Fear Street: 1994 (Netflix) Movie Review

A horror series based entirely around nostalgia kicks? … Stranger Things have happened.

by Tom Davies

Dubbed the Stephen King of children's literature, I can point to R.L. Stine as a guiding influence of my enjoyment of horror. His accessible, pulpy "Babysitters Club but with blood" style Point Horror and Fear Street books were never particularly scary, and they often trod very similar paths, but they had an knowing sense of fun and acuity for exactly how much horror sheltered young teens and pre-teens are ready for. In short, Stine had a near perfect understanding of his key demographic, something noticeably absent from the latest adaptation of his work.

Neighbouring cities Shadyside and Sunnyvale have an odd relationship: one is the most genteel place to live in the country, the other is the “murder capital” of the US. Yes, Shadyside has a serial killer problem…and a zombie problem… and a witch problem, and it's up to the local Scooby Doo crew to try and put a stop to it.

Following writer Phil Graziadei and director Leigh Janiak’s mostly successful debut, Honeymoon and a couple of well received episodes of the Scream TV series, the pair were given the opportunity to create a series of three movies based on the popular teen horror Fear Street series of books by R.L. Stine. The now defunct 20th Century Fox was to release them a month apart creating a summer of teen horror. When Disney mergers and Covid crises caused that plan to fall through, the distribution was renegotiated, finally landing at Netflix. All this background is only surprising when you actually get around to watching Fear Street: 1994, one of the most Netflix-algorithmic-looking movies of recent years. “Horror. Teen. Nostalgic. Movies with a Strong Female Lead.”

 

... doesn’t really either horrify or amuse...

The production is slick. The vaporwave-style neon lighting, note perfect 90s fashions, limited number of locations and enjoyably enfolding Atmos track of wet crunching noises speak to a movie with a modest but intelligently utilised budget and surprising amounts of splatter punctuate some of the more entertaining kills (the film is rated 18 – a bit of a head scratcher considering its intended demographic.) But the violence doesn’t really either horrify or amuse in its gratuitousness barring one notable occasion with a bread slicer. Essentially, like a lot of DTNetflix affairs, it's a lovely looking shell with an unsatisfying centre. It's the [whichever Revel you like least] of movies.

Fear Street: 1994
Do you like scary movies? Then maybe give 'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark' a try, I don't know, this is 111. Do you have a temperature or a cough? Miss, there are patients who actually need our help. Miss... Miss are you there? Are those wet gurgling noises you? Miss? Have you been stabbed by a man dressed as a skellington? Miss? Miss? MISS? ... Actually, 'Scary Stories' isn't that great either.

What drags the proceedings down in this particular instance is the almost total lack of personality. The success of the first glut of teen slashers in the 70s and 80s was, by and large, bolstered by tried and tested formula of teenage archetypes who act recklessly and get their comeuppance. The 90s turned some of these rituals on their heads, most notably when Scream brought the genre back by playing devilishly with calling out the very tropes it was mimicking. Nominally, Fear Street: 1994 follows this recipe: a cheerleader, a goth-girl, a nerd and a class clown team up to face the supernatural menace. But where Matthew Lillard’s Stu Macher is either a lovable rascal or an insufferable jerk in Scream (your mileage may vary) Fred Hechinger’s Simon is just sort of…bland. Neither funny enough to root for, or annoying enough to want to see dismembered. Kiana Madeira’s Heather, while the most developed, is no stand in for her gutsy Elm Street namesake, Heather Langenkamp. The movies it's riffing on each had a cast you either wanted to save or slaughter but in 1994 it's difficult to care either way. The interactions between the cast all feel very flat. The one pin prick of light being a sweet, but chaste, locker room connection between unlikely couple Josh and Kate.

The Gen Xer/geriatric Millennials who were in peak susceptibility to reading Stine’s work the first time around will have plenty to glom onto, spotting references to the series of books from which the film takes inspiration; while the story is an adaptation of no single book, the set pieces are often taken straight from the pages of various volumes. Even those who were not making their first forays into horror literature in the mid-90s might find pleasure in the numerous homages to pre-millennium teen-scream staples: Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark, the Scream movies, the dying embers of enthusiasm for Jason Voorhees, Blair Witch, even a little incongruous nod to T2.

 

... becomes more enjoyable and more earnest in its final act...

Further nostalgia dollars may be spent on listening to an annoyingly twitchy string of needle drops for 10 second snippets of your second-favourite indie, alterna-rock and hip-hop hits, like someone set their Sony Discman on that annoyingly pointless “intros only” setting (remember that? Why did that exist?) But that’s likely to be the extent of enjoyment for many.

Never distant from the plot either is the necessity to set up two further instalments going back in time to the 70s and the 1600s, filling in the events that led up to 1994. Some of them are weaved in admirably well, most of them are not and the weight of the setup hampers the movie, even as it becomes more enjoyable and more earnest in its final act. How the remaining films pan out and whether the interconnectivity gambit pays off in the long run is something we don’t have to wait too long for with part 2 and 3 releasing over the next three weeks, but for now, there’s not enough individuality to Fear Street to recommend it to anyone other than die-hard R.L. Stine fans and maybe the audience of Riverdale.

Fear Street: 1994 is available now as part of your Netflix subscription with Part 2, 1978 released on the 9th July and Part 3, 1666 on the 16th July.

Scores

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