Nostalgia Is a Hell of a Drug
There’s a difference between paying homage to the ‘80s and holding it hostage. Summer of ’84, the teen horror nostalgia trip directed by the trio behind Turbo Kid—François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell—spends 105 minutes reminding you that the past was better, the kids were braver, and the music was way cooler… while also proving that nostalgia alone cannot save a movie from mediocrity.
This film wants to be Stranger Things with serial killers. It wants to be The Goonies meets Rear Window. It wants to be your new favorite throwback horror flick. But much like a sun-faded Polaroid from a family vacation you barely remember, Summer of ’84 ends up feeling hollow, awkward, and strangely sticky.
The Plot: Scooby-Doo and the Suburban Serial Killer
Our story unfolds in the fictional Oregon suburb of Cape May, where 15-year-old Davey Armstrong (Graham Verchere) spends his days riding his bike, spying on his neighbors, and reading conspiracy magazines that look like they were written by Alex Jones before puberty. He’s the kind of kid who thinks the milkman is part of the Illuminati and that the mailman is probably an alien.
Davey’s world is upended when he decides that his friendly neighborhood cop, Officer Wayne Mackey (Rich Sommer), is secretly the “Cape May Slayer,” a serial killer responsible for the disappearance of teenage boys. This is, admittedly, not the craziest theory ever proposed by a suburban teenager with too much free time and a paper route.
He ropes in his ragtag gang of friends—Curtis (the nerd), Eats (the wisecracking rebel), and Woody (the walking heart attack)—to help him investigate. Together, they spend their summer creeping through basements, breaking into police property, and violating more privacy laws than the NSA.
If that sounds like a fun setup, it kind of is—for the first ten minutes. But what follows is an endless cycle of peeping, theorizing, and false alarms that make you wish the actual killer would show up just to speed things along.
The Characters: Paper Boys, Paper-Thin
Let’s talk about these kids. You’d think with four main teenage protagonists, at least one would have a compelling arc. You’d be wrong.
Davey is our protagonist, but he’s also the least interesting conspiracy theorist since your uncle at Thanksgiving. His main personality traits are “curious” and “bad at staying grounded.” Judah Lewis plays Eats, the obligatory bad boy whose idea of rebellion is saying “shit” a few times and wearing sleeveless shirts. Curtis is the one who knows about walkie-talkies and little else. And then there’s Woody—a sweet, heavyset kid whose primary function is comic relief until the script decides it needs a tragic moment.
And of course, we have Nikki (Tiera Skovbye), the hot older girl-next-door who used to babysit Davey and now serves as both his unattainable crush and convenient exposition dump. Her entire function is to make Davey feel feelings, which she does with the emotional depth of a shampoo commercial.
Even the villain, Officer Mackey, feels oddly undercooked. Rich Sommer plays him with a level of cheerfulness that makes Ned Flanders look like Patrick Bateman, but when the twist hits and we find out he is the killer (because of course he is), there’s no shock—just a sigh of relief that something is finally happening.
The Tone: A Killer Identity Crisis
Here’s the thing: Summer of ’84 doesn’t know what it wants to be.
It tries to mix coming-of-age nostalgia with gritty serial killer horror, but the blend is like pineapple and anchovies—it just doesn’t work. The first hour feels like a PG-13 episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? The final 20 minutes suddenly decide to go full Silence of the Lambs. The tonal whiplash is so intense that you’ll feel like you’ve been thrown from your BMX bike straight into an existential crisis.
The directors clearly want to evoke that Spielbergian “magic of childhood adventure,” but they forgot that those movies had pacing, personality, and joy. Instead, we get kids talking about boobs and government conspiracies for an hour while the movie squints really hard, trying to convince you it’s about “innocence lost.”
The Horror: Fear of Missing a Better Movie
Let’s address the supposed “horror” in this horror film. There isn’t any.
For most of the runtime, the big scares amount to things like “neighbor turns head suddenly” or “someone drops a flashlight.” There are no real stakes until the last act, and by then, you’re so numb from suburban boredom that even a knife to the gut feels like a mercy.
When the climax finally arrives, and Mackey goes full slasher mode, the movie suddenly wakes up. He kidnaps Davey and his best friend Woody, takes them to an island, and plays a twisted version of hide-and-seek. It’s brutal, creepy, and genuinely unsettling—for about ten minutes. Then the credits roll, and you’re left wondering if the directors just realized halfway through that they accidentally made a thriller and tried to fix it last minute.
It’s as if the film spent 90 minutes flirting with the idea of being scary before finally showing up in a hockey mask, whispering, “Surprise, I’m a serial killer movie!”
The Ending: Summer of Nope
The finale attempts to go for dark and poignant. Mackey murders Woody, spares Davey, and escapes, leaving Davey traumatized. The message seems to be: “Evil never really dies, and neither does childhood trauma.” Which is fine, if you ignore the fact that the rest of the movie felt like a Hardy Boys episode.
The tonal shift is so abrupt it feels like the directors accidentally spliced in a reel from a different film. One minute, we’re watching kids prank a cop; the next, we’re watching a child bleed out while his friend screams into the void. It’s less “emotional gut punch” and more “car accident between genres.”
When Davey resumes his paper route, haunted and paranoid, the audience is supposed to feel the weight of what he’s lost. Instead, you’ll probably just feel the weight of wasted potential.
The Aesthetic: Synthwave Can’t Save You
Le Matos’ synth-heavy score is the best thing about this movie, which is a bit like saying the best thing about a car crash was the playlist playing during it. The neon-drenched cinematography and retro soundtrack work overtime to convince you that you’re watching something profound. Unfortunately, all the glowing lights in the world can’t illuminate a script that forgot to turn on.
The film looks great—it’s got that crisp, faux-retro sheen that’s become the hallmark of hipster horror—but beneath the aesthetic lies an empty story pretending to be nostalgic art. It’s The Babysitter without the fun, It without the depth, and Stranger Things without the charming kids, Demogorgons, or Winona Ryder losing her mind over Christmas lights.
Final Verdict: Nostalgia Is Not a Personality
Summer of ’84 is the cinematic equivalent of an empty cereal box: colorful on the outside, hollow inside, and vaguely sticky from all the spilled milk of wasted potential.
It’s not an outright disaster—there are moments of tension, the performances are serviceable, and the last 15 minutes almost justify the previous 90. But for a movie that promises the heat of summer, it’s shockingly cold and lethargic.
If you’re nostalgic for the ‘80s and think every movie needs a synth soundtrack and a kid on a bicycle, Summer of ’84 will scratch that itch—right before you realize it’s mostly filler.
Final Score: 1.5 out of 5 Missing Teenagers
Watch it if you’ve already seen Stand by Me, It, Stranger Things, and every other movie about small-town boys uncovering dark secrets. Otherwise, skip the paper route and go enjoy an actual summer outside—preferably one without serial killers, bad pacing, or another reminder that nostalgia can’t resurrect the dead.
