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SUMMER OF 84
Directors: François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell Cast: Graham Verchere, Caleb Emery, Judah Lewis, Cory Gruter-Andrew, Tiera Skovbye, Rich Sommer, Jason Gray-Standford, Shauna Johannesen MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:45 Release Date: 8/10/18 (limited) |
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Capsule review by Mark Dujsik | August 9, 2018 Nostalgia is fully embraced and then, ultimately, shattered in Summer of 84. The story, set during the summer of 1984 (natch), is a riff on one of those stories about suburban kids finding adventure within their mundane lives that were so popular around the time of the movie's period. Here, the adventure is a hunt for a serial killer of children and teenagers. It begins and mostly continues, oddly, with a lot of whimsy. The resolution is anything but whimsical. The kids are a group of friends and teenage stereotypes. The de facto leader is Davey (Graham Verchere), an ordinary teenage boy. "Eats" (Judah Lewis) is the rebel, "Woody" (Caleb Emery) is the chubby one, and Curtis (Cory Gruter-Andrew) is the nerd. They spend their summer vacation talking about girls and sex, playing a nighttime game of hide-and-seek, and keeping up with the news of a killer who has been abducting and murdering kids for years. Davey suspects that a local cop named Mackey (Rich Sommer) is the killer. He and his friends orchestrate a lengthy stakeout to catch him. The movie is filled—but not obsessed—with period details: wood-paneled station wagons, milk cartons, a pop-culture reference here and there, and, just so no one starts thinking that it's all innocent, a couple of AIDS jokes. There's also the uncomfortable way that the movie treats Davey's neighbor/crush Nikki (Tiera Skovbye), on whom the boys peep while she's undressing but who, strangely, almost embraces Davey for his invasion of her privacy. She's having problems at home, and Davey, the kid who keeps a pair of binoculars close to his window so he can watch her, is the only one who can really understand her. All of that messiness aside, directors François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell intentionally seem to distract us from the severity of the situation at hand with trite observations about teenage boys, the camaraderie of these wholly unlikely friends, and the innocently morbid curiosity of looking for the darkness of the suburbs. The movie's most daring move doesn't come until the third act, when it wonders what it would really be like if Davey's suspicions are true. Summer of 84 isn't quite an example baiting and switching, but its descent into the darkest of dark terrain definitely doesn't feel earned. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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