‘The Town That Dreaded Sundown’ Trailer Arrives From ‘American Horror Story’ Creator

The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a remake audiences have been looking forward to since it was first reported that American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy would be moving forward with it last year.

The original was a half-documentary, half-slasher movie made by Arkansas filmmaker Charles B. Pierce in 1976.

It chronicled a series of unsolved murders — the Moonlight Murders said to have been perpetrated by the “Phantom Killer” — 30 years earlier.

That film has grown in stature over the last 38 years, becoming a cult classic widely respected in the horror genre as well as one of my favorite films.

With Murphy calling the shots, audiences expected a more slickly produced feature but remained unsure whether that would be a good thing. His American Horror Story TV show is generally intriguing through three-fourths of a season before breaking down into a muddled mess by the final episode.

Hopes were that he wouldn’t start with some good ideas here and devolve the Town That Dreaded Sundown remake into the same type of film rot.

After hearing of his plan for the movie — to set it in modern day with a copycat killer trying to recreate the Phantom Killer legend — the public was encouraged, though a true crime film circa David Fincher’s Zodiac would have been welcome, too.

For many people, it all rode on the trailer whether they would be willing to give it a shot when it opens in theaters on October 16, and now that moment is here.

This looks fantastic. The grainy eeriness of 1970s cinema has been exchanged for a more polished sheen, but the killer is an exact recreation of the classic movie’s and very similar to eyewitness accounts from the actual crimes.

The meta approach to modernizing the remake isn’t clunky, and the setting is truly unique for big screen horror — definitely not something you see every day, and wonderfully faithful to the Pierce original as well as the history of Texarkana, Arkansas.

Murphy has also assembled a competent cast, it appears, with standout Gary Cole (Office Space, Pineapple Express) adding an extra dose of credibility along with Denis O’Hare (also from American Horror Story), Addison Timlin (That Awkward Moment), and Joshua Leonard (If I Stay, True Detective, The Blair Witch Project).

Now that you’ve seen The Town That Dreaded Sundown trailer, are you ready for October 16 to get here?