Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 47 minutes
Director: Leigh Janiak
Quick Impressions:
We considered watching Luca this weekend, but my son refused to watch any movie and pointedly stormed upstairs to play in his room. So instead we watched Fear Street Part I: 1994 because that’s the movie my daughter preferred. As soon as I heard of Netflix’s Fear Street adaptation, I immediately thought of a friend of mine from seventh grade. She loved reading and writing horror, which alarmed a surprising number of students in our school. She had recently moved from Iowa and kept pleading to me, “This is what normal people like. These are very popular books. This is popular music. Everyone normal listens to it. I swear!” The music she meant was Nirvana, her love of which for some reason made her the scandal of the seventh grade at our school. She used to puzzle over Nirvana lyrics and invite me to join her in appreciating their abstruse charm. She’d joke, “I don’t know, Kurt Cobain, what are you trying to say?”
Later that year (right after spring break), I moved to Tennessee. When I was still pretty new there (which I guess was always since we moved again in November), the youth group at my church attended an area youth rally. We all carpooled and drove somewhere about two hours away. Every youth group gathered for a giant assembly in a huge room. Our main activity was a game. The people in charge would read song lyrics. If we could identify the song, we would win a prize. The trick was, the song lyrics were highly objectionable. The point was to shame us and horrify our parents.
I like games, but I didn’t listen to that much popular music at the time. So imagine my delight when the moderator read, “Got so high, I scratched till I bled.” I was overjoyed. I proudly raised my hand and volunteered, “That’s Nirvana, ‘On a Plain.’” When I went up to claim my prize, the moderator asked me, ‘How many times did you listen to that song to learn all the lyrics?’” Honestly, I replied, “I’ve never listened to that song.” A sixteen-year-old member of our youth group (who had just won the previous prize) could not contain her delight. We returned to our seats in a great mood, and I told my dad happily, “Look! I won a barf bag!” He replied, “I’m not sure how I should feel about that.” Shaking her head, our youth sponsor decided, “I’m not sure this activity is working.” It certainly wasn’t! Later when we were getting snacks, the moderator approached me and asked, “Do you know any other trashy lyrics from songs you haven’t listened to?” Uncharacteristically emboldened by my new sixteen-year-old friend, I answered, “I do now.” We never went to another area youth rally. (And as a result of that activity, I bought an MC Hammer tape because I think it’s awful to say to a room full of people that someone who professes belief in Christ is “not a real Christian” because you don’t like a song they wrote.)
I’m telling this story because yes, I let my daughter watch this R-rated movie. I did it deliberately. It’s a parenting choice. She wanted to see the movie, and she’ll be in seventh grade this fall. Yes, there’s objectionable material in it, but rather than try to shield her from everything, I prefer to keep an open dialogue with her, so that as she navigates her teenage years, she feels comfortable talking with me about the things she encounters in her life. I worry that people may think I’m a horrible parent for letting her watch R-rated movies. Knowing my anxieties about that, after the movie, she turned to me and joked with comically wide eyes, “Mom, should I take all the drugs in the pharmacy and blank myself in the blank blank? That’s what the movie said to do.” (She didn’t say blank. I’m avoiding spoilers but including all blanks because blanking yourself is much funnier if you do it in the blank blank. When you get to the end, you can fill in the blanks for yourself. This happens very late in the film. It’s not funny to do, just to relate.) I honestly think she’s old enough to watch this movie with her father and me without any problem. But the film does contain tons of objectionable material that you might not want your kids watching. It’s not Goosebumps.
The Good:
For the first hour or so, this film’s pace is pretty frenetic, and it’s much funnier than it is scary. “It’s almost camp,” my husband kept saying. Think of Scream (the movie clearly is). This is much zanier than that. As in the Scream series, we get actual slashing, and there’s plenty of supernatural creepiness, too, but after its opening, Fear Street isn’t actually scary for a very long time. Watch out for that ending, though. Writing even that much feels kind of spoilery. The sudden gruesomeness of the film’s conclusion took me by surprise, and it’s probably intended to take the viewer by surprise. There’s definitely a tonal shift late in the movie. In fact, it wasn’t until the very last scene that my daughter exclaimed, “Well, finally!”
