Much as we like to take credit for the rampant 80s nostalgia going on right now, it has technically been going on for decades. Emo music in the 00s took after emo and jangly goth rock from the 80s (with a hint of synthwave stuff and arena rock), slasher movies saw a comeback late in the same decade, as well as gore films ramped up into the "torture porn" genre, and all the way back in the 90s we had The Wedding Singer. The 80s was a decade that was fueled on childhood wonder and whimsy and horror. It was a decade of missing children, of ethics groups starting to crack down on what media consumption did to young minds, of metal music becoming popular and a heck of a lot more edgy, and of this general contrast of near-sociopathic tendencies in the corporate, adult world with the somber freedom of youth. For better or worse, it created an image for the pre-cynical America that has lingered and seeped into the very fabric of our culture.
Summer of 84 came out in 2018, an unfortunate year given how closely it followed Stranger Things. The comparisons between the two productions is understandable, but a bit mislead. Both want to recontextualize the 80s style, themes, and storylines into something a bit more modern, sanding away the gloss the decade put over everything in favor of our more modern cynicism. Stranger Things, for the most part, stays incredibly true to its source material, but takes from so many styles and creators of that decade as to create something more of an amalgamation of different concerns and thought from the time. Summer of 84 wants to be a lot more straight forward, playing as an alternate version of Stand By Me. It plays this in such a straight way, as a matter of fact, it comes off as wholly unoriginal until you reach its final act.
Summer of 84 has a simple plot, following four childhood friends living in a cul-de-sac in the titular year who suspect their neighbor is the one abducting children in the area. The plot has so many traditional beats it would take forever to list them all, from the archetypal characters (you've got the edgy punk kid, the nerdy smart kid, the fat shy kid, and the boring as hell, conspiracy theory obsessed protagonist) to the progress through conflict (parents won't understand, so kids take it upon themselves to investigate). And while the ending has received attention for some sort of good reason, it is important not to ignore the rest of the film, because it is downright boring. The plot follows tradition to a 'T' with no variation, even through that ending (with one slight caveat), and to vessel us through are our four child characters.
The children are incredibly problematic, not because of what they say (most of their comments can be slid to the side as 80s fair, though some of their overt sexism seems to be overly glorified throughout) but rather because they have absolutely no chemistry. The actors aren't bad necessarily, but they never actually feel like friends, nor do they ever feel fleshed out. They sit in their archetypical lane and hardly veer from course. There are snippets here and there - one kid has an abusive home life that is shown in one scene with a respectable and emotional amount of restraint, another is shown to have a worn out single mother with an implied drug dependence, also respectfully done in a restrained way - but snippets a character does not make. For the most part, what we get is what we see in the trailer: four cliches following a cliche plot on the dotted line. It is important to stress how traditional this all is, because many will try and make excuses for it as "being the point" in the end, but if your point is to not be interesting for a bulk of your run time then I cannot see that as a reasonable argument for quality. This banal, eye-glazingly rote film for 2/3rds of its running time has a pay off in the end, but that pay off is hardly worth a little over an hour of film.
Spoilers for the end of Summer of 84 below.
The film's buildup is not some red herring where the kids turn out to be wrong and something else is afoot. They turn out to be right the whole time, their neighbor is the one abducting kids. But it is the way this scene is handled that has garnered mild acclaim. The tone of the film takes a sincere shift when they break into their neighbor's basement and find the little room he has constructed. The 80s nostalgia washes away in favor of something gritty and real, where they find an emaciated boy tied to a radiator and the corpse of another decaying in a tub of chemicals. It comes about in such a revolting and shocking way partially because of the intense contrast with the film that came before it. It is an interesting trick the filmmakers (three of them!) pull off, but as though to prove the earlier bits of the film were no fluke, they fail to play off this shocking twist in the story. The scene is played with a heavy dose of trauma, but for the most part the kids come out of it just fine. Main kid is proud of what he has done, the girl love interest gives him a kiss, and all looks fine.
The film has one more twist in store, where the neighbor hides in his attic and abducts him and his best friend (the overweight kid), dragging them to a small island in Oregon and . . . doesn't kill them. He lets them run around and chases them, only slitting the throat of the overweight kid, a shocking but weird choice since the few minutes left in the film don't really do much with that point. If I were them, I probably would have killed the main kid if this scene just had to take place, showing everyone else's grief and contrasting the child-hero trope in 80s films, but even then I don't think it really improves the movie. The pay off for this last bit of trauma is simply to wipe the smile off the protagonist's face in the end, to leave you with a feeling of loss and a contrast between the romanticized style of the plot with the real life consequences. The attempt is admirable, but it doesn't really pay off. It feels like an aside, a confusing emotional end meant to linger, but with little else in the film to reflect on, it doesn't really make much of a difference.
Summer of 84 is full of cliches and played out plotting and characters. It is a competently shot and paced movie, but it lacks much content to make it worthwhile to watch. The film tries to wring some sort of nostalgia from its premise and style, and even tries to give us one of my most hated of all tropes, the attractive neighbor girl who inexplicably and objectifyingly falls for the protagonist, despite the age difference, despite zero chemistry, despite the fact that there is no indication she and he have anything remotely in common. She is simply interested in him for whatever thing he is self conscious about in the moment, and he is interested in her because she is hot and validates him. It is a downright toxic cliche that literally does nothing for the plot or characters outside of making men like me swoon over the wish we had that sort of romantic involvement in our youth (or, perhaps worse, reinterpret past relationships as such, and assume things to play out similarly in the future). The film wants your nostalgia for the cliches, the look, and the general plot to carry through the film to its one shocking moment, but it doesn't and that moment doesn't linger. It is competently made, and with a better script I think these filmmakers could make something good, but this isn't it.
4.5
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