10 Awful Movies Stranger Things Actors Want Us To Forget

In 2019, Philip Harder made his directing debut with Summer Of '72 - an adaptation of W. Glasgow Philips' novel, Tuscaloosa. The story centres around Billy Mitchell falling for a mental patient called Virginia, who's portrayed by Natalia Dyer. Billy believes Virginia is the love of his life despite his father's harsh warnings for him to stay away from her. Tension rises further when the civil rights movement comes to town and enters a conflict with Tuscaloosa's higher-ups, including Billy's father.

Sounds like riveting stuff, right? What could possibly go wrong?

And the answer is simple - the accents. Not one single actor can perform the Alabama accent without sounding like a hybrid of Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn. Natalia Dyer may be a great actress in Stranger Things but her performance is stilted here since she's clearly focusing too hard on maintaining her dialect - an accent she never nails successfully. All the complexity of the characters from the novel has been removed, turning the story into a coming-of-age romp, which seems to dilute the story's commentary on racial politics and inequality.