Fear Street Part One: 1994

8.2/10

The first installment of the film trilogy Fear Street is Part One: 1994. Fear Street is based off of acclaimed horror writer, R.L. Stine’s long-running book series. This film has damn near everything that I love and want in horror films. Slashers, teens getting chased around town, witches, magic, shit coming from the grave, and it’s set in 1994 so you get the 90s aesthetic that you can never go wrong with. R.L. Stine is mostly known for the legendary Goosebump series, but Fear Street is quietly one of the highest-selling young-adult book series of all-time, so it makes sense that Netflix is brining it to life on screen. Fear Street is a sharp departure from Goosebumps. The kids in Fear Street are older and the film is more violent, including some relatively gruesome kills. The level of violence in the film is what most surprised me. The film definitely earned its R-rating.

1994 is the first of a trilogy that Netflix is rolling out over 3 weeks every Friday during July. This is a really cool premise that I hope other franchises mimic. Fear Street tells the story of Sarah Fier, a woman executed for witchcraft in 1666. Fier places a multi-century curse on the town of Shadyside, Ohio which results in a high number of murders, misfortune, and overall impecuniousness for the town in the centuries following her death.

1994 follows open teenage lesbian, Deena Johnson, and her dorky younger brother, Josh Johnson. Josh is a fervent believer in the curse of Shadyside and dedicates a lot of time researching Sara Fier and the extraordinary high number of murders committed in the town. His sister, Deena, in contrast, is a skeptic and dismisses Josh’s research as a nerd with too much free time.

The film opens with one of Sara Fier’s curses possessing Ryan, a Shadyside teenager, causing him to murder his friend, Heather Watkins, a mall employee, as well as other workers. The police arrive and shoot and kill Ryan. Deena and her drug-dealing friends, Simon and Kate, attend a vigil for Heather with students from rival rich town, Sunnydale, also in attendance. A brawl commences and through a transpiring span of events, Sam, Deena’s closeted ex-girlfriend, ends up in a car accident that lands over Sara Fier’s grave, disturbing it, resulting in Sam’s bewitchment.

While Sam is in the hospital, Deena and her friends are stalked by apparitions of Sara Fier’s curse, which they mistakenly believe are kids from Sunnydale fucking with them in retaliation for the previous night’s events. The gang heads to the hospital to visit Sam and that’s where the bodies start to drop. An apparition of one of Sara Fier’s earlier murderers show up and start killing in their pursuit of Sam who inadvertently touched Frier’s bones, cursing herself as result. This is where the film gets its wings and shows its fun personality.

1994 is a supernatural cat-and-mouse game between Sara Fier’s pawns and Deena and Co. It’s a fun film with a lot of chase scenes and violent kills. The film is a traditional horror film with dashes of comedy to reinforce that this a film about kids in some adult scary shit. It works because it’s never cheesy and it’s definitely not a horror comedy, but rather, it allows the film to be a standard horror movie without masquerading the teens as adults. The movie is dark but has just enough light moments to reinforce the film as an R-Rated teen movie that is truly for teens. Euphoria, the HBO series starring the gorgeous Zendaya, is a really good show that I love, but it’s a teen show only because of the age of the characters. The tone, subject-matter, dialogue, rampant drug use and strong sexuality depict a show far beyond its years. Maybe I’m looking at film and teen life through a rose-colored lens, but I think shows like Euphoria are a distorted and exaggerated depiction of contemporary high school and teenage life. I believe that even set in 1994, 1994 is a more accurate representation of teens on film.

The teens in the film act like teens. Fear Street is a book series and now, a trilogy of films, that are for and about teens. Shows like Euphoria and 13 Reasons Why are about teenagers, but they feel geared towards an adult gaze of what grown-ups believe contemporary high school ostensibly is. 1994 stirs away from this in some capacity, dialing the language, sexuality, drug use and adult situations down. The film succeeds because it’s not a family film that resembles anything that you’d find on the Disney channel during Halloween. It’s a true horror film filled with death, some particularly violent, and dark subject matter, but the viewer never loses sight that it’s a teenage film.

1994 has two strong things going for it – first – that it’s a based off of a book, giving it a blueprint to work off of. And secondly, 1994 is a planned trilogy with a fully thought-out story already scripted beyond the first. Many, upon many, horror sequels fail because their screenwriters seem to be making the story up as they go, once a greenlight is given for second film following a successful first. Fear Street got to hedge its bets as Netflix signed them on for a trilogy, so the writers didn’t have the pressure of writing a follow-up to a first story told in a way that didn’t call for a sequel. 1994 succeeds because it organically leads into its sequels because the trilogy was written in totality before the film hit Netflix. 1994 tells a story that flows sequentially with an ending that seamlessly leads into the next film.

Fans of teen horror will enjoy 1994. It’s a very good film that features multiple horror tropes making it a surprisingly versatile film. Inevitably, comparisons to Goosebumps will be made, but those comparisons start and end with R.L. Stine. Being written by the same author and featuring people under the age of 18 are its only commonalities. Absent in 1994 is the campiness prominent in Goosebumps, and what it’s replaced with is a dark tone representing real-life mortal peril for its characters. 1994 is a strong film that’s dark, violent, witchy and resounding proof that Goosebumps isn’t Stine’s singular great work.