Fear Street goes back to 1978 for a gory but plodding Friday The 13th riff
The middle chapter of Netflix's R.L. Stine franchise forgets the fun of slashers past
Film Reviews Fear Street
Of all the demographics pandered to by the Fear Street movies, gorehounds may be alone in getting their streaming subscription’s worth. The first film in Netflix’s trilogy, loosely inspired by the R.L. Stine book series of the same name, climaxed with one of the killers feeding a cheerleader’s head through a produce shredder. One week later, the second installment ups the grisly ante with severed noggins, bones jutting gruesomely out of ankles, and a giant, throbbing, disembodied heart. The uptick in splatter makes sense, given the era of horror evoked this time: that long stretch of post-Halloween blood-and-guts programmers, whose entire reason for being was finding outrageous new ways to off horny teenagers. Two out of three entries into the series, Fear Street is staying true to the gross-out spirit of its predecessors, while feeling in just about every other way like the Urban Outfitters take on them.
As its subtitle indicates, Fear Street Part Two: 1978 trades one theme-park, costume-party vision of a bygone decade for another: While Part One followed the wokest, hippest small-town Midwestern kids of 1994, this middle installment rewinds back to an earlier massacre at a summer camp, where a different group of out-of-time teens cosplay another generation’s style and vernacular. Like their ’90s counterparts, the young adults of Camp Nightwing have a halo of invisible scare quotes hovering around them as they mumble out “Shagadelic” like the extras in an Austin Powers movie. Perhaps aware of how vaguely anachronistic her stars look and sound, returning director Leigh Janiak overcompensates again with a mixtape, piling The Runaways on top of Blue Oyster Cult on top of Davie Bowie. (In what counts as the only halfway clever use of music so far in this trilogy, she deploys alternate versions of “The Man Who Sold The World” to situate us in one time period and then the other.)
1978 frames its action as a very long flashback—a story told to the survivors of the last movie’s rampage by a survivor of this movie’s. Indie kid Deena (Kiana Madeira) and dorky little brother Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.) learn that in ’78, two different siblings grappled in different ways with their dysfunctional home life. Ziggy Berman (Sadie Sink) is the black sheep, tormented by her peers for her rebellious streak, though this Shadyside troublemaker isn’t so bad that she can’t catch the eye of rival town Sunnyvale’s future police chief (Ted Sutherland), who we know is the head cop we met in the previous film because characters literally call him “future police chief.” Ziggy’s sister, Cindy (Emily Rudd), has meanwhile tacked in the opposite direction, doing the reverse Sandy Olsson, though her supposed makeover into a prep princess mainly comes down to the fact that she wears polo shirts now. (Everyone else in the movie looks like they went rummaging thorough Mom and Dad’s wardrobe.)
It’s Cindy’s boyfriend, generic hunk Tommy Slater (McCabe Slye), who goes berserk one fateful night at camp, taking an axe to counselors and campers alike. He’s possessed by the ghost of town legend Sarah Fier, who was hanged centuries earlier—a backstory that will be further explored in next week’s trilogy-capping 1666, presumably to a soundtrack of righteous Baroque needle drops. The rules of Fier’s mayhem are kind of convoluted: The witch can turn kids into brainwashed psycho killers without provocation, but it takes a convenient drop of blood on her conveniently exposed remains to raise a posse of undead slashers, all going It Follows on whoever inadvertently summoned them. If you squint, the sordid history of Shadyside resembles a teen-lit gloss on one of Stephen King’s haunted Maine towns—and of course, the “R.L. Stine for adults” gets name-checked by a couple of self-aware teens here.
Speaking of Stine, his Fear Street privileged melodrama as much as scares, which may account for the general soapiness of these movies, whose high-school heroes/victims spend as much time shrilly shouting at each other as they do screaming bloody murder before their bloody murders. In 1978, it takes an interminable 45 minutes to get to the slashing. At least the movie leans fairly hard into the nastiness from there: This is a grosser and meaner film than 1994, dumping buckets of both blood and squirming insects on its squeaky-clean ensemble. The sadistic streak actually goes a touch further than it did in some of the movies that inspired this one, given Janiak and her cowriters’ willingness to drop the blade onto not just the humping-and-blazing counselors but also their barely pubescent charges. (Not even the Friday The 13th series dared to dismember tweens the way this movie does, albeit offscreen.)
