Sometimes They Come Back

1991 "With "The Shining" and "Misery" Stephen King scared you to death. Now, he's going to scare you back to life."
5.7| 1h38m| R| en| More Info
Released: 07 May 1991 Released
Producted By: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

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.

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Reviews

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict
StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
Hayleigh Joseph This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.
Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
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.
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!
Dean Ashworth 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.
movieman_kev Tim Matheson stars as Jim Norman, a high school teacher who's having recurring nightmares about a boyhood trauma involving the neighborhood bullies that left most of the gang of hoodlums, as well as his brother dead. It doesn't help that the aforementioned deceased gang members are coming back one by one putting the lives of him and his loved ones in danger.This is one of the better Made-for-TV films based on Stephen King's short stories. Matheson does a pretty good job, as do most of the others in the cast (with the only exception being the kid who played Jim as a young boy) and the film managed to keep me interested throughout. Its somewhat hampered with a sappy ending though. ever really cared for that myself, but it doesn't ruin the film, so I don't mind much. Followed by two sequels, of which the less said of the better.My Grade: B-