This film is the first installment of a trilogy, and Netflix is releasing the other chapters in quick succession. Even though the film’s early scenes made us laugh hysterically, the best part of the movie really comes at the end. As I experienced this film, I liked the first scene. Then I loved the frenetically absurd rush of non-stop, over-the-top, zanily relentless action that followed. For a while in the middle, I wasn’t as engaged as I would have liked. But the ending of the film really got my attention.
We’re watching a three-part story that has chosen to progress by moving backwards through time. I love the idea that the ending lies behind us, waiting for us in the past. That’s cool. I want to see how the series gets us there without abandoning these characters in the present, who are waiting to learn that ending just like we are. They can’t move forward until we all go back together. That sounds promising.
I’ve never read R. L. Stine’s Fear Street books, though I’ve had some of them described to me in seventh grade. When I started to read horror myself, I was an older teen, and it never occurred to me to read Fear Street at that point. (I don’t know why.) I have read a lot of Goosebumps books mainly because there was a time when my little cousins were obsessed with them, and I remember my younger sister liking them, too, and the show. I wish I had read Fear Street now because I could comment more usefully on what’s happening in this movie and talk about how it compares to the books. But sadly, I can’t do that.
I can say that this installment of Fear Street includes a number of homages to other horror movies, especially Scream. All kinds of references are lurking in this movie, but the Scream stuff is blatant and pervasive. To my daughter’s dismay, the opening sequence is so much like Scream that both she and I found ourselves screaming several times. She’s a huge Stranger Things fan, and when her favorite character showed up in this movie, we were really hoping that if we screamed advice at her loudly enough, we might prevent the worst.
The movie’s really funny, and even though I had a hard time taking it seriously for a while, I didn’t care. For quite some time, my daughter, my husband, and I were making jokes constantly, but we couldn’t keep up with the movie’s own jokes. We were half making fun of it, and it was half making fun of itself, too, and then maybe for a while it was even making fun of us. It’s not very scary. But I think it did scare my dad. At the very least, it confused him. When he first sat down to watch with us, he asked if it was a reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That’s totally understandable because it focuses on two cursed towns, Shadyside and Sunnyvale. (That makes it kind of hard not to think of Sunnydale if you’ve heard of the Hellmouth.)
My dad’s comments were cracking me up as much as the movie. “Am I understanding this romance plot correctly? That’s pretty bold for 1994! Wow, these are pretty violent people.” I told him, “It’s all that music they’ve been listening to non-stop. If only Tipper Gore had gotten through to them,” because the film’s relentless use of 90s hits is almost comical. The movie just keeps shoe-horning them in there, even if they’re not from 1994!
(By the way, my Tipper Gore joke is more about the movie’s non-stop 90s music than her efforts to protect children from explicit lyrics. I hope this review doesn’t unintentionally make me sound like I believe six-year-olds should be bombarded with graphic language and disturbing content. I’m not sure efforts to protect children by censoring music work as intended, but this isn’t a thoughtful critique of someone’s sincere efforts, just a lazy joke about the lazier use of 90s music in Fear Street.)
After a while, my dad remarked in befuddlement, “I think I must have missed the 90s. I must have been at work.”
Wickedly, I asked my daughter, “Are you ready for high school?”
Oddly, I would vacillate between thinking the film was completely outrageous and then deciding, “Well, no, actually, I guess it’s pretty realistic.” The characters’ lives are moving a mile a minute, but they do seem sort of realistic in a way. It’s just all happening so fast, and for a while, nothing happens that isn’t incredibly supercharged with either intensity or strangeness.
