Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Crappy film

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Here's that Stephen King-feeling! I typically love Stephen Kings work. I am also of those who think several of the movies based on his stuff, are pretty good. Some film makers manage to get that feeling, that Stephen King-feeling across very well. Others don't.This is clearly a TV movie, but that doesn't mean it can't be good! I really like this story, I haven't read it so I don't know if the movie differs a lot from Kings original story, but that doesn't matter, because this is a movie!The story is cool, like I said, I really like the setting and some of the performances from some of the actors. Some slick teens. Very neatly done. It's an eeriness, and a am-I-dreaming?-kind of feeling. I loved that.I didn't find it very scary, but it was entertaining, and the King-feel really shone through.

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.

Based on a short story by Stephen King, a man (Tim Matheson) and his family return to his home town, but he is then harassed by teenagers that died when he was a kid.This film has King written all over it: the use of a train, the idea of a problem for kids transferring over to when they are adults... but this film is pale in comparison to "Stand By Me" or "It". I mean, it is not a terrible movie, but far from being listed in the better half of King's work.Not really much else to say about this one... I guess I could ask about why it took 27 years for the kids to come back, why 27 years exactly... or how the first kid came back if you need to kill someone to bring another person back. But these are plot points that would only ruin the story...This is a great villain role for Robert Rusler, whose career seemed to peak and fade too quickly. Rusler's a great guy, and it would have been nice to see him in a few more big projects of the era. This also is a solid entry in the career of director Tom McLoughlin, who horror fans might know for "Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives" (1986).

I'm not saying this is a great film(it clearly isn't), nor a great horror film, but it had its' moments and I expected a bit less than what I saw, and that was a pleasant surprise. I was impressed with Tim Matheson's performance, although I'll forever link him to Animal House, but he portrays a serious role in fine form in this film and is very convincing. I never read King's story so I can't compare one to the other, but this version was fairly easy to follow with creepy moments throughout, although it seems that I've seen the "car greasers" in other King adaptations before this movie as well, like Stand By Me and Christine. As a horror buff, let me add that this isn't very scary, but as a stand alone film it isn't that bad. I recommend it, but not that highly, as there's a reason this film is rarely on. I would say watch this for Matheson's performance and some creepy scenes too.