Fear Street: 1994

A lacklustre opening to this new trilogy of teen slasher yarns based on the books by RL Stine.

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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Published 3 Jul 2021

Tags: Fear Street Fear Street: 1994 Netflix RL Stine Stranger Things