The opening scene of “Fear Street Part One: 1994” has a snooty shopper referring to R.L. Stine’s work as “low-brow horror” and “trash.” Still, writer/director Leigh Janiak is perfectly comfortable slumming it with Scholastic Book Fair kings. No stranger to frights, Janiak comes off her directorial debut thriller “Honeymoon” and stints at the helm of “Panic” and “Scream: The TV Series” to bring Stine’s popular “Fear Street“ novels of the ’90s to life in a trilogy that drops a new entry on Netflix every week. The first endeavor succeeds in delivering fresh thrills and a few kills, starting the journey off on a solid foot.
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In “Fear Street Part One: 1994,” the town of Shadyside is akin to Stephen King’s beloved fictional locale of Derry, Maine, wherein a cycle of violence perpetuates itself over the years. Townspeople lose their faculties, pick up melee weapons, and go on killing sprees that make headlines but quickly fade from the collective memory. The latest manifestation of the curse has a young man going full Jason Voorhees on his fellow mall employees before catching a bullet to the head, something that the youths suspect is the work of a witch executed in 1666. There is a candlelight vigil for the victims, prejudices boil over into a confrontation with neighboring rivals from Sunnyvale, and an ensuing accident ends up disturbing the bones of that very witch, who unleashes a cadre of bloodthirsty, undead minions upon the suburb. The adults are useless, and it’s up to the kids to right the wrong before someone loses their head. What follows is a high-end remodeling of classic gateway horror with heart, energy, and teeth.
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Part of the film’s success is visibly expanding the genre’s time-entrenched ideas of who can participate in those beloved archetypal roles. Who gets to have the romance, who gets to have depth along with their comedy relief, who gets to save the day (until the next sequel)? Gay kids, that’s who. Black kids, that’s who. The kids are not only alright; they’re filled with rage against the machine. Just as self-aware as their hack-n-slash predecessors, they refer to other horror movies to contextualize their situation, comparing a killer stalking them to a shark smelling chum in “Jaws” or a witch’s vendetta; to the disturbed graves of “Poltergeist.” Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.) is the record-keeper of the group, akin to Mike Hanlon in “It.” His arc is the most traditional for this type of movie, a geeky kid who shines when it’s time to save the day and maybe make out with his crush before the world ends. His relationship with his sister Deena (Kiana Madeira) is a relatable mixture of barely-contained tolerance and genuine admiration. Flores Jr. and Madeira have great chemistry that plays well when things get hairy for the pair later on in the story, and their performances are the strongest of a well-rounded cast. Madeira, in particular, accesses bitterness where one might expect surface-level teenage angst, an intensity where one might expect histrionics. It makes for stellar tension as she has to save the town with her ex.
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Janiak is in command of her universe, operating its players and stages with a sure hand within genre constraints. The lens knows when to lean in for a fun but frantic near miss, like the time a resurrected doll-faced slasher nearly lured Simon (Fred Hechinger) towards his bloody end. While the chosen tone-setting songs are solid, the barrage of ’90s Top 40 gets tiresome by the time “Insane in the Membrane” meanders directly into “Creep.” A locker hallway sequence leapfrogs from song to song and high schooler archetype to archetype in seconds. There’s really no need to go that hard to establish the era, but maybe this is an “if it’s too loud, you’re too old” situation. That said, the Shadyside vibes do reflect those of mid-90s Woodsboro, and the screams of “Scream” echo throughout each of the “Fear Street” frames.
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The sex and violence quotient adds fuel to the “Fear Street” fire, earning its R rating. The bloodshed exponentially ramps up for all characters in the third act; what progresses as a lively reverse-the-curse quest suddenly growls with a few rather rude kills. The carnage is such an abrupt, late-stage step up from their preceding stabbings (and the occasional useless ghost shooting) that the slasher element of the film feels like an intentional afterthought to the characters and the supernatural lore-building, a choice that pays off in authenticity and characters that matter—to us and to each other.
Horror provides scores nooks and crannies for subversion. French Extremity films locate subversion in transgressive violence, while nunsploitation prefers to deconstruct the Catholic Church while attending schools of the holy beast. Fear Street’s greatest subversion is in its expressions of love, self-love, and togetherness. Simon notably paints his nails, enjoys jewelry, sells pills to support his family, all in addition to having conflicted attractions to evil entities, and even he carves out an implied moment of screen time to love himself. Its inclusion in a sequence of desperate, passionate make-out sessions is a fresh modification to the hanky panky that’s become de rigueur for teen horror movies, presenting teen attraction from a variety of viewpoints. Traditionally, these characters like Deena and her closeted lover Sam have existed within queer coding as psychos and sidekicks, outliers of the modern teen experience. “Fear Street: 1994” does not settle for mere visibility of its players; Janiak moves to retroactively insert orientations and representations of identity into the 90s that the horror lenses of yesteryear didn’t include. More teens get to fumble in the dark, which means more fodder for the maw and more entertainment for all.
“Fear Street Part One: 1994” is a promising commencement to the trilogy and a nasty but enthusiastic welcome to anyone new to the genre. R.L. Stine’s books have long acted as a gateway to the horror genre for youths, and it warms the coldest of hearts to see an adaptation that not only seizes the spirit of the source material but provides a potentially formative experience of its own for any who may dare to hit “Play.” {B+]