If you’ve heard anything about Sundance’s much buzzed about Summer of 84, it likely revolves around its soul crushing ending. And while the last act of the movie does deliver a gut punch you won’t be able to stop thinking about, its impact ultimately stems from its very subtle but highly effective deconstruction of cinematic nostalgia. Directed by the trio RKSS (François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell), Summer of 84 is, on the surface, a coming of age movie about a quartet of boys who become convinced that their neighbor Wayne Mackey (Rich Sommer), a local cop, is a serial killer. Most reviews have drawn parallels with Neflix’s Stranger Things and given the movie’s focus on adolescent friendships, it’s an apt comparison. But I suspect that the filmmakers are actually referencing- very specifically- another rite of passage movie: Rob Reiner’s 1986 classic Stand by Me.
Stand by Me (L) and Summer of 84 (R)
This review contains spoilers
Check out the trailer for Summer of 84:
Both films share a number of important similarities. Not only are both set in seemingly tranquil towns in Oregon, but both rely on a core group of characters who fulfill specific archetypes. There is Davey (Graham Verchere), the conspiracy theorist of the group who convinces the others to join his investigation; Eats (Judah Lewis), the delinquent of the group with the troubled home life; Woody (Caleb Emery), the overweight sidekick; and Farraday (Cory Gruter-Andrew), the nerdy bookworm. Both films also feature a treehouse that, for some of the characters, serves as a respite from a troubled home life, and a summer adventure plot that results in life changing repercussions for the four boys.
Most interestingly though, Summer of 84 and Stand by Me both leverage nostalgia as a means of situating the viewer into periods of American history often perceived to have been safer than present day, the 1980s and the 1950s, respectively. But how that nostalgia ultimately plays out is radically different. In Stand by Me, nostalgia functions to fuel a narrative that is ultimately bittersweet and that reinforces audience perception of the 1950s as a simpler time. Yet, Summer of 84, despite its evocative 80s soundtrack and era specific wrapping, isn’t so much interested in reflecting its audience’s wistful affection for a time gone by as in challenging it. Unlike the Rob Reiner classic, this movie refuses to give its audience a cathartic ending. In doing so, it reveals that our perception of the past as somehow less dangerous is an illusion.
It’s not a coincidence that this movie occurs in 1984 and that we see Reagan signs adorning the homes of a middle class neighborhood. Trump’s messaging to “Make America Great Again” is specifically referencing this period and the filmmakers play with the way distance creates a cultural mythos of a better time by initially playing into it. With scenes of children riding their bikes in the streets and playing outside at night unsupervised (the last generation to grow up this way); the movie deliberately works to lull the audience into a false sense of security. We know something bad will happen, it’s a movie after all, but we don’t suspect it will be too bad. And so when the unthinkable occurs, the audience is left gob smacked not only because they’ve just witnessed a man get away with murdering children, but because the movie has just upended our way of thinking about the past. Despite our perception of the past as “greater” than the present, it was never safer. Horrible things have always happened and they always will.
It’s a distressing moment of self-reflection for the audience that ties into the experiences of the characters in a profound way. To varying degrees, all of the characters contend with trauma. For some, such as Nikki’s (Tiera Skovbye) distress over her parents’ impending divorce or Eats struggle to survive an abusive household, this trauma is foisted upon them by circumstance. But for Davey, whose cajoling causes his friends to join his pursuit of Mackey, and for Farraday, who is so used to being the smartest person in the room that he doesn’t consider he is wrong about Mackey and leaves his friends vulnerable, their choices facilitate the danger and result in a different experience of trauma; one additionally layered with guilt.
Stand by Me (L) and Summer of 84 (R)
Summer of 84 is a self-aware movie and it’s asking its audience to be similarly aware of our own expectations when it comes to cinematic nostalgia. An example of this comes in how the audience is asked to connect to the brutality underscoring the narrative. As in Stand by Me when the boys discover the body of Ray Brower, we get an impersonal spectre of death courtesy of the body in Mackey’s bathtub. In both instances, the audience hears about these missing boys but never develops a personal relationship with them such that the resonance of their deaths is somewhat tempered. It is only once one of the four central boys is brutally murdered that the audience is asked to become emotionally involved in Mackey’s crimes.
It’s an effective if shocking choice, especially since it facilitates the movie’s dismantling of an 80s nostalgia that yearns for the days of a traditional home life. Indeed, not one but two of the friends are products of a dysfunctional home: Woody, for instance, has assumed the role of caregiver to his emotionally unstable mother—and both his and Eats’ experiences, at least initially, contrast the relatively healthy home lives of Davey and Farraday. And if the movie had concluded with the gang’s discovery of Mackey’s guilt and their being heralded as heroes, the audience would be left with the same heartfelt wistfulness of Stand by Me. But what happens in the last act of the movie extends the trauma instead of diluting it. Davey’s home, with its functional two parents and upwardly mobile signifiers (multiple characters comment on the decor being updated), is the quintessential representation of safety. And so when Mackey descends from the attic in Davey’s home and succeeds in kidnapping the children while Davey’s parents sleep, the movie radically shifts the location of the horror. It no longer resides outside and in the homes of others, but has now infiltrated perceived protected spaces. In essence, the horror is now everywhere.
Even Mackey, with the replicated childhood room where he keeps the kidnapped children and his isolated life, displays clear markers of abuse and trauma showing that not only has the danger always been there but that it is also cyclical. From the outset of the movie, when Davey says, “the truth is the suburbs are where the craziest shit happens,” it’s clear that Summer of 84 is not interested in nostalgic myth building but in reminding viewers that whether through choice or circumstance, evil can find anyone and it always could.
Grade: A+
Related post: Stranger Things and 80s Nostalgia
Nostalgia in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Summer of 84 is now available through Amazon.