Last week’s 1994 began with a tribute to Scream—a courted comparison that did the new movie no favors. 1978 benefits from a lower bar to clear: Even the president of the Jason Voorhees or Angela Baker fanclub would likely concede that the majority of the films indistinctly echoed here are no masterpieces. Yet if this homage is better written, directed, and acted than plenty of slashers that came before, it rarely revives the grimy or campy fun of its genre. And that’s because Janiak, for all her plain skill behind the camera, doesn’t invest in its conventions, or make a meal out of the stalk-and-slaughter set pieces; the kills come and go with a perfunctory swiftness that suggests a condescension to the material, not a genuine affection for it. That’s why the gore feels like scant reward: There’s plenty of blood but no heart put into pumping it.
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More importantly, are the main characters less utterly detestable pieces of shit than the ones in the first movie were?
The absolutely breakneck, unwieldy musical soundtrack chaos of the first part was a semi-ironic delight for me in the first part, so I’m excited to see where it goes this time.
The rapidity of the needledrops in 1994 was truly breakneck in the beginning of the movie. Also it was interesting how they were a bit “eh close enough timewise” with some of them, like “I’m Only Happy When It Rains,” which was 1995.
The best part was when it interrupted ONE pop music montage to start a new one from another characters perspective.
I actually found that pretty funny, if more in a ‘clever’ than a ‘haha’ way
It was the only tool they had to establish the setting as 1994 because there was nothing else 1994-ish about the movie, aside from some of the set decoration and her brother using AIM. Otherwise it felt like a movie taking place in the current day.
I dunno, seemed like a passable 1994 to me. What seemed off to you? Was someone caught with a smart phone in a shot?
This soundtrack was a delight, and considering I was a teen in 1994, I’m not sure what it says about me that I knew more of the songs from this movie than the first one. (Well, I knew almost all of the ones from the first one, so I should say “knew and liked” more of the songs in this movie.)
I wonder what bangers they’ll be rolling out for 1666.
The absolutely breakneck, unwieldy musical soundtrack chaos of the first part was a semi-ironic delight for me in the first part, so I’m excited to see where it goes this time.
first one was a solid B in my books, I feel this trilogy is the silly throwback a summer needs, and a cool introduction to teens who might just be discovering horror!
I’m genuinely curious why the throwback slasher horrors aimed at a broadly young demographic is being reviewed by the person AV Club sends on festival circuits to review obscure indie films, and not someone that can actually critique the films for what they are- these two reviews read like someone who’s watched both the films and is disappointed it wasn’t a different film with a different story and different audience. Katie Rife would’ve been a better read on these.
Yeah, giving these to Dowd is murder.
Dowd’s reviewed just about every kind of movie many times over in his 8 years here, my impression is that he can assess dumb genre fare just fine and both his reviews for these movies read to me as critiquing them for what they are—it’s just that what they are isn’t good, and fun, enough. If anything it’s refreshing to have a critic with standards call this stuff out on its relevant shortcomings instead of accepting and excusing them.
If anything it’s refreshing to have a critic with standards call this stuff out on its relevant shortcomings instead of accepting and excusing them. Except Dowd’s now written two reviews complaining that these films for teenagers don’t compare 1:1 with the films they send up. I’d be fine with the hypothetical you lay out, but Dowd’s criteria for his criticism is absurd.Were it the case that Dowd could see the forest through trees, but alas…
Remember when they let Dowd review Halloween (2018) twice for some reason? And write a non-review article about how bad it was?
I don’t remember that, but movie fucking rocks so I probably shut it out. I’m very excited about the next one, it looks like there’s going to be a wild ride. Trailer gave away too much though, I’m trying to forget as much as I can before it hits theatres.
