Mar 21 2009
SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK
Why I won’t become a teacher!PLOT
Jim Norman hates his old hometown because it’s the place where his older brother was killed. After injuring one of his students though, his hometown is the only place willing to offer him a job as a teacher so he moves back with his wife and son. He naturally has a few bad apples in his class, like the spoiled jock Chip. He also has a few nice kids that make him remember why he became a teacher in the first place. At the same time he’s plagued by flashbacks of his brother’s murder by a group of “bad boys”. His good students start dying off, only to be replaced by guys who look strangely familiar and may be connected to his past.
TRIVIA
Based on the short story by Stephen King and actually remains fairly faithful to that story.
THOUGHTS
It was a random twist of fate that led me to review this movie. I had just finished re-reading a Stephen King book of short stories with Sometimes They Come Back in it and I was thinking that I should watch the movie again. Literally, the next day, one of my DVD shelves tipped over and this same movie whacked me in the shoulder. I figured fate was telling me to put off Trackman and some of my new purchases to focus on this one.
Sadly enough, Sometimes They Come Back isn’t nearly as good as the story though it does stick pretty well to the story. The only problem is that they take some story ideas and really draw them out to make the movie a little longer and skip over other things. Jim isn’t really given the chance to bond with the good kids before they’re offed and then they spend too long on his wife and son, who are pretty much an afterthought in the story. I was also itching to see a little more of Jim’s violent streak and figured they’d have at least one flashback to his life beforehand, but they didn’t. It’s not a bad movie, but it could have been a little better. I’m still shocked that they managed to make a ton of sequels out of this one.
