Sometimes They Come Back (1991)

I love this movie so much

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Jim Norman witnesses his older brother Wayne being murdered by a group of bullies as a young kid. Jim has never fully recovered from this tragedy and decides to take his family back to where it all began for a fresh start. Jim's students start dying and The Bullies come back from the dead for revenge. I loved this movie growing up. I watched it quite a few times. I'm sad to say that it doesn't have anywhere near the impact that it used to. I realize that it is a television movie, but it is only slightly above average. There isn't anything that stands out about it, really. It also has some major plot holes. It isn't fully explained, about how they have managed to suddenly appear after being dead for 27 years. We aren't given any inkling what so ever on how they have been able to return from the dead. Why did they wait 27 years to seek vengeance on Jimmy? Wouldn't they have done it far sooner? Also, why does Jim have visions in a telepathic sort of way with the hoods? It is script contrivances like that, which make me shake my head. Nothing is explained fully as I would have liked. There are plenty of flashback scenes involving the incident with Jimmy as a child, but they are delivered as mundanely as possible. The storyline could have been something riveting and chilling, but it ended up going the routine route in every way. Tim Matheson is very solid as the lead. He conveys the proper emotions when needed and I liked him a lot. Too bad he didn't have much to work with. Brooke Adams is OK as the wife, not great. Robert Rusler is a favorite character actor of mine. He's good for the most part and rather bad-ass. My only gripes is the maniacal laughter and the way he taps his unlit cigarette on his hand. They were pet peeves that irked me. The rest of the cast are decent. The finale is probably my favorite part of the movie. It is emotionally well done. Final Thoughts: I didn't dislike this movie or anything, it just doesn't hold up nearly as well from my childhood. It is a forgettable film for the most part. It is worth a look, just don't expect much5.4/10

One of them perfect late 80's/ early 90's horror films set in small town America, great story, great acting from the main cast, great pacing and tension, effortlessly cool, there aren't really many special effects to speak of, apart from when the bad guys show their demon faces, the bad guys are cool thou, the epitome of a 50's greaser, complete with flick knife and Johnny Cash hair, and their car is cool as anything, a hot rod with flames roaring out the back of it, the ending is a bit rushed and a bit schmaltzy but it made me cry (because I could identify with it) and is another great King adaption, which is saying a lot as most King adaptions are a bit hit and miss, and the endings always seem rushed, just like his books, definitely a must see if you like small town American horror type films.

The atmosphere is quite good during this film and emotional scenes involving the family were effective too. Its quite easy finding affection for these characters.There is one problem though - in the process of increasing the story's length, the writers threw in scenes of students being murdered.IIRC, dead students simply disappeared from the story, replaced by (un?)dead people. Here we're shown how they died and it almost seems like the writers thought the audience would be bored without action scenes.They don't even match the film's tone and frankly, the crew proved capable of making me uncomfortable without anything happening on screen, meaning they were talented enough to not need random kills to interest the audience, making these scenes redundant.

Hey, I thought this was generally a well-executed film in terms of direction and acting. The story is very strong in the first half but falters a bit in the last half, but as a complete unit is overall fairly decent. Tim Matheson plays a man with wife and child who returns to his hometown where years ago his brother was killed by a gang of 50's style hoodlums. He takes a teaching job and begins having nightmarish dreams about the incident from his past and starts to see people killed before they actually are. Several of his students disappear and "new" students from Milford(cannot tell you where or what that is) start appearing in his class. They are the very embodiment of the dead hoodlums he saw in his childhood. They start giving Teach problems and soon we have an intensive thriller where the anniversary of the date where they and he once met years ago is arriving. Now, yes, much of this is contrived and predictable, but the effects and acting are strong enough to carry out some of the corny proceedings. Matheson is always good in these Everyman type roles which we are able to identify with. The hoodlums led by Robert Rusler and Nicolas Sadler are real creepy. William Sanderson is always good in just about anything. Brooke Adams is okay as Matheson's concerned wife. The best thing about this film is the atmosphere of small-town, middle America that director Tom McLoughlin is able to create. It is almost like it comes out of a Ray Bradbury tale. It definitely has Stephen King's stamp. The end does get a bit out of control and really suspends that disbelief too much, but generally I found this made-for-television film to be a pretty good little thriller. My favorite scene of all is when the thugs have Chip in their car and how they "dispose " of him. He certainly went to pieces in a crisis!