Summer’s winding down, the nights are drawing in and Halloween is the next big holiday. For all you horror fans out there, this means one thing: a cinematic calendar filled with spooky, gory, and altogether frightening flicks to aid your insomnia. Or, in more recent years: remakes, sequels and reboots. Either way you’ll likely leave the theatre screaming; from fear or frustration. To prepare you for the dark nights ahead, we urge you to scope out the first trailer for meta-remake, The Town That Dreaded Sundown.
Resist the urge to rant for at least the remainder of this article. This isn’t your typical cash-in. This remake of the 1976 classic horror comes from two genre masters. American Horror Story‘s Ryan Murphy and Jason Blum – whose Blumhouse Productions gave the community Insidious, Sinister and the Paranormal Activity franchise. They’ve each forwarded the somewhat stagnant genre. With AHS director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and Carrie remake scribbler Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa onboard, the flick shows a lot of promise.
The original movie by Charles B. Pierce, about a masked killer in the small town of Texarkana, is acknowledged in this updated version. We told you it was meta! The question no doubt on all of your lips, is meta better? might be answered in the trailer, which is creepy as hell. There’s direct homages to certain scenes from the original and your standard horror nudity – but this is gearing up to be one helluva good horror. Plus – who doesn’t love a guy with a bag on his head?
The Town That Dreaded Sundown premieres at Austin’s Fantastic Fest and then moves to L.A for Beyond Fest before crossing the pond to play at the BFI Film Festival in London. The film is set for an October 16th U.S. release.
Based on a terrifying true story, The Town That Dreaded Sundown picks up sixty-five years after a masked serial killer terrorized the small town of Texarkana, when the “moonlight murders” begin again. Is it a copycat or something even more sinister? A lonely high school girl, with dark secrets of her own, may be the key to catching the murderer.
