A masked maniac terrorizes the same small community where a murderer known as the Phantom Killer struck decades earlier.
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Reviews
Perfect cast and a good story
Just perfect...
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
65 years ago, a masked man attacked residents of small town Texarkana. Now it appears the miscreant is back. Speaking with a modulated voice in slow deliberate tones, the 'moonlight murderer' begins his killing spree all over again.The production values are decent, the acting is convincing. So why do I find this tortuously dull? How can something with a fair amount of screaming teens and restrainedly gruesome killings not arrest my attention? Could it be that Jami (Addison Timlin) speaks in a monotone and insipid manner no matter what the emotion? To be fair to her, her contempories are often much the same. Far from the strutting posturers that frequent such films usually (which is a mercy), they are on the other end of the spectrum. Humbly mumbling their lines to one another, it is difficult to work out one character from another. Inoffensive –sweet even - to the point of inertia, these characters are barely even cyphers for the marauding killer, who is also without much in the way of presence.It may be that I am simply not in the mood for this, but there seems to be no life in any facet of the proceedings. Even the occasional sex scene fails to break free of this miasma. Why is the murderer doing these things? Just *because*, really. I feel bad about my nonchalance – after all, a great deal of work has presumably gone into creating this: the bleakness of the locale is nicely conveyed by Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, and Ludwig Goransson's musical score is nicely haunting; there's a good set piece where a couple wake up to find their scarecrow perched on the wooden stand has been replaced by the bloody corpse of a young girl and then within moments the lacklustre performance of those trying to solve the mystery drags things back down again. Sadly unengaging throughout.
Two thirds of a century after a series of brutal, vicious, and unsolved killings took place in Texarkana, Arkansas, and one film, loosely based on the crimes, was made, another killer begins making the rounds, using the original killer's M.O. Not really a remake, as it does have an original take on the story, and not exactly a sequel, either, as the characters are aware of the previous film's existence, and even turn to it for clues to the killer's next move, this meta-film has an interesting idea, and much more tension and suspense than I had expected. The hooded killer stalking his victims is effectively chilling, and just when it seems to begin copying the cornfield scene from the original, it does something a bit different with it, and gives the audience a creepy scarecrow image, not present in the earlier film.It mixes fact with fiction, as an article is being written about the killer, and a previously unknown victim, which could provide a clue to the killer's identity.But for all those things working in its favour, the characters are mostly dull, bland, and boring, the cinematography is typical high contrast with over saturated colours, and while the final chase is effective, the reveal of the killers' identity was uninspired and unbelievable.
A town that sits between Arkansas and Texas had a spell of killings nearly sixty-six years ago. This town is named Texakana and the killer was known as the Phantom. The Phantom suddenly reappears and vows to make the killings continue until the town remembers his legacy. The movie plays out in grisly fashion and has a few creative deaths along the way (knife attached to a trumpet). The main heroine, or the tormented in this case – watches people around her die as she tries to get to the bottom of things. The killings are so bad that the "Texas Rangers" are called on the scene to investigate. I can't help but thing the heroine is similar to "Cindy" from the "Scream" series, only as more of a token and one shot character. The movie really does center more around the antagonist, "The Phantom" and it is almost too bad that the movie doesn't take place around his point of view instead.The movie is creative, and some of the scenes leading up to, and the deaths themselves, are creative. The movie is worth watching if you are a horror buff – it is typical slasher affair.
my feelings about this film is split. On one hand you have a decent film which tells a story about a serial killer, then you have a film (which may or may not be intentionally funny) which is a splatter gore fest. The majority of this film is good to watch when nothing else is on, but that is the problem. This film is at most times pretty tedious to battle through. Some moments seem clever and smart, but other moments seem rather unamusing and not at the least bit entertaining.The Town That Dreaded Sun Down is at times fun to gloss over, but at times also hard to watch due to its prolonged scenarios. Not much of this film screams "this is worth watching", however at times the plot drifts off into a pretentious overdrive. Netflix supplied this to me, and being one of the last horror films for me to watch, was not a good one.