The tragedy cast a very long shadow. Up on Droop Mountain, a college student discovered the bodies of hitchhikers Vicki Durian and Nancy Santomero. They’d both suffered close-range gunshot wounds and were left for dead. The year was 1980, and the summer had barely ripened. The entire region, down to my hometown 20 minutes away, heard about what happened. I grew up in the ‘90s in a town called Renick, and that story clung to our valley like a dark, sticky spider web. I first recall hearing the story from my best friend Sam when I was in elementary school. A good 15 years had passed and the Rainbow Murders, as they were called, still erupted in hushed whispers and gossip. No one was bound to ever forget it.
In Summer of 84, a similar unease shrouds the town of Cape May, Oregon. Fifteen young boys had been abducted over the last decade, yet the idyllic neighborhood attempts a happy existence despite the newsroom static. Directors François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell coat the screen with bright colors and hues, a creative decision to counterbalance the anxieties bubbling below the surface. While everyone appears content with their lives, one kid named Davey Armstrong (Graham Verchere) can’t seem to shake sinking suspicions that his next door neighbor harbors some skeletons in his closet.
“You never know what might be coming around the corner,” says Davey in an introductory voiceover. He is seen pedaling furiously on his bicycle, delivering papers to everyone in town, when he rides up to Mr. Wayne Mackey (Rich Sommer). Mackey is revered for his work as a police officer and known as quite the charmer. He’s unafraid to get his fingernails dirty, both in his luscious gardens and in real life. In his spare time, he’s quite the amateur photographer, or so he claims. He is the very definition of a standup citizen, but the twinkle in his eyes masks psychotic tendencies.
When the local newspaper receives an anonymous tip via letter, in which the author claims to be the killer, Davey hatches a theory that Mackey is responsible. His friends don’t appear as freaked out, however. “Guys, why are you not freaking out that something is finally happening here?” he asks, before pointing out that Mackey’s profession as a cop is “the perfect cover,” allowing him to know tactics about killing and his ability to plant evidence. It’s been said Mackey makes weekly trips down to the hardware store to buy pounds and pounds of dirt; he couldn’t possibly be using all that dirt to replenish his own gardens.
‘Summer of 84’
Circling the drain, my friends and I often obsessed over rumors about the Rainbow Murders and how the Greenbrier River Trail leads directly from the border between Pocahontas and Greenbrier counties and down into the heart of our town. We imagined a killer taking the trek on foot, wearing a grungy backpack and muddy, gnarled boots, and sweeping through our neighborhood. My friend Sam frequently insisted we once had a known serial killer pass through the woods surrounding the area. I always believed it, even though she always told tall tales. I always thought about the children’s film Dennis the Menace, another obsession of mine. In that story, Switchblade Sam (Christopher Lloyd) hops on a train and makes his way into an otherwise normal, serene suburban town. Different film, but the fear was the same.
The fear of the unknown permeates every frame in Summer of 84. The townsfolk go about their daily lives as though nothing has happened. There’s divorce, sexual blossoming, and a late-evening game called Manhunt with walkie-talkies. It’s by all accounts a perfect, sleepy town 一 but they’re in for the rudest awakening of their lives. It’s smack dab in the middle of the milk carton era; in fact, Davey recognizes a plastered headshot as being the same kid he once saw inside Mackey’s home. The emergence of serial killers and child abductors in the ‘70s and ‘80s gave rise to increasing paranoia and overprotection.
Summer of 84, written by Matt Leslie and Stephen J. Smith, excels as a masterclass of tension because it relies so much on the power of imagination. There’s only one clear scene of a young teen being abducted on screen, and we don’t even know it’s Mackey. It’s just a shapeless boogeyman popping out of a dark alley. Even the audience begins questioning if Davey has just lost it. When he gets caught digging up Mackey’s garden, believing there to be bodies hidden in the dirt, his parents don’t believe him, of course, and he’s handed a severe punishment of being indefinitely grounded.
