'Summer Of 84' Trailer: A Serial Killer Terrorizes Suburbia In This Riff On Classic '80s Movies

You may not recognize the name RKSS, but the filmmaking collective comprised of François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell made some waves with their futuristic feature debut Turbo Kid, which was a cult favorite on the indie circuit a few years ago. Now they're back with a new film called Summer of '84 that takes a deep dive into the nostalgia of the 1980s.

The premise is simple: a group of teenage boys ride bicycles through idyllic suburbia while trying to figure out if one of their neighbors is a serial killer. A new trailer has just arrived, and you can check it out below.

I saw this movie at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and though the premise sounded intriguing, the final film doesn't live up to its potential. /Film's Ethan Anderton called it "almost aggressively average and supremely disappointing rather than simply being bad. The movie refuses to go in any interesting directions and is stunted by its slavish loyalty to the nostalgia of the 1980s, right down to a typical dream girl next door played by Tiera Skovbye, who serves no purpose other than being the two-dimensional crush of our main character." You can read the rest of his review here.

The film is bursting with plot beats we've seen elsewhere, and while the execution is largely competent, it spends 95% of its run time simply going through the motions, more occupied with capturing the time period than providing anything new. But credit where it's due: it finally attempts to add something to the conversation in its final minutes, but that's not enough time to separate this from being anything other than another modern rehash of Amblin-esque nostalgia.

At a certain point, popular culture is going to move beyond the fetishization of the early works of Steven Spielberg and his contemporaries, and after seeing this movie, I was begging for that transition to occur as quickly as possible.

Then again, some people really dug it. Doctor Strange writer and friend of the site C. Robert Cargill is a big fan:

SUMMER OF '84 from the makers of TURBO KID is STRANGER THINGS meets REAR WINDOW by way of the 1980s serial killer panic. So. Fucking. Good. Dark, funny, terrifying. *A MUST SEE* for horror fans.

— C. Robert Cargill (@Massawyrm) April 6, 2018

You'll be able to decide for yourselves when Summer of '84 hits select theaters on August 10, 2018.

Summer, 1984: The perfect time to be 15 years old and free. But when neighborhood conspiracy theorist Davey Armstrong begins to suspect his police officer neighbor might be the serial killer all over the local news, he and his three best friends begin an investigation that soon turns dangerous.