Mark Reviews Movies: FEAR STREET: 1994

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | July 1, 2021

The best parts of Fear Street: 1994 are the ones that tease the potential of a better movie. It opens strongly and ends—before ending again—on a similar note.

Co-writer/director Leigh Janiak's sort-of tongue-in-cheek horror pastiche also ends with an actual tease, promising this tale of an old evil, haunting a town and occasionally possessing its inhabitants, and a slew of vicious slashers is "to be continued." Maybe that better movie will be the next installment, and since each entry of Janiak's trilogy is scheduled to be released over three consecutive weeks, at least we don't have to wait long to find out if that's the case.

As for this entry, it does stand on its own as a mostly mediocre horror tale, albeit one with flashes of genuine and surprising inspiration. Take the opening sequence, which follows a teenage girl (played by Maya Hawke) closing down shop for the night at a mall in the sleepy—more like "nightmarish," as we quickly learn—town of Shadyside (The name is a bit of a giveaway, and there's something admirable about how blunt the background details of this story are).

The scene itself is pretty typical, as the girl hears strange noises, just misses flashes of some threatening figure rushing behind her, and has a dead-end chase with a killer in a cloak and wearing a skull mask. In theory, this is the setup for the rest of the plot, and we're anticipating more killings by the masked figure, more mystery about the killer's motives, and the big reveal of whose face is behind that mask.

In a bit of a shock, Janiak and Phil Graziadei's screenplay (based on the book series by R.L. Stine—yes, that R.L. Stine and, no, not for kiddos looking for goosebumps, this one) simply bypasses all of that. This sequence ends with the finale of that particular story—the revelation of the killer's identity and the end of said killer. We might not know what this story will be, but there's a certain daring in the filmmakers asserting what it won't be.

The actual tale involves a group of other teens, led by Deena (Kiana Madeira), as they deal with the murder of a classmate—just another bit of gruesome history to befall this town. That history is of interest to Deena's younger brother Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.), who participates in an online chat room (It is 1994, after all, in case the soundtrack doesn't give it away) devoted to Shadyside's, well, very shady past. Josh also has a crush on Deena's cheerleader friend Kate (Julia Rehwald), the school's valedictorian who sells prescription medication on the side with Simon (Fred Hechinger), the perennial and sometimes effective comic relief.

The town's long-time rival is Sunnyvale (There's that amusing bluntness again), where Deena's former girlfriend Sam (Olivia Scott Welch) moved recently, making her Deena's ex. A fight breaks out between the two schools at a memorial service, and some Sunnyvale teens, including a hesitant Sam, harass the Shadyside school bus on its way back home. There's a car crash, and Sam ends up having visions of a witch that burned at the stake in the area more than 300 years ago.

The rest of the plot has the quintet being pursued and hunted by a string of killers from Shadyside's history. There's some cleverness here, as the killers represent some era or subgenre of horror movies through the decades. The resurrected skull-mask killer is joined by a hooded hulk, who slaughtered some camp counsellors with an axe back in the late 1970s, and a pale girl, who sings old songs while slicing with a straight razor. Our team of protagonists has to evade and/or try to defeat the slashers, while also figuring out the mystery of why they're after Sam and working through their assorted relationship issues. Meanwhile, a bit too much time is devoted to the local Sheriff (played by Ashley Zukerman), who starts looking into the town's past—hinting at what's to come in this series' future.

The cat-and-mouse games with the killers are efficient, although the whole scheme becomes far too predictable and repetitive (especially after the prologue, which seems to break that cycle before it even begins). Breaking up the investigation into the witch and all of the evil that has followed, the teenage melodrama is shallow, if sincere (A montage of romantic encounters allows Josh to have his weirdest moment—a romantic encounter with himself). The climax, set amidst the dimly lit aisles of a grocery store, is fairly bold in who doesn't make it—and how they don't (There's a chance one may not look at sliced bread the same way again).

Fear Street: 1994 attempts to establish and balance a lot—all of these characters, the standalone plot here, the history and mythology of this town that will, theoretically, mean much more in the future installments. It doesn't work on its own, and as for whether or not all of this exposition is worth it, we'll just have to wait—not too long, thankfully—and see.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products

Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)