Fear Street Part 1: 1994
2021
I was surprised to learn that the Fear Street series was bought by Netflix rather than made for it, as it’s a back-to-back trilogy which they released on a weekly basis (apparently the original plan was to release them all in cinemas a month apart) and because Part 1: 1994 starts with a Scream reference where the star in the pre-credits is Maya Hawke in a role very much like Robin in Stranger Things. Most of the publicity for this features a shot of her and the skull-masked robed killer from the first ten minutes, as seen in The A.V. Club Film Club podcast article about the series.
Knowing the trilogy format I knew it wasn’t just going to be a Scream-alike in plot terms, though close tonally in the snark about slashers.
They’re based on a series of R.L. Stine books I’m completely unfamiliar with, I understand they’re more teen-aimed than Goosebumps, but have no idea how much they adapt. Looks like not much.
I’m also pretty puzzled about who this is for, as it goes from almost teen-friendly to increasingly brutal.
That’s pretty much all I knew going in so I got to slightly surprised a couple of times so I’ll drop a spoiler block here...
The credits introduce two connected towns called Shadyside and Sunnyvale (apparently there’s a real Sunnyvale in California which Sunnydale in Buffy The Vampire Slayer is an expy of, but this series is set in Ohio, and there’s a real Shadyside there) with centuries of problems and fairly regular slasher attacks for the former while everything's great for the latter, going back to a witch trial in 1666 (the time for Part 3) which immediately made me suspicious of Sunnyvale.
Then we meet our actual heroes getting ready for school in Shadyside. Deena has recently had her heart broken by Sam, who it turns out recently moved to Sunnyvale. The two towns’ high school teams are about to play, setting up a West Side Story vibe to the rivalry. Her brother is active on the internet, which in 1994 makes him unusual, and has a Big Wall Of Crazy about the string of witch-inspired spree killings in town. Her main friends are low-key drug dealers. With that and some very low-for-the-rating sex, it’s a nice aversion of the 80s slasher morality code.
Going in I also didn’t know about the momentary fakeout before the reveal that Sam is Deena’s ex-girlfriend, which adds a nice layer to Deena’s feeling that she’s an outsider.
A rivalry-induced accident lands Sam in hospital and marked by the slasher-related curse where the film decides to go a bit more Cabin In The Woods or possibly Dead By Daylight (and the Goosebumps movies, actually) as several of the variously familiar slashers rise from the dead as unstoppable regenerating monsters, though like Ghostface in Scream they’re roughly human in strength so they can be and are fought off.
So it’s a take on the 90s slasher revival aimed at the supernatural slasher instead of the down-to-earth variety, introducing the magical “why do they keep coming back?” explanation first and foremost rather than adding it for sequels to mostly-mundane slashers like Michael and Jason.
Along the way there’s a bad call, a good call, multiple plans from the protagonists (I appreciate how quickly they started planning and fighting when presented with undead monsters) several side deaths and a cliffhanger sequel hook.
Oh, and the Sheriff (of both towns, apparently) knows a lot more than he’s letting on. Which links to the cliffhanger. Come back next time for 1978!
The 1994 setting (not 1996 like Scream, just like Part 2: 1978 is set two years earlier than Friday The 13th came out, so I presume 1666 will be full of callbacks to a well-known slasher movie from 1668? /sarcasm) has the internet detail, corded phones, some plaid, but mostly the music is a Back To The 90s run of songs that I have almost all of on CDs from the time.
It’s pretty uneven, funny now and then, with some modernising touches I really appreciated, but the trilogy setup slows some things down as some things are brought up and don’t go anywhere, a big moral question gets shrugged off, and a lot of the scares are “someone runs past behind the viewpoint character with a Scare String in the soundtrack”.
The biggest surprise for me was also an unevenness thing, reading the A.V. Club review after it noted that the gore jars with the rest of the tone. There are some really gory moments, and quite a lot of painful-looking stabbing in a film that doesn’t take injury as seriously as Scream and otherwise feels like it could have had a teen-friendly rating. Apparently this is intentional, to give it the feel of a film kids aren’t supposed to be seeing.
I’m not sure the 1978 callbacks will sustain its own movie for me though I’m curious about the 1666 finale. I doubt I would have rushed back to cinemas after Part 1 if they’d come out that way, but I’ll watch them on Netflix soon, quite possibly in the next couple of nights.
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