The Town that Dreaded Sundown

A masked killer returns to a small town on the Arkansas-Texas border, where a notorious series of murders had occurred decades earlier. In the new attacks, the killer targets young couples, and Jami, a high school student carrying a secret of her own, survives an assault that leaves her friend dead. The police, led by Sheriff Morales, fail to make progress, so Jami begins investigating herself, aided by her grandmother Lillian and a former classmate, Nick. As the killings continue, the question is whether the original murderer has come back or someone new is copying him.

The film is a meta-sequel to the 1976 horror movie of the same name, set in the real town of Texarkana and using the earlier film as part of its own story. Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, it was the first feature he directed, followed by Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and The Current War. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa wrote the screenplay, and Ryan Murphy and Jason Blum produced. Addison Timlin plays Jami, with Veronica Cartwright, Travis Tope, Anthony Anderson, Joshua Leonard and Denis O'Hare among the cast. It runs 85 minutes.

It received a mixed reception. On IMDb it holds a 5.6 rating from more than 16,000 votes, and on TMDB it sits at 5.9 from over 500 votes. A critics' rating of 6 out of 10 from 29 reviews places it roughly level with those audience scores, making it a modest entry in the slasher genre rather than a widely praised one.