Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Fear Street Part One: 1994’ on Netflix, a Collection of Pop Culture References and Gory Slasher Tropes Looking For a Place to Land

Fear Street Part One: 1994 is the first in a trilogy of films debuting on consecutive Fridays this month on Netflix, and they’re inspired by some R.L. Stine books that shifted 80 million units primarily in the ’90s, so prepare yourself for some hard, pipe-hittin’ nostalgia and enough alt-rock needle drops to break yer rusty cage, make you feel more human than human and f— you like an animal. The movies, all directed by Leigh Janiak, aren’t straight adaptations, but riff on and reiterate the edgy-teen vibe Stine sought as he tried to tap into an audience that grew out of his more youth-friendly scary stories, Goosebumps. They jump back in time with each chapter, so we should fully expect Part Two: 1978 to make us feel hot blooded, and Part Three: 1666 to hammer us with a well-tempered clavier.

FEAR STREET PART ONE: 1994: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Heather (Maya Hawke) works at a B. Dalton. Hey, remember B. Dalton? It was a bookstore where you absolutely could find R.L. Stine books, and now there are hardly any left. But in the ’90s, there was one in just about every mall, and that’s where Heather is, after closing, when the mall is mostly empty, tidying up the Jackie Collins display when she’s attacked by a maniac in a skull mask. He tries to stab her with a knife but she happens to be holding a book in front of her abdomen. She flees to the novelty store with all the blow-up dolls (probably a Spencer’s) and finds a phone and dials 911 but he chases her down and this time she has no book to use as a shield. Stab stab, one in the heart, so very sad. Then the cops show up and put a bullet through the attacker’s head and he and Heather both breathe their final breaths.

This is a great big fat case of Not Again for the town of Shadyside, where this shit happens all the time. We get the gist of this shit in the opening credits, where we see old clippings of teen killers and malevolent milkmen dating back centuries. This town must be cursed, right? Especially compared to its sister city, Sunnyvale, where everyone lives in a mansion and the high school football team always wins and the grass is green, so so green. We meet Shadyside resident Deena (Kiana Madeira), who’s listening to Garbage — hey, remember Garbage? — because she just splitsvilled with her girlfriend Sam (Olivia Scott Welch) because she moved to Sunnyvale like a total f—ing traitor.

There are other teenage characters we should list. Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.) is Deena’s younger brother, who spends all his time in the basement listening to White Zombie — hey, remember White Zombie? — and typing away in an AOL chat room — hey, remember AOL chat rooms? — when he isn’t obsessing over the Shadyville death curse, which he believes is not a string of coincidences, kinda like Fox Mulder — hey, remember The X-Files? Deena’s compatriots in school are a wiseass named Simon (Fred Hechinger) and a popular girl named Kate (Julia Rehwald), who collaborate on a ladies’ room drug-dealing business. There’s an angry incident in which Sam is in a car crash and crawls from the wreckage and like the dirt whispers to her and she has flashes of red images, and they’re meaningful, real meaningful, and key to the Shadyside plot, which comes to a head when the skull-mask guy apparently returns from the dead to keep on killin’ folks. Methinks this makeshift Scooby Gang has to get to the bottom of this.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Monster Squad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the show) and Scream. It’s sometimes oh so very reminiscent of Scream. Hey, remember Scream?

Performance Worth Watching: I dunno, the cast here doesn’t have much to do besides shriek, run and move the plot along. Perhaps it’s worth noting that Hawke is the film’s highest-profile star and dies in the opening sequence, mirroring Drew Barrymore’s Scream role.

Memorable Dialogue: “Normal bitches don’t bleed black blood!” — Deena makes a self-evident point

Sex and Skin: Teen makeout sessions with light petting.

Our Take: Janiak shows some vision here, clearly enjoying deploying a vivid red-blue-purple color palette and maintaining a not-all-that-serious tone by keeping at least one tongue in one cheek. But otherwise, Fear Street Part One is underwhelming and overplotted, a story in which kids of various degrees of angst-riddenness suss out clues about an ancient witch-entity that’s haunting Shadyside (yawn). Since the movie so obviously wants to be an homage to scary-murder movies from three or four decades ago, one feels compelled to document the kills: There’s a decent gory-as-hell sequence of head-first slaughter deep in the third act, but the rest are rote stabbings and shootings. I say yawn.

The movie’s laden with drawn-out scenes, blah one-and-a-half-note characters, moth-eaten jump scares and enough white-hot referential pop-culture bric-a-brac to melt a million millennials. Seriously, the generational-reminiscence thing seems out of control in the wake of Stranger Things, which tries SO HARD to turn Gen Xers like myself into Members Only fetishists, and I can only wonder, is this how my parents felt about Happy Days? Fear Street seems to believe tossing in a line of dialogue about exorbitant AOL fees is an adequate replacement for actual wit, and friends, I am here to adamantly argue that it is absolutely f—ing not.

No, the brain-zone that yearns for an earnest laugh will go untickled by this movie, which struggles to find any sense of comic timing or narrative pacing. Also odd is how it exploits an overall Stine-ishness in order to appeal to younger audiences, yet is as unabashedly gory and violent as any ’80s midnight slasher flick. It’s as if Janiak knows damn well that it’s astronomically easier for 12-year-olds to watch R-rated movies on Netflix than it was to buy a ticket for Gorillas in the Mist then sneak across the hall to see Pumpkinhead. Whatever happened to clearly delineating the line that underaged viewers will inevitably cross with delinquent glee? This movie’s not even playing the game, people. It’s not even playing the game.

Our Call: SKIP IT, and hope that 1978 is tighter and funnier.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Fear Street Part One: 1994 on Netflix