Sometimes They Come Back (1991) Review

Sometimes They Come Back (1991) Review

Sometimes They Come Back is about a teacher who reluctantly returns to his hometown with his wife and son, years after a tragic accident that took the life of his brother and several greasers who were bullying them, but the problem, as the title hints at, is these bullies are coming back to his classroom, one by one, as more and more of his students mysteriously die. Of course, the bullies are coming for him, to take care of some unfinished business. 

The quality of TV movies based on Stephen King stories in the 90’s was not at an all-time high. In this case, the concept is decent, but the execution? Not so much. There are a bunch of elements from other stories by King (Stand By Me, It, Christine) but having not read the short story upon which this movie is based, I can’t confirm if these blatant similarities are the result of King’s writing or the screenwriter adapting the story. Whatever the case, it isn’t that original. 

It flashes back in the first act to when the main character, Jimmy, and his older brother are cornered in a train tunnel by the bullies and their car, and one of them sort-of-accidently-but-kind-of-on-purpose stabs his older brother and then a train comes and kills all but one of the bullies, leaving Jimmy devastated. 

In the second act, students close to Jimmy start dying in ways that seem to be suicidal, but also seem to indicate Jimmy himself has something to do with it. The first kid to go is riding his bike when the same model car the bullies drove back in the day starts following him, but only the kid and Jimmy can see it, then the kid is forced off the road and dies, and the car drives away while shooting flames out the back. It’s one of the few memorable and exciting scenes. 

As the movie progresses, the bullies come back one by one, appearing like their young selves for most of the time, but once in a while reverting to a decayed state, just to scare people. They all act like typical, over-the-top punks, but they also take such joy in what they do—laughing, jumping around, howling like wolves (?)—that it makes them more laughable than intimidating. The makeup effects for their decayed faces is passable for TV, but not anything unique or especially grotesque. 

The actors all give acceptable performances, but with the main character, it falls into the cliché of, “Something weird is happening, and nobody believes me”, which is fine for a while, but becomes tiresome pretty quick. 

My main issue with the whole thing is it’s mostly just boring. The pace is quite slow, and there are very few scares. It felt very restricted, in terms of being able to show violence, and while it likely was due to being made-for-TV, in comparison to something like 1990’s It, which is actually quite violent and horrific (for TV, anyway) Sometimes They Come Back feels very tame. 

Apparently some large amount of people must’ve liked it, though, because there were two sequels, Sometimes They Come Back…Again and Sometimes They Come Back…for More. Judging by that number of sequels it sounds like they always come back.  Couldn’t they have just not come back? 

Sometimes They Come Back is watchable, has a few okay moments, but I found it mostly slow, predictable, and repetitive. I can’t see myself ever coming back to this movie.