Review: Fear Street: 1978

Image courtesy of Netflix.

The second entry in director Leigh Janiak's period piece slasher trilogy — based upon the series of novels by R.L. Stine — is a little scarier, a little better at filling in the period details than its predecessor and a little better overall. While neither reinvent the wheel or could be viewed as groundbreaking for their genre, both films are consistently solid for a series that riffs on gory low budget horror movies of yesteryear.

While the first "Fear Street" was set in the mid-1990s — and did a good job of capturing the essence of that era's clothing, mall culture and teenagers — the second entry in the trilogy is a lean and mean throwback to 1970s summer camp horror movies in the vein of "Friday the 13th" or "The Burning." The period details — from the clothing to the soundtrack including The Runaways, Kansas, Buzzcocks and Blue Oyster Cult — mostly feel right.

Much like the 1994 film, this one also centers around the relationship between two young women, although not romantically this time. As the film opens, the survivors of the first film seek out a woman who is known to be one of the few survivors of a 1978 massacre at Ohio's Camp Nightwing. Albeit reluctantly, the grown version of the character (Gillian Jacobs) — whose identity is masked for the entire picture's running time — tells the 1994 teens about her night of terror.

At the camp, rebellious Ziggy (Sadie Sink of "Stranger Things") is a resident of Shadyside who is tormented by the upper crust youths from neighboring Sunnyvale, who tie her up and accuse her of being a witch. Coming to her rescue is Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland), future sheriff, who later realizes he has some things in common with Ziggy — namely, an appreciation of Stephen King novels.

Ziggy's older sister, Cindy (Emily Rudd), who is a counselor, attempts to keep her distance from her younger sibling. She has a nice, polished boyfriend named Tommy (McCabe Slye) and wears preppy clothes to try to get the Sunnyvale youths to like her. She clashes with Ziggy, who sees through her behavior, and a wild child named Alice (Ryan Simpkins), with whom she was once good friends. We don't learn until the film's end which one is the surviving sister.

An early indicator that danger lurks is when the camp's nurse — who is the mother of one of the town's previous serial killers — attacks Tommy and is taken away by the police. However, the attack seemed like a warning of sorts — one that the film's characters don't take seriously. After several of the counselors stumble upon a lair that had previously been occupied by Sarah Fier, the town witch who placed a curse on Shadyside, a spell is cast on one of the young men, who engages in a bloody killing spree at the camp.

While Stine's novels were violent, they were still safe enough for teens, while "Fear Street: 1978," much like the previous entry in the series, earns its hard-R rating. Not only are teenagers dispatched with gruesome glee in the film, but several of the camp's younger attendees also see the business-end of the killer's axe, although mostly off-screen.

Among my few quibbles with the picture are the fact that several characters who are given a number of scenes early on just disappear and never return, and a sequence in which Cindy and Alice venture through an underground cavern goes on a few beats too long. But much like the "1994" entry in the series, the strongest moments involve the relationship between the two central girls in the story - headstrong and stubborn Ziggy and Cindy, who feels pulled between the town from which she hails and the aspiration one toward which she is drawn.

And much like "1994," this second entry slips in some interesting plot developments based on class — the victims in both films have primarily been youths from the poorer community, while the teens from the affluent Shadyside — even the rotten characters who you assume will get picked off, based on the standards set by the genre — tend to go unscathed.

"1978" also does a pretty decent job of answering some questions regarding the story in "1994." In other words, the trilogy — which goes backward in time, an interesting structure for these type of movies — is starting to come together as more of a cohesive whole. We'll find out in next week's "1666" where all of the pieces fit. For now, the first two "Fear Street" movies are pretty decent — their familiarity in terms of story are made up for by their execution — and better than your standard teen slasher film.