in love with.

If you can’t tell, I was really blown away by this film so congrats to the filmmakers and their team! Bravo!

• Author
• Recent Posts

Mary Russell

Latest posts by Mary Russell (see all)

• Sundance Film Festival Review: PIERCING (2018) - January 27, 2018
• Sundance Film Festival Review: SUMMER OF ’84 (2018) - January 24, 2018
• Mary’s Top 5 Horror Films of 2017 - January 2, 2018