September 14, 2018
Written by: Matt Leslie, Stephen J. Smith
Starring: Graham Verchere, Judah Lewis, Caleb Emery
Quote: "15. 15 is the perfect age. I wish I could freeze it for you."
Trivia: In Mackey's secret lockup is a Volkswagen Beetle. The same make of car owned by serial killer Ted Bundy.
Twenty years from now when people look at the mid-to-late 2010s, what they will notice is our heavy nostalgia for 1980s culture. The huge successes of Stranger Things and IT and the more cult successes of Future Man and Turbo Kid are testament to our love of all things 80s. Created by the same people who did Turbo Kid, Summer of 84 fits nicely in this mashup of nostalgia. While the 1980s culture is laid on pretty thick, it does both help to keep the film entertaining and more importantly helps build towards themes in the film.
The film at its heart is an attack on 1980s nostalgia. Nostalgia, at its heart, is a whitewashing of our collective memory. We choose to remember Pacman, ET, "Where's the Beef?", and Dexy's Midnight Runners. And therefore we choose to ignore the other stuff... the latchkey kids, rampant divorce, drug/alcohol/sexual excess, Reaganomics, the Cold War, the Savings and Loan Crisis, the Satanic Panic, a drastic increase in the prison population, etc. The 1980s were both a period of the perfect suburban home and the darkness that happens behind closed curtains. I think (and I could be wrong) that a character even mentions hiding secrets is why curtains were invented. Not everything is what it seems and not everything is how we choose to remember it.
