Fear Street: 1978

The 1994-set first part of Leigh Janiak’s RL Stine tril­o­gy saw teenagers stalked by sev­er­al undead mass mur­der­ers from their seem­ing­ly cursed town’s his­to­ry. It estab­lished that these homi­ci­dal out­bursts across 300-plus years were the work of sus­pect­ed witch Sarah Fier, a woman killed in 1666, pos­sess­ing unsus­pect­ing Shadysiders every so often from beyond the grave, as a means of revenge against the town.

Extin­guish­ing their spe­cif­ic night­mare prob­lem in part one, the sur­viv­ing char­ac­ters were then left on a cliff-hang­er when one of their own became Fier’s lat­est vic­tim of pos­ses­sion. The sec­ond film’s fram­ing device sees her friends turn to the only local who might believe them. C Berman (Gillian Jacobs, sell­ing two decades of trau­ma in only a few scenes) is a scarred, nihilis­tic sur­vivor of the ​‘Camp Nightwing Mas­sacre’ of 1978. In its imme­di­ate after­math she spoke of Fier’s involve­ment, but no one would lis­ten. Berman was said to have briefly died, before resus­ci­ta­tion, while her sis­ter was among the slain.

Cut to the Berman sis­ters at sum­mer camp in ​’78. Cindy (Emi­ly Rudd) is the old­er one, an osten­si­ble ​‘goody-two-shoes’ coun­sel­lor, work­ing hard along­side her sweet boyfriend Tom­my (McCabe Slye) and some more rebel­lious teens from Shady­side (the camp also hosts kids from neigh­bour­ing Sun­ny­vale). Cindy’s prep­py per­son­al­i­ty cov­ers pri­vate mis­eries at home, which are more explic­it­ly expressed through her hell-rais­ing younger sis­ter, Zig­gy (Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink), an out­cast who’s spent the sum­mer a tar­get of enti­tled, vio­lent Sun­ny­valers. Like Sarah Fier, Zig­gy is labelled a witch but, fol­low­ing warn­ings from a har­bin­ger of doom, it’s anoth­er char­ac­ter who under­goes a grad­ual, gen­uine­ly sad trans­for­ma­tion into axe-wield­ing puppet.

Fear Street: 1994’s biggest prob­lem was that one spe­cif­ic plot device ren­dered the main group of char­ac­ters prac­ti­cal­ly inde­struc­tible, destroy­ing ten­sion. This sec­ond film being a sto­ry large­ly told ret­ro­spec­tive­ly, with at least one fore­gone con­clu­sion, would seem to promise sim­i­lar struc­tur­al and ten­sion issues. So, in addi­tion to 1978 being an upgrade in terms of excit­ing set-pieces and sus­tained sus­pense, it works in the film’s favour that we think we know what’s going to hap­pen. If 1994’s esca­lat­ing events seemed more like a string of bad luck, 1978’s feel like peo­ple gen­uine­ly at the mer­cy of cru­el, coor­di­nat­ed fate thanks to sins of the past.

Charis­mat­ic, com­pelling per­for­mances were the pri­or film’s great­est strength and that car­ries over here to an even greater degree: Rudd and Sink are par­tic­u­lar­ly strong in draw­ing sym­pa­thy for their com­pli­cat­ed sis­ter bond. The char­ac­ter ros­ter and body count are big­ger, and while not every­one gets the lev­el of depth of a cen­tral few, almost every even­tu­al vic­tim makes a dis­tinct mark.

Out­side of a Car­rie-inspired prank, nods to oth­er hor­ror texts are far less overt this time, though Fri­day the 13^th and The Burn­ing are def­i­nite touch­stones. And speak­ing of Stephen King, thanks in part to the stronger theme of a town rot poi­son­ing its future, his It comes to mind as a pos­si­ble influ­ence. Here’s hop­ing Fear Street’s finale is bet­ter than the recent cin­e­mat­ic It saga’s con­clu­sion.