Fantastic Fest Review: Horror Remake 'The Town That Dreaded Sundown'

The original "Town That Dreaded Sundown," released on Christmas Eve 1976 and based on actual events, was a minor cult classic that cast a long shadow. Its cinema verite aesthetic, which combined deadpan narration, publicly available music cues, and chilling reenactments, created a kind of true crime sensationalism that would be borrowed by everything from "Unsolved Mysteries" to the current "found footage" horror craze. Even if you've never seen the original movie, chances are you've felt its pull. So it's with some trepidation that we approached the new "Town That Dreaded Sundown" remake, a film that would not only have to live up to the boldness of the original, but also the countless imitators who approximated its sensibilities in the years that followed. And while "Town That Dreaded Sundown" is ambitious and supremely weird, it fails to cohere into something more resonant. For much of the movie it feels like what would have...