{"id":28702,"date":"2018-08-07T19:05:06","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T23:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=28702"},"modified":"2018-08-07T19:05:06","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T23:05:06","slug":"summer-of-84-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/07\/summer-of-84-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer of \u201984 (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The thing about RKSS\u2019s latest eighties inspired genre offering is that it\u2019ll poke all the right nostalgia cords with audiences. There\u2019s so much eighties ephemera, that it\u2019ll be difficult not to be charmed by it. But deep down beneath the \u201cCruel Summer\u201d music cues, and giant camcorders beats the heart of a vicious, mean spirited and dark murder mystery that was often unpleasant and kind of dull. To admit that isn\u2019t easy as I loved RKSS\u2019s \u201cTurbo Kid\u201d and anxiously wanted to see what they would do with a murder mystery. But while you might get shades of \u201cStranger Things\u201d here and there, the movie itself is pretty crappy.<\/p>\n

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Davey, Eats, Woody, and Curtis are all friends that hang out in their tree house and spend their days facing teenhood while also refusing to let go of the past. When Davey neighbor Mr. Mackey with a young boy who goes missing one day, he begins to suspect Mr. Mackey is the Cape May Slayer, a kidnapper and serial killer the police have been chasing. Now he and his three friends begin investigating Mr. Mackey, convinced he\u2019s the murderer. Mackey seems to be generally good natured about their investigation, despite disrupting their lives, but is this the game of some psychotic serial killer, or the delusions of guys that just can\u2019t face moving on and growing up? RKSS invoke a lot of \u201cThe Burbs,\u201d \u201cRear Window,\u201d and a tad of \u201cFright Night\u201d with what is essentially a tale about the end of innocence.<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019re not catching on yet, the movie beats the hell out of you with those overtones. RKSS stage a pretty great scenic eighties town with back woods and its own colorful characters as well as four eighties archetypes we can root for, and jeer when they\u2019ve hit their pitfalls. But \u201cSummer of 84\u201d takes a long time to get the wheels in motion in regards to its mystery and hysteria revolving Davey\u2019s suspicion his neighbor is a serial killer. While there are genuine moments of tension and suspense, a lot of it feels like filler and dry runs rather than mounting tension that will lead to an explosion. RKSS\u2019s big eighties celebration works to the detriment of the film\u2019s actual narrative involving murder and a mystery that could mean doom for its protagonists.<\/p>\n

Nothing really very interesting happens within the course of the movie, and when events finally explode in our heroes faces in the finale, RKSS dive head first in to a rather grisly and unpleasant showdown that is shockingly more violent than the entire film would have you believe it\u2019s building up to. I was surprised with how grisly RKSS tended to make what felt like more of a spooky mystery than anything else. I was so sorely disappointed in how monotonous and clunky it all way, especially when it came to the heavy handed allegories about growing up. Most fans of RKSS might love the massive injection of eighties nostalgia they put on display here, as did I. I loved the music, the score, and everything. But when it comes time to unfold an interesting story with engaging characters, \u201cSummer of 84\u201d stumbles and never recovers.<\/p>\n

In theaters on\u00a0<\/strong>August 10th,<\/b>\u00a0and available on VOD and Digital HD on\u00a0<\/strong>August 24th.<\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The thing about RKSS\u2019s latest eighties inspired genre offering is that it\u2019ll poke all the right nostalgia cords with audiences. There\u2019s so much eighties ephemera, that it\u2019ll be difficult not to be charmed by it. But deep down beneath the \u201cCruel Summer\u201d music cues, and giant camcorders beats the heart of a vicious, mean spirited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[225,240,302,696,703,874,1033],"class_list":["post-28702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-coming-of-age","tag-crime","tag-drama","tag-murder","tag-mystery","tag-romance","tag-teen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28704,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28702\/revisions\/28704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}