Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Leigh Janiak
Starring: Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Fred Hechinger, Maya Hawke, Benjamin Flores Jr., Julia Rehwald
I've long felt envious of fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How
much fun must it be to have this ever-evolving world filled with
returning characters, with three or four new instalments hitting cinemas
every year? Those movies bore me to tears however, but I do respect the
patient manner in which MCU supremo Kevin Feige has gone about building
that cinematic universe over the past 15 years or so. DC, on the other
hand, thought they could rush together their own cinematic universe in
the space of a handful of movies, a move which backfired and led to one
of the most cringeworthy scenes ever put on film – that of Batman
watching primer videos on the other members of the Justice League. Where
Marvel gave their heroes their own standalone movies before assembling
them into The Avengers, DC did it ass backwards, lumping together a
bunch of heroes the audience had no familiarity with.
Netflix's ambitious Fear Street trilogy promises
something of a cinematic universe for horror fans, but unfortunately it
opts for the DC method, throwing a bunch of characters at us and
expecting us to play catch-up.
Inspired by RL Stine's popular (in the US at least) series of
Young Adult books, Fear Street is broken down into three
movies, each taking place in a distinct year. If it seems odd that the
trilogy opens with 1994, the latest year in chronological terms, it
becomes even odder once you start watching this opening instalment, as
it really feels like we're watching the concluding chapter of a trilogy
rather than the curtain raiser.
All three movies are set in the small town of Shadyside, right next to
Sunnyvale, the Shelbyville to its Springfield. While Sunnyvale is
considered one of America's most liveable burghs, Shadyside has a
notorious history of headline grabbing homicides, earning it the
nickname of the murder capital of the US (I bet
Murder She Wrote's Cabot Cove has it beat though).
Fear Street Part One: 1994 opens with the latest dark
chapter in Shadyside's history, as several store clerks are butchered in
an after hours mall by a knife-wielding local teen wearing a skull mask
before the killer is gunned down by a security guard. Things take a
supernatural turn when the killer appears to return from beyond the
grave, along with several notorious murderers from Shadyside's past.
It's up to a bunch of teens to figure out how to save their town.
1994's opening act leans heavily into the influence of Wes Craven's
Scream and its late '90s imitators, though visually it
bears more of a resemblance to the recent Scream TV series
than the original movies. The '90s is one of those decades that's
difficult to visualise, as it lacked the distinct personality of the
decades that preceded it, and despite the never-ending needle drops (the
music licensing budget for this thing must have been astronomical) and
presence of AOL Online, it never really feels like a period piece.
If these early scenes promise a fun throwback, it's frustrating when
1994 becomes so bogged down in its haphazard
world-building. The group of resurrected killers feel like they should
be the Avengers of Horror, but we know nothing about them, and we only
learn their backstories through clunky exposition delivered by an
obligatory nerd character who has a fascination with his town's dark
past. Every time a new twist emerges, we're left to watch as the teens,
and the audience, are delivered another lecture on what's going on. It
often feels like the movie is making up its world as it goes, and
Shadyside never feels like a convincingly real place.
If 1994 set out to evoke '90s slashers…well, I guess it
does a good job. Those movies were generally awful to mediocre, and
unlike the golden age slashers of the '70s and early '80s, spent more
time spelling out the plot than building suspenseful sequences. Save for
a late flurry when Janiak seems to pay tribute to Scott Spiegel's cult
supermarket slasher Intruder, there's very little here to satisfy fans of the slasher sub-genre.
With its focus on teen dynamics and non-stop needle drops, it's more
likely to find an audience among fans of Netflix shows like
Riverdale and Stranger Things. Maybe that's the point.
Fear Street Part 1: 1994 is on
Netflix from July 2nd.