Fred Hechinger makes quite an impression as Simon. He’s as bizarre as he can be at every second, and yet, sometimes I would think, “Maybe he’s the most realistic one. I knew so many people kind of like this.” That’s the thing about this movie. All of the characters are relatable, but they’re either highly exaggerated themselves or in exaggerated situations at all times. It’s fun to watch. We liked Kiana Madeira as Deena, Benjamin Flores, Jr. as her brother Josh, Julia Rehwald as Kate, and also (maybe to a slightly lesser degree) Olivia Scott Welch as Samantha. (Welch isn’t doing anything wrong. She’s just not quite as interesting as the others, maybe because her character is more understated. We’re thinking that Welch’s part may be more interesting going forward because of late developments in her character. On the other hand, maybe we won’t see her again. It’s hard to tell exactly what will happen in the next movie.) And, of course, my daughter loves Maya Hawke. (I like her, too, but nobody could possibly like her as much as my daughter.)
The movie also offers some light social commentary (especially near its ending) that my daughter found welcomingly thought-provoking. Yes, there are supernatural forces at work in this story. But what if there weren’t?
Best Scene:
I like the film’s opening scene with Maya Hawke. It contains multiple echoes of Scream (including the whole of itself). In fact, the movie plays with our familiarity with Scream to add suspense and surprise to what’s happening to Hawke’s Heather. Hawke is always interesting to watch, and one aspect of the ending of this scene actually did surprise us.
Even more surprising is the very last scene of the entire movie. Because of its unexpectedness, it’s probably the film’s best scene. Suddenly I see far more potential for story development. My daughter was thrilled, too. “Now this is actually going somewhere,” she said. “I always hate it when the enemy is all the forces of evil, and the protagonists are a bunch of teenagers, and they’re like, ‘Oh yay! We beat evil! The end.’ That’s not realistic.”
Best Scene Visually:
What I most remember are all the late developments in the grocery store scene near the ending of the film. I wasn’t prepared for some of these things because the movie had been deceptively kind and gentle to us for such a long time up to that point. I didn’t enjoy seeing these things and was forced to admit, “I guess this really is horror.” I didn’t like these late developments, yet they make the movie better. Suddenly we’re in the story instead of being pulled out of it by its own exaggerated humor.
And I also find the girls’ bathroom at the school quite…something. When we first see it, it’s hard not to think of Scream. Plus, something’s always going on in there.
Best Action Sequence:
The sequence on the bus that turns into a car accident is riveting.
The Negatives:
I never truly believed we were in 1994. I was in high school in 1994, and while any of these characters could have gone to high school with me, the 1994 element seems a bit forced and not truly convincing. In the beginning, the movie appears to want to create atmosphere by simply stacking popular songs from the era, forcing in snippets of them back-to-back-to-back-to-back. (Weirdly, some were released later than 1994.) It gets overwhelming fast. Now, this is not a true mark against the movie because the use of 90s music is so aggressively excessive that it becomes hilarious. (I was sort of complaining about it, but I was also laughing because of it. And I liked hearing the songs.) Then about half an hour in, Fear Street abruptly decides it doesn’t want to be a 90s nostalgia jukebox after all and really backs off of all of that. But despite its efforts, despite all those songs, I still wasn’t saying to myself, “This music sure has convinced me that these events are happening in 1994.” (I will grant that hearing NIN’s “Closer” at the beginning of the movie did immediately make me think of high school, but that song remained popular for an extremely long time.)
It’s true that the characters wear 90s fashions, but a lot of those fashions are coming back now (at least if we’re going by my daughter and the other kids she knows). We see old fashioned phones, 90s style computer conversations, the mall. But the characters themselves don’t seem to belong to an earlier era. Now maybe this is because I was a 90s teen, so these people just look like normal teens to me. That’s possible. Fred Hechinger’s Simon stands out to me because he does remind me of people I knew in high school. But he’s also not so different in general demeanor from the character he plays in The Woman in the Window. Honestly, I just don’t believe any of them are really in 1994. I believe at moments they’re trying to act like they’re in Scream and other earlier horror movies. But I don’t believe they’re really in 1994. (Hechinger is more like someone in high school pretending to be someone in high school, but his behavior doesn’t seem decade specific.)