Dowd flat-out misses a lot of the first movie’s strengths, though. He dismisses “the class clown” as a one-note stereotype when he’s not, as he’s been supporting his family for years and he’s been Employee of the Month at the store where he works for like six months in a row because he’s just good at his job and takes it seriously, not because he’s the only person who works there. Likewise, “the cheerleader” is introduced as kind of an aloof and bitchy queen bee wannabe, but it’s not long until she’s shown to be an essentially normal person who tried to get out of her shitty town. All the characters feel like more complex people than Dowd dismisses them as. The movie also hits home when dealing with how hard it was to be poor or gay in the 90s without hitting you over the head with it or making it the focus of the story, it’s just a part of their life. And there are a bunch of Easter eggs for people who’ve read the books to be entertaining without being obnoxiously self-referential.It’s not a great movie by any means, but these reviews read like the critic went into it yawning and fell asleep before the end, having decided ahead of time exactly what they were going to say about it within the first ten minutes.
These threads are always confusing, but this one is making my head hurt. The argument seems to be that this movie isn’t very good, but it deserves a better review because it isn’t supposed to be very good. It’s like Dowd is a moderately hard high school teacher and the posters are tiger parenting a mediocre slasher movie that didn’t try very hard.
Just watched it and Dowd did this one dirty. A step up from the first in my book.
it was soooo good! this will be a classic homage movie!
I hate to say it, but I agree. These aren’t supposed to be high art. They’re not even supposed to be films that elevate the horror genre, like The Orphanage* or The VVitch. I would say that the bar they’re trying to make it to is Scream, and really Scream is a movie made for horror fans, while this trilogy seems to be made more for people who didn’t know that they could maybe be horror fans. It’s pulpy summer fun and it doesn’t need to be anything more than that! *aka the Saddest Horror Movie Ever Made
I’d agree if the worldbuilding weren’t so fucking stupid.
I’m trying to find the interview, but that’s basically what the director said. These movies are meant to be for kids who are coming across horror that’s a bit more gory than they’d think, so they have in the back of their mind ‘should I be watching this?’ which I’m pretty ok with. It’s very much meant for the 12 year old who hasn’t really watched horror but is interested in it and comes across this. It’s entertaining, nothing crazy great, but enjoyable. With that says, It’s totally worth watching for the head being chopped by a bread cutter.
yah exactly, I think it should be reviewed for what it is, a way to pay homage to old slashers and introduce youth to the genre. but the 2008 urban outfitter reference in the review made me think the reviewer might be out of touch with todays youth lol.
(Not even the dared to dismember tweens the way this movie does, albeit offscreen.)
Valid point. A film that does go the distance is the first Sleepaway Camp which is such a nasty but entertaining little film.
In Friday the 13th part 6, the camp for once is populated with kids, though while they’re put in jeopardy, I don’t believe any are killed. Still, that leads to a golden moment with two of them hiding under a bed from Jason, with one turning to the other and asking “So, what WERE you going to be when you grew up?”
I forgot about that one over the magnificence of part five and trying to guess the killer.
That is a great line.
Sleepaway Campbell killed kids, off screen
With Jason it’s at least established that he doesn’t kill kids or animals – their existence barely seems to register to him. It’s what makes him the lesser evil in Freddy vs. Jason, since Freddy is a literal pedophile child-murderer while Jason is pretty much “don’t have sex or do drugs within a certain radius of Crystal Lake and we’ll be fine.”
Freddy is a child-murderer in the originals, he was a pedophile in the terrible reboot which is at least 10% of why it was such a failure. It’s actually a shame in the originals they didn’t just make him a teen murderer who, ya know, comes back to murder more teens.
I thought they implied he was a child molester in the original too. Been a while since I’ve seen it. Either way, it was a little weird how he shifted over to teens after he became an immortal nightmare asshole, not that anybody really wants to see a bunch of little kids die in horrible ways.
They didn’t. He was a child molester in the original draft and they specifically took that out and made him a child murderer. Despite that Freddy is a misogynistic bro, they make it pretty clear that he’s not doing it for a sexual thrill, he just loves that murdering, there he does murdering again, murdermurdermurderwheeeThe reboot fucked all of that up.
