Sometimes They Come Back (1991)

Best movie of this year hands down!

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

A film about a man haunted by his past, and trying to finally let go. I enjoyed the character introductions and set-up of the back story. The film was actually much better than expected and the visuals and make-up was rather good, considering this was made well before the CGI boom. The film features the typical disrespectful students/new teacher cliche, but Tim Matheson lends credibility to the character and cliche. I enjoyed the final confrontation, as well, as a matter of deja vu.

Originally airing on May 7, 1991 on CBS, this TV movie adaption of King's short story was originally going to be part of Cat's Eye. The story was originally published in Cavalier Magazine and is part of the short story collection Night Shift. Jim Norman (Tim Matheson, Buried Alive) has moved back home to become a teacher, years after he watched his little brother Wayne get killed by a teen gang. Soon after, the murderers were killed by an oncoming train, but the nightmares have stayed with Jim for twenty-seven years.One by one, his students kill themselves and the greaser gang returns from Hell. All Jim has to do is reenact the murder by killing the last surviving member of the gang Carl (William Sanderson, TV's Newhart) and they will leave his family alone.Jim wants to bring his brother back from the dead too and is trying to find a way to make it happen. He and Carl try to fool the gang, but their leader stabs Carl and Jim's brother Wayne returns. The greasers try to escape again, but their car is struck by a ghost train. Wayne asks Jim to join him in heaven, but he decides to stay alive.The book and novel differ greatly, with Jim's wife Sally (Brook Adams, The Dead Zone) being killed by the gang and his brother Wayne being a demon that he calls for revenge.Two sequels followed, Sometimes They Come Back...Again (which Becca recommends more than this film and I've been trying to buy her a copy, but it's near impossible to find on DVD) and Sometimes They Come Back for More.This is a decent film, directed by Tom McLoughlin, who also directed Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. It has all the trademark King tropes and moves quickly.

The group of high school thugs intercepts two elementary school brothers in the railway tunnel, but the classic teenage bullying turns into tragedy when the older of the brothers, in an attempt to free himself, runs into the knife that one of the goons holds in the hand. At that moment the train comes and runs them over. 27 years later, killed teenagers come back from the dead to get revenge on surviving brother. The film is well-written, directed and acted and builds distinctive King's atmosphere. It would be one of the better adaptations of the King of Horror, if they didn't, as usual, spoil it with two completely redundant elements. At one point thugs, who seemed normal all the time and led us to wonder if everything was just in the mind of the main character, decide to take on the faces of rotting zombies, and thus a very tense atmosphere is spoiled by ridiculous visual effects. Another, perhaps worse, mistake is the pathetic dialogue at the end of the film, which replaces the impression that you have after watching horror with the impression that you have after watching teenage drama.5,5/10

Returning to his home-town, a teacher and his family find that the traumatic incident involving his big brother while he was growing up has caused the greaser-gang also included in the event to come back and torment them forcing a final showdown to right the wrong.This one here wasn't all that bad even though it does have some issues. One of the film's biggest positives is the fact that this one really manages to get the fear of being involved in a traumatic incident from the past in a small-town. The fact that the initial accident itself feels like the kind of accident that really could happen in such a location, with the greaser gang tormenting them and then getting caught up in the train coming through the tunnel does come off like a rather enjoyable setup for later, and with the way this holds up the different incidents later on that trigger the incidents later on. From the dropped set of car-keys to the shoes and the kids coming one-by-one into the classroom, the set-up from these incidents plays a great part in how this one manages to come off when it starts to reveal what their actual purpose is for returning. Those are quite fun as the different variations of them appearing as students in his classroom while taunting him in the town, the ways in which they manage to fool everyone in class as well as the town who constantly think he's having mental breakdowns based on his past history which comes into play quite nicely and overall manages to give this one a great build-up for the story to play out in the later half. With the group out and tormenting him and his family with some rather impressive stalking scenes of the family at the house and the later scene in the church where they get taken away leading into the final confrontation in the tunnel once again as this makes for a rather thrilling and engaging finish that plays out the fateful accident that came through in the rest of the film. With these action-packed scenes that come together into giving this a lot to like alongside the few fine make-up effects on the ghouls who look quite creepy and chilling, there's enough to like here that really manages to hold off the few minor flaws present. The film's biggest issue is the fact that we're not given a reason to care about why the greaser club is seeking revenge, as the film makes the point of them coming back for him killing them only they deserved their fate so it's really troubling to get into the story. The gang is a total joke that simply act like tough-guy greasers but are just so over-the-top in their silly threats that it makes for a pretty hard time to find fear in them for the whole film as they're return doesn't make any sense. The other big issue here does manage to carry on about that with there not being any real reason stated about why they come back to begin with as there's just nothing explained about why they come back to life here at that point in time. By simply showing up saying they want revenge but never explaining how they manage to do so when they clearly never deserved to do so in the first place makes them so simply non-threatening that as a whole the film really stumbles with the main villains. That it also gets a little too schmaltzy with the fantasy-driven finale that looks quite goofy and silly against the more realistic elements, these here do hold it down somewhat.Rated R: Language and Violence.