SUMMER OF 84: Relies Too Heavily On Nostalgia

Summer of 84 is a nostalgic horror film which follows a group of kids, led by Davey Armstrong (Graham Verchere), who thinks his neighbor Wayne Mackey (Rich Sommer) is a serial killer responsible for the disappearances of several children in town. The story is fairly simple, and often relies on the nostalgia of the setting and time period.

Flat Characters With Limited Development

Summer of 84 takes its inspiration from horror films of the 1980s, similarly to Stranger Things and the recent version of Stephen King’s IT, without spending as much time setting its characters apart from each other and from the stereotypes from the genre. The dynamics of both IT and Stranger Things rely on well-written children characters with their own personalities and issues. With Summer of 84, the characters all had a similar personality of a kid going through puberty and only thinking about sex. A character like this isn’t inaccurate of boys growing up, but Summer of 84 wrote these kids that seemed like they only bonded on their interest in girls.

Most of the dialogue for the children characters felt like bad porn dialogue, and I can understand having one character speaking about girls with crude jokes, but this film took that too far and wrote dialogue that was cheesy and bad, but also didn’t sound like anything a young kid would ever say. The sentiment of some of these lines could come from children, but the words chosen took me out of the film.

With other recent nostalgia trips into the ’80s, I enjoyed the dynamics between the children, and they helped pull those other films and shows to the next level. Summer of 84 has a decent story and an interesting dynamic between Davey, the only child character in the film that had any amount of a unique personality, and the neighbor he thinks is a serial killer, but it falls flat in establishing the friendship between its main group of children. Since so much of the film is focused on these kids interacting and helping each other solve this mystery, the film was hard to get through.

For a film that should be strong in its childhood nostalgia and friendships, the strongest aspects of this film actually involved the villain. Rich Sommer’s performance as Wayne stands out, and helps this film stay afloat. Graham Verchere’s performance as Davey is especially good in the scenes he shares with Sommer. These scenes also are the best representation of how the film handles the horror of its plot. The script and directing in the tense moments between these characters kept me interested in the film.

Visuals and Tension Bring the Film Together

Even though the dialogue of Summer of 84 was pretty sub-par overall, the script was strong in its moments of tension and horror. Some of the scenes that stand out are fairly simple, but visually haunting. I enjoyed the moments where the focus of the film goes away from the friendship of the kids and focuses on the tension surrounding Wayne.

The dialogue in the scenes between Wayne and the kids is still not the best, but I like how his performance gave a creepy edge to even the most ordinary of lines. Keeping his dialogue fairly normal, with a hint of everything not being as it seems helped keep the tension throughout all his scenes. Even though I was not a fan of the dialogue through most of the film, I enjoyed how much a focus was made to word choice with Wayne’s dialogue. One word that seems out of place took a fairly normal phrase and made it unsettling. Sommer did a wonderful job in these scenes, playing a mix of overly friendly neighbor and untrustworthy and creepy.

I wished Summer of 84 had more tense moments, instead of being bogged down with poorly written scenes of the kids bonding, but not really bonding, because I never felt like any of them were actually being friendly with one another. The moments where the film focuses on the horror and creating tension were nostalgic to the horror films of the late ’70s and ’80s without feeling overly forced like some other scenes in the film.

A Chilling Climax Shows The Potential of the Film

The last twenty minutes or so of this film really worked, and made me see the potential it had if the script spent a little bit more time fleshing out the child characters. Summer of ’84 managed to surprise me with where it goes. The ending of the film takes everything further than you would expect, and ends it on a strong note.

Through most of the run time, I was bored by the film and felt it was dragging, but by the last act, I was watching closely and intently, not sure how far they would go, and wanting to see exactly what was in store.

Rich Sommer and Graham Verchere stand out, making me wish the film focused more on the tense moments the two share rather than the friendship between a bunch of unlikable characters that the film seems to want us to like, and a budding romance between Davey and Nikki Kaszuba (Tiera Skovbye), a character that should have been a big part of the group of friends, but is instead a babysitter all the boys talk about like she’s not a person. Her character and the budding relationship had potential, if they were developed properly.

Conclusion: Summer of 84

Summer of 84 strives in its scenes of tension and horror, but fails in its moments of childhood nostalgia and friendship. Rich Sommer gives a memorable performance, leaving the audience uneasy. His performance expertly blends small town hospitality with necessary malice. Even though this film did not land for me, I am interested to see what directors François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell and writers Matt Leslie and Stephen J. Smith come up with next. Summer of 84 had potential, especially in its moments of tightly written horror and unease.

Are you interested in seeing more nostalgic horror along the lines of Summer of 84, Stranger Things, and the IT remake? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Summer of 84 is released August 10th in the US. Check here for more release dates.