Fear Street: 1994

Pre-glob­al pan­dem­ic, a gam­ble was tak­en with a tril­o­gy of gory films loose­ly based on YA-hor­ror series Fear Street by RL Stine, all direct­ed and co-writ­ten by Leigh Jani­ak. Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry Stu­dios (née Fox) was orig­i­nal­ly set to dis­trib­ute these three inter­con­nect­ed movies, each set in a dif­fer­ent time peri­od, in cin­e­mas across three con­sec­u­tive months in the sum­mer of 2020.

With the­atri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion dis­rupt­ed that same year, pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Chernin Enter­tain­ment sold their exper­i­ment to Net­flix, with the stream­ing giant now releas­ing the tril­o­gy across three con­sec­u­tive weeks. First up is the 1994-set film, direct­ly inspired by that decade’s slash­er genre revival, and it will be fol­lowed by trips to 1978 and 1666.

A fic­tion­alised Shady­side, Ohio is the set­ting, and it’s the haunt­ed screw-up Spring­field to the com­par­a­tive­ly pros­per­ous Shel­byville of rival neigh­bour­ing town Sun­ny­vale. Shadyside’s his­to­ry is filled with mys­te­ri­ous mas­sacres, and the lat­est trig­gers events that see for­mer teenage les­bian lovers Deena (Kiana Madeira) and Saman­tha (Olivia Scott Welch) reunite in a fight for their lives as a skull-masked spook starts some stalking.

The ​’90s set­ting seems cho­sen to delib­er­ate­ly riff on the wave of Kevin Williamson-penned or ‑inspired self-aware teen hor­rors that came just a few years lat­er, though with a more super­nat­ur­al edge. The sound­track cer­tain­ly doesn’t ful­ly adhere to the par­tic­u­lar choice of 1994, though – any­one with basic knowl­edge of pop­u­lar music’s chronol­o­gy in the ​’90s will ques­tion the use of spe­cif­ic Garbage and The Prodi­gy nee­dle drops.

Aside from hir­ing com­pos­er Mar­co Bel­tra­mi, the most explic­it nod to 1996’s Scream arrives in the film’s open­ing sequence as a char­ac­ter played by a descen­dant of Hol­ly­wood roy­al­ty, who’s also the cur­rent most famous cast mem­ber, is stalked by a knife-wield­ing masked killer, akin to Scream’s mem­o­rable first-scene victim.

Although that ini­tial set-piece is thrilling (despite its fore­gone con­clu­sion), it’s ulti­mate­ly the clos­est the film comes to actu­al frights. There’s cer­tain­ly gris­ly imagery through­out, includ­ing one spe­cif­ic mur­der via head trau­ma that might have received Lucio Fulci’s endorse­ment. But when a core group of five char­ac­ters keep nar­row­ly escap­ing steadi­ly increas­ing num­bers of (most­ly) masked hunters, with rel­a­tive­ly min­i­mal phys­i­cal dam­age each time, the ten­sion duly dissipates.

Not to spoil too much, but there’s an almost 45-minute gap between addi­tions to the body count tal­ly in this 105-minute movie, and most of the ear­ly kills con­cern char­ac­ters intro­duced just moments before. Maybe the film could have done with a few ​‘expend­able’ side char­ac­ters tag­ging along with the five leads for at least some of the nar­ra­tive. There’s a tricky bal­anc­ing act to pull off when it comes to delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion, and Janiak’s attempts unfor­tu­nate­ly result in the feel­ing of killing time more than build­ing to a sat­is­fy­ing showdown.

And that’s only exac­er­bat­ed by aware­ness that the final few min­utes will inevitably need to direct­ly set up the mid­dle chap­ter of the tril­o­gy, sow­ing the seeds of who we might be fol­low­ing in the 1978-set film and why. The town mythol­o­gy estab­lished through­out this first instal­ment is def­i­nite­ly com­pelling in the­o­ry, but the fol­low-up movies would be more entic­ing if 1994 was less a pro­tract­ed pre­am­ble and more a sin­gu­lar­ly sat­is­fy­ing film in its own right.

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