The pieces soon fall into place, though. First, Mackey is caught in a lie when he claims the missing child to be his nephew and calls his own home number. Despite the police supposedly apprehending the murderer, and Mackey as the arresting officer, something still feels off. Second, Davey schemes to break into Mackey’s house during the annual festival. Along with Woody (Caleb Emery) and Nikki (Tiera Skovbye), the group unearths unimaginable horrors, including a decomposing body and another very-much-alive teen tied up, and they film their discoveries. The photos hung around the home are not Mackey’s own family, as Davey first learned. They’re actually snapshots of his victims. Davey’s eyes soon gaze upon his own family portrait staring gleefully back at him. Chills dance across his spine, as well as the viewer’s.
‘Summer of 84’
Summer of 84 builds and builds before the frightening climax. With Mackey being sought by police, Woody spends the night with Davey so they can comfort one another and process what they’ve witnessed. But it’s not over yet. Mackey has managed to hide out in Davey’s attic, and once everyone falls asleep, he creeps from the shadows and abducts Woody and Davey, tossing them in the back of his police car and setting out into the woods. It’s a blood-curdling twist, and it keeps unfurling. After Mackey slits Woody’s throat, he attacks Davey and threatens him with one of the most terrifying monologues I’ve ever heard.
“All I wanna do is kill you,” he begins. “That’s not enough for you. You have spent so much time thinking about me… I want you to keep thinking about me. I want you to imagine what I’m going to do when I come back for you. And I am going to come back for you. After you have spent your life looking over your shoulder… after you have wondered every single day if that is the day that I’m gonna come for you… one day… you’ll be right.”
Even thinking about that speech produces another run of goosebumps. Rich Sommer’s performance is appropriately petrifying. Each word is like a bomb exploding in mid-air. Mackey’s well aware of Davey’s tendency to obsess, so he plants an even greater paranoia in the back of the young boy’s skull. The fear that one day Mackey will return is the kind of terror that seeps into everyday life. It could be next Friday, or the following Monday, or it could be four years, six months, two weeks, and three days from now. All that time spent glancing over your shoulder, believing the guy just trying to walk his dog is out to get you. That’s what real nightmares are made of.
When I was 13, I underwent my own period of paranoia that still haunts me even now. A few months after my then-step-father Frank nearly killed my mother, he came after me. It was a day like any other. I returned home from helping my 4-H club plant flowers for spring when I spotted him down the street. I could recognize his silhouette anywhere. My heart shot up into my throat, and I almost choked. My mind reeled. I had just enough awareness to grab my cordless home phone and hunker down in the hall closet. I dialed up my step-mother and tripped over my words. Then, there came a knock on the door. Stillness. Me in the closet nearly in tears. I didn’t answer. I slunk further into the back of the closet. Darkness somehow comforted me in that moment.
He eventually left, but his presence hung over my life in the weeks and months afterward. I grew increasingly paranoid that he would return一and he did at least one more time. I spotted his beat-up four-door sedan slink through the evening haze. Its cracked siding and bug-splattered windshield is ingrained in my mind. I didn’t even wait to see if he was driving. I knew he’d come back. My heart in my throat again, I darted inside my best friend’s house and yanked the curtains closed. In a hushed whisper, I told her that it was him and I needed to call my father immediately. As before, he disappeared from my life, and I never saw him again. I did hear that six years later, he killed a woman and is now serving time.
Summer of 84 is my childhood bottled up in 106 minutes. The night terrors I had about being abducted by Frank, or the killer behind the Rainbow Murders, or another homicidal maniac are things you just don’t forget. The fear courses in my veins as I’m writing this. And it probably says a lot about who I am now as an adult.