“Dirty child murderer” is just a euphemism for “child molester.” Even leaving aside the scene where he says “I’m your boyfriend now” and licks Heather Langenkamp’s face – or the scene where he attacks her in the bathtub – it isn’t subtle.
They specifically changed it away from child molester, and both the murders in the original and the molestations in the reboot were of children, not teenagers. If you want to go with statutory rape (in addition to, like, actual rape and friggin murder) is pedophilia then go ahead but the two ideas were very clearly separated, the original Freddy isn’t a peddy, that’s revisionism. Also it’s pretty uncharitable to audiences (and was of the shitbirds who made the reboot), to make them, by revision, cheer for a pedophile. Freddy is a misogynistic murdering implied teen rapist, that’s who audiences cheer for, naturally! MURKAThank you so much for walking into this one, I really think you need to review this educational video on the distinction between evil and evil
Freddy is a child-murderer in the originals
It’s heavily implied he does more to those kids before he kills them.
Been a while since I watched it, but didn’t Jason kill the Jarvis’ dog in part 4?
Yeah but the dog started it.
That “certain radius” is wide enough to include a space station.
“Guys it’s okay, he just wanted his machete back!”
Well, that’s cause Jason’s mom was such a good parent, teaching him moral lessons.
I’m just going to be a straight up pedant and point out that it was a breadslicer, not a produce shredder in 1994.On a different note, it seems like people who grew up reading the books in their preteen/teen years mostly enjoyed the first one and at least one person pointed out, these could’ve been straight trash, so the fact that they aren’t is kind of a miracle.
That breadslicer scene. Jesus. It’s like the movie forgot its audience for ten seconds then snapped back into it.
Yeah like it’s like if someone put 10 seconds of Cannibal Holocaust in The Goonies.
Yup, and that those characters died at all also felt tonally inconsistent.
Yep. I actually stopped watching the movie more than halfway through because once we learned that the killers were only going for a character I didn’t really care about, I was absolutely positive they wouldn’t kill off any others. Then I read about the bread-slicer scene and was so impressed they’d kill that character that I went back and watched. Kinda wish I’d finished just so I’d be genuinely surprised by the death.
It’s kinda funny that the two who died only died because of the bloody clothes they put on to attract the killers. Like presumably if they’d just taken their blood smeared coats off they could have just casually walked away.
I think the whole It-Follows-lite approach really hamstrung the scariness of the first movie. What’s scary about a killer that just follows the scent of one person’s blood?
It might have been the one moment in the movie that genuinely shocked me. Partly because I didn’t think they were going to kill that character, and partly for the horrific way they did it.
Yeah, it’s one thing to kill a character that way; it’s another thing to kill a character who’s had a full arc that way. Genuinely ballsy, sickening stuff. I only wish the other characters had treated it with the gravity it deserved. The guy she kissed wasn’t NEARLY traumatized enough.
It is interesting how they pulled it off, though — putting cake all over her face was a VERY canny way to soften the violence just a little so we wouldn’t get an overhead shot of her sliced-up face staring at us. And somehow, the cake just made it more disturbing for what we couldn’t see.
Oh, that felt VERY Fear Street to me, though. Hardly anyone made it out of those books alive.
I think it’s just that they had her survive and fight back several times before then, so I expected her to flip it around and put his head through the bread slicer, if anything. I also liked the nod to the books’ constant fake-outs, when that kid stabs a knife into the locker right next to Deena and carves RIP.
Yeah. I was honestly shocked, since it was telegraphed so obviously for like 30 seconds before it happened. I was sure it was just a fake out, but they did it. Raised the bar for the rest of the movie, in my book.
I didn’t like the first one and trust your review but for some reason I will watch all 3. I am powerless against this underwhelming content, R L Stine might have brainwashed me as a child.
Same. I hate that I’m definitely going to watch both the second and third parts.
The 1st one was dumb fun. Hoping for the best wit the other 2 installments.
“(Not even dared to dismember tweens the way this movie does, albeit offscreen.)“
That’s not really fair considering that plenty of slashers REALLY went for it only to be cut to shreds in order to get an R-rating.
