The Town That Dreaded Sundown

I've never seen the original movie, although saying "original" here is a misnomer. This isn't a sequel to the 1976 movie. This isn't a reboot, and this isn't a remake. It re-contextualizes the original as a movie within the universe of this movie, a sort-of sensationalized biopic of the real events, giving this a weird meta feel to it. So, I guess this is a meta-requel? Unfortunately, it does nothing with this concept. Other than have scenes in this movie parallel the original and telling you so with flashbacks to footage from the original, being meta is a meaningless gimmick. From there, the movie is a slasher-whodunit about how the Texarkana Phantom has returned after 65 years. The movie does drop some red herrings along the way, which is a mixed bag, because while it isn't any of the obvious red herrings (thank the heavens), when the mystery is revealed, it's unsatisfying and overly clever, the product of a writer desperately trying to outsmart the audience, but doing so at the cost of logic or impact. The gore effects are decent, and the Phantom is definitely given an imposing, horrifying stature. Again, though, there's a downside, and it's in the motive and the way it wants to parallel the original movie. For a little while, the kills are trying to go step-for-step in recreating the locations, and sometimes the exact manners, in which the murders occurred. But along the way, it feels like the movie forgot that the original only had a body count of five, and that such a meager death toll might not be satisfying, so it just throws away the parallel conceit and runs up the body count. As a slasher fan, I can't sit here and say a high body count bothers me, but when the framework of your script is "killer is recreating the past", and then they suddenly don't for no adequately explored reason, it feels wrong. And here's another mixed bag: the cops in this movie are there, at the forefront, leading the charge to find the killer. They're never portrayed as dopes or country bumpkins. Then, about two-thirds of the way, they cease to be in the movie at all, which makes any time spent with them feel like a waste. I didn't have a bad time Sundown 2014. It does keep up the energy, even if the third act feels rushed as all hell, the kills are gruesome and effective, the effects are good, and Addison Timlin plays an effectively sympathetic Final Girl (even if she looks about 7 years older than a graduating high school student). I just wish the movie hadn't spent so much time trying to be clever, all the while being too dumb to do anything about its shortcomings. It's not a dreadful aughts-slasher, or a PG-13 stinker ... it just needed a little more crafting to go from merely good to really good.