Fear Street: Fun or Flop?
Based on the young adult book series by R.L.
Stine, Fear Street Part One: 1994 is the first of three Netflix adaptations
that will be released this July. For me, this release came out of nowhere as it
wasn't really on my radar and I didn't see much promo for it either. Summer
seems like an odd time to release a spooky teen horror trilogy, closer to
Halloween would've made more sense and probably would lead to better viewing
numbers.
Fear Street takes clear inspiration from popular teen horror flicks, the main
one probably being Scream. As you'd expect, it contains all the typical horror
tropes you've become familiar with over the years i.e. A group of teens living
in a town called Shadyside are being terrorised by a killer, there's a film
nerd (or in this case a horror history nerd), a dopey one etc. The twist that
separates Fear street from your average teen horror movie is that there are
multiple killers, all of which are spin-offs of popular horror movie icons:
Ghostface is now the Skull Mask Killer, Jason is now a sack wearing, axe
wielding killer called Nightwing and so on. It's interesting to see their own
interpretation of these icons and seeing them all together is pretty
interesting, like a little horror Multiverse.
The lore and mythology behind the supernatural events of Shadyside is very
interesting: a witch that was murdered by the town during witch trials cut off
her hand so she can keep a "grasp" on the land. Ever since her death
she has possessed seemingly normal citizens and turned them into deranged
killers to get revenge on Shadyside. Looking back at the history and all the
different killers spanning hundreds of years is very interesting!
The cast of teens do a pretty good job of acting seriously. In what's sort of a
spoof tribute to teen slasher flicks, it would be all too easy to act
incredibly cringy, like they're trying too hard. For the most part they manage
to avoid it. So they all get a big thumbs up from me 👍
The story remains pretty solid throughout, with not many points where it could
go stale, so I'm curious as to how they're going to extend it into a trilogy, 2
films I could see, but 3 seems a bit excessive. However, I had never
heard of Fear Street before now so the trilogy could link back to the book
series, so I'm no expert on that 🤷🏻♂️
The film won't win any awards for best storytelling, but it's not an unpleasant
watch either.
I won't lie, it got pretty frustrating during the big finale in the last
quarter of the film, the whole thing could've been shortened by about 15
minutes, it felt like they were dragging it out a bit too much. It does start
to feel like quite a long film near the end 😅
Despite the lengthy runtime for a film of this nature and the prospect of 2
more just like it in quick succession, Fear Street Part One: 1994 was a pretty
enjoyable experience. For those who are maybe more familiar with the source
material or are just horror/slasher fans like myself, you will get a decent
amount of enjoyment from Part One. But I do still think they'd have been better
off releasing this trilogy closer to Halloween 🎃
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