Very well executed

good back-story, and good acting

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

65 years ago, a masked man attacked residents of small town Texarkana. Now it appears the miscreant is back. Speaking with a modulated voice in slow deliberate tones, the 'moonlight murderer' begins his killing spree all over again.The production values are decent, the acting is convincing. So why do I find this tortuously dull? How can something with a fair amount of screaming teens and restrainedly gruesome killings not arrest my attention? Could it be that Jami (Addison Timlin) speaks in a monotone and insipid manner no matter what the emotion? To be fair to her, her contempories are often much the same. Far from the strutting posturers that frequent such films usually (which is a mercy), they are on the other end of the spectrum. Humbly mumbling their lines to one another, it is difficult to work out one character from another. Inoffensive –sweet even - to the point of inertia, these characters are barely even cyphers for the marauding killer, who is also without much in the way of presence.It may be that I am simply not in the mood for this, but there seems to be no life in any facet of the proceedings. Even the occasional sex scene fails to break free of this miasma. Why is the murderer doing these things? Just *because*, really. I feel bad about my nonchalance – after all, a great deal of work has presumably gone into creating this: the bleakness of the locale is nicely conveyed by Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, and Ludwig Goransson's musical score is nicely haunting; there's a good set piece where a couple wake up to find their scarecrow perched on the wooden stand has been replaced by the bloody corpse of a young girl … and then within moments the lacklustre performance of those trying to solve the mystery drags things back down again. Sadly unengaging throughout.

A town that sits between Arkansas and Texas had a spell of killings nearly sixty-six years ago. This town is named Texakana and the killer was known as the Phantom. The Phantom suddenly reappears and vows to make the killings continue until the town remembers his legacy. The movie plays out in grisly fashion and has a few creative deaths along the way (knife attached to a trumpet). The main heroine, or the tormented in this case – watches people around her die as she tries to get to the bottom of things. The killings are so bad that the "Texas Rangers" are called on the scene to investigate. I can't help but thing the heroine is similar to "Cindy" from the "Scream" series, only as more of a token and one shot character. The movie really does center more around the antagonist, "The Phantom" and it is almost too bad that the movie doesn't take place around his point of view instead.The movie is creative, and some of the scenes leading up to, and the deaths themselves, are creative. The movie is worth watching if you are a horror buff – it is typical slasher affair.

This 21st century version of "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" isn't really a remake, or a sequel. It fashions a fictional tale around the real life murders that plagued Texarkana (a town straddling the Texas and Arkansas borders) in the 1940s, and the subsequent film adaptation of those events by regional filmmaker Charles B. Pierce in the 1970s. Addison Timlin plays Jami, a high school graduate whose boyfriend is slaughtered by a masked psycho, approximately 66 years after the original murder spree. She becomes caught up in her hometowns' strange history, deciding to do some sleuthing of her own and thereby assisting the local police and a big shot Texas Ranger (Anthony Anderson).Filmed on location in Texarkana (and Shreveport, Louisiana), this turned out to be more entertaining than this viewer expected, if mostly because it's played commendably straight. This viewer was afraid that these filmmakers were going to be overly impressed with their own supposed cleverness, and get cute too often. This is more of a straight up slasher film (albeit one with a fairly limited body count) than docudrama, although it does quote one memorable moment from TTSD '77, and the characters do study that film hoping to come up with clues. It's slick (with some inspired touches here and there), and pretty damn violent, but some people in the audience are going to be left wanting more because there just ain't THAT much gore. Ultimately, it's too predictable to work very well, and falls right into that old trap of having our villain talk too much once revealed.It also makes a waste of some of its veteran talent. In addition to the cute Timlin, who's appealing enough to carry the story, there's Veronica Cartwright as her grandmother, Edward Herrmann as a priest, and Ed Lauter as a sheriff. Sadly, this was the final feature film for both Herrmann and Lauter, and they deserved better swan songs. Gary Cole gets precious little to do as one of Lauters' deputies. Denis O'Hare tends to steal the show, playing the real-life Charles B. Pierce Jr., with his own theory of who could be behind the killings. Anderson is no Ben Johnson, not by a long shot.The finale isn't very satisfying, but getting there is entertaining enough. At the very least, it's nice to see that logo sequence for the long defunct Orion Studios once again.Six out of 10.

Hate to tell the truth but whether or not you personally "liked" a film does not necessarily qualify you to review it.This reviewer was hosting horror festivals when the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD came out, and the hardest thing to do in a horror flick is be subtle.But this director has mad skills. And can do subtle.The framing in many of the scenes is incredible, there are times you almost feel the characters on-screen are the only people left on the face of the earth.And Gomez-Rejon also is shrewd enough to get more mileage out of Addison Timlin's face than a Prius.And a nice face it is. I counted over 50 closeups and then stopped counting. Her character is the glue, the connection, for this story and she is set up as a shy girl who (quote) never gets asked out.Which is why this story is fiction and not a documentary.And you the viewer get to watch the whole story through her eyes.The juxtaposition of the new movie and the "old movie" only makes my point -- putting this film alongside Whedon's Cabin in the Woods for cleverly deconstructing a tale from within the story arc itself.