Looks like it could take place in 70's or 80's...

Yes. It felt like it was set in the 80s without all the 80s cultural markers.

Old telephones.
Old televisions. Older programming.
Older cars. Nothing newer than a 1990 model.
Old 10-speed bicycles.

No era specific hairstyles and clothing. Very generic style.
No one wore sunglasses.


The writer/director entered high school in 1987 or 1988 and is from Michigan.

It was set in the present day. The director was just more concerned about these characters, first and foremost, and the time period was irrelevant to the story he wanted to tell.

Take us down and all apart
Cherry Tree
Lay us out on the table

You're sharp alright...

Yes, easily it's set in the early 90s or the 80's, or even very late 70's (my teen years)...or the director wanted to evoke those years. Not only not one cellphone or laptop in sight, but a console TV and a VCR for the boys watching that horror movie. And the guy with the twins, that was a carryover Bowie/Iggy Pop 70's hairstyle, befitting an older guy than the rest of them.

I was also thinking around the late 90's, maybe 2000. Not many kid's had cell phones back then. Me and my friends also had cars from the 80's like that. That is at least what stuck out to me.

It's definitely set contemporary to the time it was being filmed (late 2000s/early 2010s).

I was in junior high/high school in that late 1990s/early 2000s period and personally I didn't get a cellphone until I got to college (a pay as you go that I literally never used but once when my car broke down), and didn't get an actual phone until I graduated and got a job. Cellphone usage in my High school? Only the rich kids had cell phones and usually they were only to call one's parents--which they never did. Texting? That didn't really become popular until I got into college, and then that became the only reason to get a cellphone. However doing so was problematic at first as it was clunky to text when you had a flip phone. It was only with the demise of flip phones (which was occurring about the time this film was being filmed circa 2008) that texting became easier and more prolific.

Personally I found the film quite evocative of the fact that since 2000 there's no defining distinctions to decades anymore. Instead we can reproduce and pick and choose from any and all times that we want. You walk down the street, and can see someone (probably a hipster) wearing a flat cap from the 1910s, an argyle sweater vest appropriate for the 1930s, skinny jeans from the 1980s, a skinny tie from the 1960s, circular lens glasses from the 1920s, a flared collared shirt from the 1970s, a jacket more appropriate to an English professor from the 1940s, with the penny loafers and white socks combination that was popular in the 1950s. You could see that all on one individual or spread out amongst many separate people. Critter shorts and boat shoes--staples of the 1980s Frat Boy--walk amongst us. Argyle and adapted golf-wear that hasn't been popular since the 1930s is back in style. Fedoras, which departed being fashionable sometime in the 1950s are back. Girls wear dresses which look like it's the early 1960s/late 1950s, mod inspired outfits, or stand out in skinny jeans with a t-shirt in the 1980s neon color palette. Or they go out wearing pedal pushers (capris) more fitting for the early 1960s. It should also be noted that early 1990s colors are beginning to make a comeback. We exist in a mishmash time period that is ultimately defined by its lack of definition and desire to mix and match from all the previous "eras". The only thing that made this film stick out to me as "definitely late 2000s/early 2010s" was the t-shirt decal design that Rob wears in the supermarket--that decal didn't become popular until the late 2000s. Personally, that's only one of two things that mark me as being the only "new" things that the 2000s came up with in terms of fashion. That kind of decal on t-shirts and an army-style cap.

As for the comment about "put in period music" that another poster made, he did, all of that music was "modern" to the film's being dated to the late 2000s.

Red Wolf #4

tell-tale sign that it's in the current era: the girl with the nose-ring. Because that wasn't socially-acceptable in middle school not even 10 years ago.

it did have a great 80's feel to it, great little movie.

When there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...