Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021/Leigh Janiak) - 2.5 / 5 - Netflix's 'Horror Summer Event' came out of nowhere for me. For those similar to my lack of knowledge, Fear Street was a series penned by Goosebumps author R.L. Stine that was targeted towards a slightly older teenager crowd. The film adaptation centers around the plight of a group of teenagers that reside in Shadyside, a town that has been dubbed 'Killer Capitol, USA' because of how frequent seemingly normal citizens loose their mind and become deranged killers. The teenagers set off a chain of events that awakens a 300 year old evil and must fend off the horrific fiends of the town's past in order to save their own lives.
Right away, FS1:1994 starts with a great scene that really sells the 90s nostalgia in a greatly played homage to the horror classic Scream. The opening is tense, well shot and dripping with bits of mid 90s fun. Unfortunately, it's all down hill from there. I love the core idea at the center of this story and it really is a pretty damn good way to incorporate a slew of spooky horror classic killers into one film. The execution left a lot to be desired, unfortunately. The characters are just outrageously unlikable that the first few scenes we get to know them just plod along irritatingly and once they're fighting for their lives I don't have that apprehension of caring for the characters. The acting is, overall, pretty good, so it's frustrating that they just had nothing to work with to bring to life better characters. An interesting thing to note is that this film has an LGBTQ header on it on Netflix (the main two characters are a gay couple) but within the film that is constructed as flimsy character traits and leads to a pretty mind numbingly pointless sex scene that felt pretty exploitative. The direction has a few flairs but is overall about average. There are an extreme number of needle drops present in the film to hammer home that 90s nostalgia but it's mostly noticeable in the opening half hour before dying down. The kills and gore do get ramped up pretty grotesquely as the film goes on. While likely targeted towards a younger audience, more seasoned horror veterans will get a kick out some of the kills and homages to horror's past. It does seem like it might potentially become a 'gateway' horror film as young viewers might ask 'what is up with this guy chopping at this door so weirdly?' or 'where does this character in a burlap sack who is chasing teenagers come from?', etc.
I'll be watching the second and third films in this trilogy (they're releasing over the next two weekends) but I'll be honest in saying that I'm a little disappointed when I was really looking forward to this one once I learned what it was all about.
Also, I have a HUGE gripe with it in that: once the film gets to about the 30-40 minute mark and the killers are all chasing after our core group, there's LITERALLY no one in the entire town outside of the teenagers, the two cops and the monsters. I liked seeing the monsters go on their mini spree in the hospital so more of that would have been fun but the town is literally entirely empty for no reason that I can remember being given. It's a tiny nitpick but it just really stuck out to me the more the movie went on.