If
the Losers’ Club can take on an all-powerful demonic clown like Pennywise and Charley
Brewster can face off against a vampire next-door, four nebbish but scrappy
eighties kids ought to be able to handle their neighborhood serial killer.
However, there is one slight complicating factor. It is not absolutely certain
Wayne Mackey is the killer stalking Cape May, but there is no doubt he is a
local copper. Of course, Davey Armstrong is not about to be dissuaded by
awkward facts like that, but his friends will need constant convincing in François
Simard, Anouk Whissell & Yoann-Karl Whissell’s Summer of ‘84, which screens during this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
It
is 1984. The Reagan-Bush ticket is cruising to re-election, college grads
actually expected to land jobs, and fifteen-year-olds like Armstrong and his
buddies were not nearly as jaded by the media and pop culture as they think they
are. Armstrong, Tommy “Eats” Eaton, Dale “Woody” Woodworth, and Curtis Farraday
are all preoccupied with girls, but Armstrong also has an abiding interest in
lurid conspiracy theories. While most Cape May residents are alarmed by news of
the serial killer, he is thrilled by it.
As
luck would have it, Armstrong, the paperboy, happens to spy some rather
suspicious but circumstantial details around Officer Mackey house while
collecting for the month. Aided by his own imagination and his friends’
boredom, he manages to convince the gang to launch an ambitious surveillance operation.
The stakes will raise dramatically when the boys inevitably blow their cover.
However, Armstrong’s attention will also be somewhat divided when Nikki Kazsuba,
the somewhat older literal and proverbial girl-next-door starts paying (essentially
platonic) nocturnal visits.
Obviously,
Summer of ’84 hopes to ride the 1980s
horror nostalgia wave, launched by Stranger
Things and It. Be that as it may,
Summer happens to be smartly written
and skillfully executed. It hits all the right notes, but it is also willing to
go to some surprisingly dark places. In terms of tone and aesthetic, Summer is a dramatic departure from the
directorial trio’s prior film, Turbo Kid,
but it is clear from both works, the tandem knows and appreciates their 1980s
genre films.
The
four young co-conspirators all look age and era appropriate, but Judah Lewis
really stands out as the spectacularly foul-mouthed Eaton. Yet, Tiera Skovbye
scores some of the biggest laughs as the sly but sensitive Kazsuba. However, it
is Rich Sommer who really makes the film work by maintaining audience uncertainty
with a performance of perfectly calibrated ambiguity.
Summer of ’84 is a great deal of
fun, because it convincingly evokes the eighties era and suburban milieu. It
also proves Simard, Whissell, and Whissell have considerably more range than we
might have thought. Easily the most enjoyable selection of the midnight section,
Summer of ’84 screens again tomorrow
night (1/25) and Saturday (1/27) in Park City, as well as tonight (1/24) in
Salt Lake, as part of the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
