Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021) Review

 "The dude was wearing a Halloween skull mask.  How is that not fun?"

-Simon

The town of Shadyside is plagued by mass murders and tragedies of all kinds.  In 1994, a group of teenagers find themselves being stalked by a masked killer, but something isn't quite right and the history of Shadyside comes to life to haunt these kids.

Spoiler Alert below!  Go watch Fear Street right now!  It's on Netflix and a lot of fun.  Spoilers Below!  You've been warned!

What Works:

My favorite horror movie of all time is Scream and this movie feels like a love-letter to Scream.  There are a couple of scenes that are shot in the same manner, especially the opening sequence, but Fear Street puts its own spin on things.  That's true of the entire movie.  It definitely shows respect and admiration to what came before, but is willing to be it's own movie, which is the best of both worlds.

I didn't know this movie was rated R going in, so I was caught off guard by the amount of blood, which I was very ok with.  Most of the kills won't blow your minds, but there are few fun ones, especially near the end when the movie proves that nobody is safe.

One of the best parts of slasher movies is seeing the creative design they create for the killer.  Well, Fear Street triples down on that front and gives us three killers on a rampage.  They each have their own distinct personality and all get some very fun and brutal moments.  Most slasher movies only have 1 killer walking around, but having three makes this movie feel a lot more dangerous.

I really appreciate how smart the core cast of characters are here.  They make a lot of really intelligent decisions.  They try to get the cops involved, but figure out pretty quickly that the cops are useless, so they take matters into their own hands and make moves to stop the overall threat.  And later on, when they recognize the cops won't believe this insane story, they dull it down to make it more believable and get the problem to go away.  It's refreshing to watch.

This movie also explores themes of classism, racism, and homophobia.  It's not subtle at all, but that's fine.  Slasher movies aren't the most subtle of movies.  They explore the topics by diving straight on it and sometimes movies need to do that to get their point across.

Finally, the 3rd act showdown takes place in a grocery store.  This is a solid setting that I haven't seen used a whole lot in the slasher genre.  It gives us some creative sequence and the best kill of the movie.

What Sucks:

The biggest problem with the movie is the main protagonist, Deena (Kiana Madeira).  I believe that a protagonist needs to be likable or interesting for our audience to get invested in the.  Deena is neither.  She's a poor, angsty, and angry high schooler and has a really negative attitude throughout the entire movie.  She is also in conflict with her ex-girlfriend, Sam (Olivia Scott Welch).  This would be fine, except the movie wants us to be on Deena's side over their conflict when I think Sam is definitely the more sympathetic of the two.  I found myself very annoyed with Deena for the first half of the movie and it was tough for me to become invested in her survival.

The other problem is some of the humor doesn't land.  The movie tries to reference other horror movies to varying degrees of success and the majority of the comedy failures come from Simon (Fred Hechinger), who is very hit-or-miss as the comic relief.

Verdict

Besides a few character problems, Fear Street Part 1: 1994 is a very fun movie with some solid kills, interesting themes, smart characters, cool killers, and an awesome 3rd act.  I can't way to see where this series goes next.  Part 1 certainly has got it going on.

 8/10: Really Good