‘The Black Phone’
While Summer of 84 leans into suggestion, The Black Phone fully realizes those horrors with striking contrast. The Scott Derrickson-directed feature is coated in far more dreary, realistic tones. It’s a slice of middle America straight out of 1978. Set in Denver, the film cues up the audience straight away with the dangers awaiting around every corner, pulling from major headlines in real life abduction cases. After flexing his skills during a baseball game, Bruce (Tristan Pravong) is abducted while riding his bicycle by a man known as The Grabber in a black van. He’s never seen again 一 or at least, “not how they want to,” Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) tells her older brother Finney (Mason Thames). Her words linger. Not how they want to. That’s some Unsolved Mysteries level spookiness.
Similar to Summer of 84, The Black Phone prominently focuses on everyday life. Finney and Gwen contend with their abusive, alcoholic father while dodging bullies at school. From tip-toeing around on eggshells to outright bursts of violence, they never get a moment’s peace. And that makes Finney’s abduction all the more heart-wrenching. He is Gwen’s only life preserver, and without him, she turns to her dreams as a saving grace. You see, her dreams are often visions of what’s happened in real life. She dreamt Bruce was abducted by “a man with black balloons,” which leads the cops to question how she knows that unreleased detail in the case. “Sometimes my dreams are right,” she tells the detectives.
On his way home from school, Finney stumbles upon The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), a so-called magician who lures kids with the promise of magic tricks. He pretends to trip, scattering his cool gadgets across the pavement. “Could you hand me my hat?” he chuckles. Finney obliges. And The Grabber already has him hook, line, and sinker. “Would you like to see a magic trick?!” “Yeah!” beams Finney, who then notices black balloons in the back of the van. But it’s too late. The Grabber uses the balloon string to strangle and wrangle him into the back, quickly spraying an unknown substance in his eyes. The Grabber slams the door shut with a grimace on his lower face.
It takes place in broad daylight, and that’s the most frightening part of all. No one hears or sees a thing. And it’s not out of the realm of possibility, especially given that 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted every single year since 2010. Finney is just another number.
Imprisoned inside a soundproof basement, Finney believes he’ll “never [get] out of here.” His desperation and fear seeps through the screen. He’s a surrogate for the audience, experiencing every ounce of pain in real time, even if you’ve never known the dread and paranoia of potentially being abducted. “Nothing bad is going to happen here,” says The Grabber, suggesting that his intentions are pediphilic. Later, he confirms when responding to Finney, “I just wanted to look at you.” Tears well up behind his eyes. It’s every kid’s worst nightmare. He says in another bone-chilling moment, “I will never make you do anything that you won’t … like.”
The Grabber’s words crawl under his skin and almost deflate him entirely from fighting back. Fortunately, Finney has similar visions as Gwen, mostly auditory in nature. The black phone hanging on the wall connects the real world to the other side. Through a series of phone calls with Bruce, Robin, and several other lost kids, Finney learns what it means to stick up for himself.
‘The Black Phone’
In the vein of Gerald’s Game and Hush, the hallucinations guide him through a plan of action, including digging up dirt beneath a tile and clogging the phone receiver with dirt to give it “some heft,” as Robin tells him. Bit by bit, he collects up all the strength he can and is ultimately successful in killing The Grabber with a couple good swings to the head and choking him with the phone cord. He then makes a triumphant escape. The victims’ stories are finally seen and heard.
The Black Phone ends on a victorious note. The Grabber is dead, perfect justice for all those kids buried beneath his second house. For just a moment, the terror can subside. Whereas, Summer of 84 does a full 180, swerving from a bright horror/comedy to a dark, disturbing, and altogether grim finale. Mackey disappears into the night, and Davey is faced with a future riddled with paranoia and (probably, hopefully) therapy. These films utilize wildly different tones to tell the same story. One bottles up the growing fear amidst a serial killing spree, leaving the abductions as secondary, and the other nose dives explicitly into the abductions themselves. Both are equally, effectively horrifying, and depict child abduction that feels way too close to real life.
I don’t know about you, but I’ll be sleeping with all the lights on tonight.
Double Trouble is a recurring column that pairs up two horror films, past or present, based on theme, style, or story.