Also I think the film’s manic pacing takes away from its potential suspense. In Scream, when the killer is stalking Sidney (and others), it’s scary. But this movie doesn’t leave any time for suspense. By its nature, suspense has to build. This movie moves as fast as me telling an anecdote. There’s no time for the audience to worry about what’s happening. Plus, we already kind of know what’s happening. If you pay attention during the opening credits, you pretty much get the idea what the source of all of this horror is. Now, don’t get me wrong. The whole first half of the movie is extremely entertaining (especially if you’re watching with others and making jokes about it the whole time), but it’s not scary. I don’t know that it needs to be scary. (It doesn’t to entertain me.) But usually horror is scary. I was surprised that even with the violence, gore, and supernatural elements, I never felt afraid. Now, I will say that this lulls us into a false sense of security. I personally thought that this movie had decided to be consequence free (in the sense that anybody we invested in emotionally was always fine). It tricked me there, and my surprise did make the ending of the movie better (for me, certainly not for the characters). It’s possible, too, that after Platoon, most movies don’t seem all that intense.
My daughter’s other big complaint is that the love story just doesn’t feel as consequential as it should. She feels more strongly about this than I do and says the audience doesn’t get a chance to feel as invested in the movie’s central relationship as the characters do. She found this very disappointing. When we get physical romance, she kept complaining, “I should feel more invested here. This is happening at the wrong time. It doesn’t feel appropriate here. It has to be rushed because it shouldn’t even be here. This is the wrong moment.” She felt pretty strongly about it. To me, part of the problem is that once again, the film can’t let up with the comedy. (I get that. I always turn everything into a joke myself. But maybe this is the wrong time for a joke.)
This part of the movie is actually highly entertaining, but the two love scenes happening don’t get the weight they deserve because another character is pulling focus by being hilariously weird. We found ourselves unable to refrain from joking back and forth about this character’s behavior, and then we were actually pretty surprised that the movie blatantly makes the same joke itself. We thought you were just supposed to kind of get the joke, but then the movie’s like, “Let me tell you!” It’s funny enough, but at this moment, we should be more captivated by both the romance and the suspense. We’re not scared. We’re not worried about the horrible evil that’s coming. And the romantic moment feels like it deserves a better set up and execution, too, especially because the romance is supposed to be driving the story (possibly of not just this film but the entire trilogy). I think this is actually the weakest part of the film, this sequence in the school, because everything should feel scarier and more urgent here. But it just doesn’t for some reason. I didn’t think the love scene was quite as bad as my daughter did, though. I’m not sure at what other time the Deena/Sam story could reach this point given the restrictions of the plot. I also think some of the bizarre comedy of one character’s behavior has a more serious side in that it normalizes not being coupled at every moment of your life. But I do agree with my daughter that something feels off here. I think it’s more the terror than the romance that lets us down. She finds the issue far more problematic than I do, though.
She adds, “I do think the love stories get better near the end. At first, the story is moving too fast for you to invest in either romance. That second one is really thrown at you. But the part at the end works better. I believe the romance there. I think it’s because we’re finally able to breathe. Everything is moving slower.”
Now one thing about Fear Street Part I: 1994 is that it finishes strong. It finishes so strong that we were immediately eager to watch the rest of the trilogy. In fact, even if we find the second part disappointing, there’s no way we won’t watch the third movie now. For me, the idea that the story will now progress by moving backward chronologically is reason enough to continue watching. Structurally that’s fascinating, and I want to see how it plays out. I love the idea that the end of the story lies in the past, that it’s been waiting for us there. That’s creepy and compelling.
Overall:
For a long time, despite its willingness not to shy away from gore, Fear Street Part I: 1994 is one of the least scary horror movies I’ve ever seen. Still it’s funny with interesting characters, and its ending alone has convinced me to watch the other two movies in the trilogy.