Review: Fear Street: 1994

Image courtesy of Netflix.

The first of the three "Fear Street" films feels a little bit like an intro and a placeholder - it sets up the central story for the three films and ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger - but as a piece of 1990s nostalgia and a teen-oriented slasher, it's mostly enjoyable. The picture definitely plays off recent films and TV shows that have utilized a certain formula - I'm thinking of the "It" movies and "Stranger Things" - in that a group of youths are the only ones interested in the strange goings-on in their towns, and adults are mostly a non-presence (in "1994," two siblings seemingly don't even have parents).

The movie opens with a great throwback and a creepy scene that might have been at home in a "Scream" movie. A young woman is working at a B. Dalton - remember those? - bookstore chain in a shopping mall. A young guy carrying around a blow-up doll - no explanation for that one - who works at a Spencer's Gifts-type of store converses with her. Moments later, she is attacked by a guy wearing a skull mask and hood, and we learn soon thereafter that the film's titular town, Shadyside, has a history of people seemingly going nuts and killing others.

Some of the flashbacks punctuating this history are among the film's creepiest images - a young boy bludgeoning someone to death, an eerie looking preacher, a serial killer at a summer camp (which will be featured in the next installment of the series) and a milkman who murdered housewives. One of the youths in "1994" often engages in scrolling through some prehistoric version of the internet and finds ways to link these murders together - it seems that a witch was killed in the town in 1666 (that's the third in the series) and cursed everybody thereafter.

At the heart of the film is a romantic relationship between a young woman named Deena (Kiana Madeira) and Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), who previously was sneaking around with Deena, but is now dating a meathead jock from a rival school - these two groups of students hate each other so much that during a vigil for the mall victims, they nearly get into a fight and vow to kill each other.

After an accident during which Sam is lightly injured, Sam; Deena; her brother Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.), the web-surfer; and two other friends, Kate (Julia Rehwald) and Simon (Fred Hechinger) begin to get the feeling they're being stalked by some otherworldly killers. As it turns out, the murderers of years past in Shadyside are back from the dead at the behest of the executed witch, who is after Sam for reasons I won't divulge here.

Much of the film's running time is spent on setting up the mythology of the town of Shadyside and seeing the main characters flee from the murderous undead. There's nothing particularly new here, but the personalities of the characters go a long way, the central love story is unique for this type of movie and the level of bloody mayhem unleashed here might surprise those who recall R.L. Stine's very PG-13 series of books. 

So, while the payoff for "Fear Street" will likely take place over the course of the next two films - released for the next two weeks on Netflix - this first picture is a good start. It's not as ingenious as "Scream" or as scary as the best of the slasher genre, but those who enjoyed the "It" movies - at least, the first one - and watch "Stranger Things" religiously will likely want to catch these movies as well. On the whole, the series is off to a pretty decent start.