‘It began as a prank… and ended in murder...’
Like most horror fans, I graduated from Goosebumps to Point Horror to Stephen King and while I never read the Fear Street books, I was still excited when I heard they were being adapted for Netflix. Let’s crack on…
Fear Street Part One: 1994
I watched the first entry in the Fear Street trilogy on release back in the summer of 2021. At the time I dismissed it as just another post-Stranger Things nostalgia fest. Re-watching it again with a couple of years of hindsight made me realise that as ever I was vastly mistaken. Sure, this first entry has that same Duffer Brothers aesthetic also glimpsed in the IT movies and various other projects, but 1994 is also a love letter to the ’90s slasher. Scream is the obvious influence here but the supernatural elements give the first Fear Street movie a uniqueness that ensures that everything mostly lands. It helps that the young cast does a sterling job with Maya Hawke fulfilling the Drew Barrymore role and Kiana Madeira and Olivia Scott Welch sharing a believable chemistry as the young leads.
Fear Street Part Two: 1978
This second entry is a notable step down from part one. This is mainly due to director Leigh Janiak’s failure to capture the dynamic and aesthetic of a late ’70s/early 80’s slasher movie in the same way that she did with part one and the ’90s. That being said, the first thirty minutes are great with Friday the 13th being channelled instead of Scream and the presence of Sadie Sink automatically improves anything in which she appears, ditto Gillian Jacobs. Another issue, however, is that the flashback doesn’t leave enough time for the framing device to fully achieve what it needs to achieve at the film’s conclusion. There is still plenty here to recommend Fear Street Part Two, however.
Fear Street Part Three: 1066
Undoubtedly the weakest of the trilogy, this third entry suffers from not pulling from a pre-existing aesthetic. There are shades of folk horror here, but this uneven entry too often feels phoned in. The use of shadow and darkness is overused, resulting in a film that is difficult to make out in patches and the decision to have the entire cast speak in Irish accents is as odd as it is misguided. By the time we have returned to the comforting bosom of 1994 much of the momentum created in parts one and two has been lost.
While Janiak fails to stick the landing, the Fear Street trilogy has some fantastic moments and a rumoured fourth film would be a potentially exciting prospect. All in all, a decent horror trilogy.