50 Movies Where Evil Won

Plot: Oregon Suburbia, 1984. 15-year-old Davey (Graham Verchere) becomes convinced that his neighbour is an unidentified serial killer of teenage boys, but no-one else is convinced. 

With many of the movies on this list, many viewers might've been able to guess that evil was going to win - not with Summer of 84. 

One of the powerful things about this picture is that much of it is light-hearted and comedic in tone, and it seems quite possible that the suspect, police officer Wayne Mackey (Rich Sommer), is, in fact, innocent. It'll successfully keep the viewer guessing... right up until Davey and his friends find a mutilated corpse in Wayne's house, which serves as one of the nastiest and most effective jump scares in recent memory. 

From then on, the light-hearted tone vanishes, and it's full steam-ahead into a shockingly bleak final act in which Wayne violently murders one of Davey's friends and then tells him he'll spare him, leaving Davey living in constant terror until Wayne finally returns for his revenge. 

And that's how Summer 84 ends, with everyone traumatized and Wayne still at large. Brutal stuff.