Sometimes They Come Back
Sometimes They Come Back
R | 07 May 1991 (USA)
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Desperate for a job to help him support his family, Jim Norman takes a position teaching high school in the town where his brother was murdered in front of him by teenage bullies twenty-seven years before. The teens who committed the crime are long dead, but now the kids in Jim's new class keep dying and being replaced by new students who look like the deceased hoodlums.

Reviews
FuzzyTagz

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

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CrawlerChunky

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

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BelSports

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

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Casey Duggan

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

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BA_Harrison

Sometimes They Come Back is a made-for-TV adaptation of a Stephen King short story that I might have enjoyed a little more if the actors playing the bad guys hadn't laughed, jeered, whooped and hollered quite as much as they do. I get it, their characters are evil, and evil people laugh, jeer, whoop and holler, but the actors over-egg the pudding to such a degree that they prove extremely irritating whenever they are on screen.A bit more gore, a few more frights and a tighter script wouldn't have hurt either: the film is fairly light on the bloodletting and scares, while the muddled story meanders leisurely to a frustratingly gutless finale. I imagine that a large portion of the blame should go to screenwriters Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, who also gave us the dreadful Romancing the Stone sequel The Jewel of the Nile, the much derided Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, the dreadful The Beverly Hillbillies movie, and the shockingly awful 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes. Wow that's quite the résumé you have there, guys.

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classicsoncall

Ever wonder to yourself what Stephen King must have been like as a kid? Could have been really creepy or as normal as the next guy. I'd just like to know where the imagination came from. Though not as terrifying as "It" or "The Shining", this picture still manages to capture that Stephen King quality of fear and anxiety right around the corner in the midst of normalcy. I had to chuckle at Dr. Bernardi's 'see something, say something' approach to the students following the death of two classmates; isn't that always the case until somebody has something to say? King used an interesting approach to his story here. A resurrected thug from the past showed up whenever someone died in the present. That idea telegraphed the finale as I was fully expecting Jim's (Tim Matheson) brother Wayne (Chris Demetral) to show up for the final confrontation. The kicker had to do with the car key, it didn't make any difference that it got dropped during the scuffle the first time around, the hoods were goners anyway. The real puzzler is how they managed to resurrect the 1955 Chevy.

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Catharina_Sweden

This movie was so unpleasant that I in fact had stinking, nervous sweat running down my body towards the end! This is because it made me recall some horror figures from my own school-days, and also some unpleasant memories from when I worked as a subsidiary teacher at a high-school in Austria much later....YES, the horror figures from your childhood and youth come back to haunt you... but not as ghosts of course. That is not necessary, either. They come back in the form of new kids, who are just the same kind as the old. And I also believe that if you were frightened of them when you were the same age, you will never make a good teacher. Because when you recognize the type, your fear will come back... and the thugs will notice it. And behave exactly the same to you, as those horror kids did 20 or 30 years back in time. It is an unpleasant kind of game, and once you are at all aware of it, you have lost your innocence forever and you cannot pretend that you do not understand what is going on.That is the sense morale of this movie, I think. It is very scary, and if you yourself have unfinished business from your youth, I would advise you not to watch it. You are better without that renewal of memories and fear!

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lost-in-limbo

Another adaptation from the Stephen King staple, but this small story is given a little more weight and probably from that gets a little too bogged down and brightly overwrought. Making it somewhat irregular in tone, mainly around the jaded flashback sequences that always inter-cut the present time. Although atmospheric (those sounds we hear which are not there) and unpleasant in parts, it could have been a much darker journey than it was. Still what we got were some solid performances, creepy imagery of our demonic thugs and their done-up car, well placed suspense and a gripping little tale of history repeating itself, but with our protagonist trying everything to make sure it doesn't. A man and his family head back to his hometown for a teaching job, but are still haunted by the childhood death of his older brother caused by a teenage gang who died at the same time in a train accident. But then the heartache comes flooding back when he is harassed in and out of the classroom by the demonic teenagers that killed his brother wanting revenge for their deaths. The plot actually at first plays around with the idea that maybe it's all in the protagonist's weary mind after the first death, but soon enough that's psychological angle is shot down when the first dead teenager makes a classroom appearance. There the tension, while basic gradually builds up as Matheson's character goes toe to toe with the vengeful dead while no one around him believes him. Robert Rusler is truly menacing as the hot-headed leader and Nicolas Sadler is devilishly sly as one of the members. In their decayed make-up, it was a ghastly sight. Tim Matheson's tormented turn is very well pitched, as he battles past events and reality as the two come together in a nightmarish ordeal. Brooke Adams' is affably good and William Sanderson also shows up a minor part. Director Tom McLaughlin (who was behind other horror efforts "One Dark Night" and "Friday the 13th Part 6") gets the most out of this TV production, as while it looks cheap and it could have been much tauter it has some stylish touches, lyrical camera-work and a hankering for numerous slow motion reactions."I can't keep running."

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