Fear Street Part 1: 1994 is a hoot of a horror film. Inspired by RL Stine’s novels (slightly more hardcore than his Goosebumps output) without being an adaptation of any one, Leigh Janiak’s triptych will trace the supernatural history of one small town over three centuries. Part 1 centres on 1994 (hello Portishead, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails on the soundtrack) and it will come as no surprise it is a bloody valentine to the stalk-and-slash era of horror cinema – a compendium of stabbings, scary masks, dumbfounded policemen and terrified teens. While it evokes the joys of video shops, filled with cheapo frightfests with lurid cover art that always suggested more than the finished film delivered. Fear Street actually makes good on its promise.
The obvious touchstone here is Scream; the perfectly choreographed opening gambit sees Maya Hawke in the Drew Barrymore role, getting more than she bargained for when she answers the phone while staying late at the mall. Yet where Fear Street smartly departs from the Wes Craven classic is that there is no self-referencing; no genre-savvy kids who expound the rules of horror, no classic scary flicks on TV, no cops called Detective Cronenberg or Captain Romero. Instead, Janiak and co-writer Phil Graziadei’s screenplay spins its old-school yarn straight and true and is all the better for it.
The result is full-on horror fun, satisfyingly bloody (but not grotty)
The Stephen Kingian small town is called Shadyside (aka Shittyside aka Killer Capital USA). It’s home to Deena (Kiana Madeira), generally disillusioned by living in deadbeatsville and in an even deeper funk because her ex, Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), has moved to the much more prosperous Sunnyvale. Tensions between the two towns spill over at a vigil for the murdered mall worker, and an accident brings Deena and Sam uncomfortably together. But reconciliation isn’t on the cards as it becomes clear that the urban myth surrounding Shadyside’s macabre rep — chiefly a curse cast by witch Sarah Fier in 1666 — might have a basis in truth. So, Deena and Sam, along with a Scooby Doo gang of Deena’s pals, come together to rid the town of its supernatural hex.
The result is full-on horror fun, satisfyingly bloody (but not grotty) with a sense of verve and imagination. The classic genre scenarios —babysitting, the woods, a hospital, a high school — all come into play as a skull-faced killer, a mad axeman and a Gothic enchantress (“Normal bitches don’t bleed black blood”) raise merry hell. But what Fear Street Part 1: 1994 gets right is that, played by a mostly unknown cast, its central teens are eminently likable. Kianac and Welch make for a very appealing couple, the film wearing its queer couple protagonists lightly on its blood-stained sleeve. Surrounding the central two, Flores Jr. is winning as Deena’s younger brother Josh, who handily is a serial killer/supernatural expert, so can keep the plot moving, Julia Rehwald has fun as Kate, an overachiever with a side-line in drug dealing and Fred Hechinger gives good comic relief as Kate’s boyfriend Simon. These teenagers only want to eat cheeseburgers, listen to The Pixies (it is ’94) and make out. How can you not root for them?
Alongside The Pixies, Fear Street is also pleasingly full of things about the ’90s you may have forgotten about — AOL chat rooms, pagers, Sophie B Hawkins (Dayum, I wish I was your lover). By the end, all the chasing around starts to feel a little bit repetitive and, given there are two more episodes to go, don’t expect narrative closure. But Janiak’s direction is crisp, full of flair (it’s a hyper-coloured palette) telling a tale with genuine surprises. As the death toll rises, it’s tough to guess who makes it to the end credits — that, in a genre often marked by crushing predictability, is no mean feat.
