THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN - Meta horror was nothing new when this remake decided it was going to star the movie it was based on, but it's a slightly unexpected choice and colours TTTDS as a little eccentric from the outset. It's set in TexArkansas, where the events that inspired the seventies grindhouse original supposedly happened, and every year the drive-ins swing into life with mass showings of the movie that delivered this little town to notoriety. A pleasant ritual to mark the passing seasons but hold on, the killings are back! Here, a straightforward set-up - small town amateur sleuthing meets post torture porn gore - is at odds with a weird approach. Said weirdness includes the convoluted meta angle, but more so a visual style that's so overblown as to seem misplaced, with the screen flooded at every turn with skewed lighting, Dutch angles and even, at one point, a bit of random animation. Such dedication to aesthetic overkill might seem questionable in the domain of formula horror, but look at it this way - what's the point in remaking anything unless you're either going to either perfect what's already there, or else shit all over it in a way that's at least interesting? What fascinates about 'The Town That Dreaded Sundown' is an attitude more frequently encountered in arthouse / experimental cinema. For those looking for callbacks, yes, that death by trombone is in there, it's my favourite bit too. The spate of remakes that hit in the noughts and twenty tens produced a couple of duds ('A Nightmare On Elm Street' being the most egregious rehash), but overall I look favourably on them - 'The Town That Dreaded Sundown' is one of the more interesting efforts from around that time.
 |