The best part was going to wikipedia to confirm that such a HUGE percentage of those songs simply hadn’t been released when the movie is set (Nov. 1994).
The first one was better than your review made it seem, and there’s no way that won’t be true about the second one, based on this review. It seems like you’re incapable of enjoying good, dumb fun. Chill out, my dude.
The first one wasn’t great, but I do like this whole “3 movies in 3 weeks” thing. It’s fun!
this one was super fun. I liked the first one but didn’t love the leads who were a little zzzz, this had some really great characters plus great gore!
Dowd: “…a giant, throbbing disembodied…”Me: “Yeah, keep going, I’m getting there…”Dowd: “…heart.”Me: “…oh. Not what I was expecting. Eh, I can work with it.”
is Emily Rudd Paul Rudd’s great grandchild?
The first one played like 15 different 90s songs in the first 10 minutes. I predicted they’d play radiohead next, and sure enough im hearing “Creep”.
The first one is okay, but 1978 is surprisingly solid.
I really enjoyed this one. More than the first, even. But the preview for the third one doesn’t look very enticing to me.
Same. I just have no nostalgia for the 1660’s or movies set in back then.
Really curious how they’re going to replicate the first two films’ rampant pop culture soundtrack.
I don’t understand how the plot twist is also plot twist in the movie. spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler The kid’s reaction of “wait, you’re ziggy!?” implies that C. Berman has been telling the story in the third person, which would be weird as hell especially since the 90’s kids know it’s a story about her.
Yeah, that line made me laugh – the realization that she’d been telling this whole long story about herself in the third person for some reason, it’s bizarre.
But also, the surprised kid is the same guy who has a big wall of news reports etc. dedicated to the curse’s history (including about this massacre) and seems to be really interested and knowledgeable on all this stuff. He should 100% already know that Cindy was dead and not the survivor.
lol, I guess the audience was supposed to assume she was Cindy, which I noticed on another message board a lot of people were surprised Ziggy was the survivor.
“Ooooh, I thought the actress who more closely resembled a younger Gillian Jacobs would grow up to be Gillian Jacobs!” – The Kid“Yes, I told the story in such a way as to make you believe that!” – Gillian Jacobs
You know I just re-watched Community and still didn’t realize that was Gillian Jacobs.
I swear GJ has chameleon-face when it comes to changing her hair color. I would generally lay money on her being a very identifiable actor and then she shows up in, say, brown or red hair and I spend the whole time thinking “she sounds familiar . . .”
The jarring thing for me was that I thought young Cindy (who I’d assumed was the Gillian Jacobs character as intended) looked a lot more like Allison Brie than GJ.
Yeah, that was the only part that bothered me. Of course she’s Ziggy? Were we ever meant to be under the impression that she wasn’t?
Oh shit I didn’t even think of that. I just thought the twist was dumb because Ziggy is the bigger star has all of the advertising centered on her, and was the one in a relationship with Nick Goode.Like, there would be no reason for Nick and Cindy to remain in contact afterwards. They barely interacted throughout the film.But yeah, in universe the twist would make no sense. Didn’t they know the survivor’s name from the news paper clipping? It would have used her full name or no name…not “C Burnam.”Also, if Ziggy was trying to stay hidden…why would her number be in the phonebook?
Yeah, after we were told her character’s name was C. Berman (no first name) and that one of the girls went by a nickname, it was so apparent that she was Ziggy.
I think I enjoyed the first one more, but that’s also because I liked Scream more than Friday the 13th. This one was also solid, and the ending worked better than the ending of the first one did. Once again, this was dumb fun which was better than the review makes it sound. Looking forward to Part 3.
I found this one much better than the first so I’m a bit surprised to see them get the same score. It seems like the big knocks against it are the worldbuilding (which is fair. Hoping pt 3 clears things up a bit) and the fact that the movie doesn’t commit enough to the time period. I couldn’t care less about the second one; it was a fun popcorn flick.
I feel like the 1994 setting is also in part to keep the door open for a fourth installment set in modern day.