Rating: ****
Starring: Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch and Benjamin Flores Jr.
Like many horror-inclined kid growing up in the late 90s and the early 2000s, R.L. Stine's Goosebumps books were a staple reading for me during them past lazy weekend afternoons, that was until I elevated my taste for horror novels by reading my first Stephen King work. (Cujo, for those who are curious) From that point, I kinda associated R.L. Stine with kiddie horror for a while and never really bothered with the author until I started looking for slasher novels during college and rediscovered Stine through his other literary series, Fear Street, about teens living in a town called Shadyside and their deadly encounters with the paranormal, the murderous, or sometimes both!
In this first entry of a planned three-parter movie event inspired by the books, we start off in a small town mall during its closing hours and one "Shadysider" teen named Heather Watkins, clocking off from her bookstore cashier job. A figure in a robed skeleton costume suddenly shows up and starts a deadly cat-and-mouse chase with her, hunting knife at hand and a couple of other unfortunate folks littered outside already murdered. "Skull Mask" here eventually catches up on Heather after an intense stalk-and-stab act, knifing her to death just as she uncovers that Skull Mask is actually her friend Ryan Torres.
The killer then gets himself snuffed out with a bullet to the head when a responding sheriff finally makes it there, thus ending another Shadyside massacre...
As the following morning comes, news of the spree killing have the entire town talking once again, among them being the students of the local high school who some believe this to be the work of a witch who cursed the town centuries ago, leading to murders like this being an unwanted norm for Shadyside. Young Deena Johnson doesn't believe in this, however, nor does she have the time to; still bitter about a recent break-up, she just wants to get the day done and over with so she can quit the school band and go back home to sulk. Her fun junkie friends Kate and Simon, though, convince her to stay and join them in a memorial service over at the neighboring town of Sunnyvale, whose football team they'll be fighting in a later game.
The problem, of course, is that Deena's ex-girlfriend, Sam, just happens to be now living in Sunnyvale and attending the same school opposing Shadyside's. The meet-up gets as awkward as it can get when Deena starts going off on Sam for breaking her heart, made worse as a fight breaks out during the service when a Sunnyvale teen made some very unsavory remarks against Shadyside.
It all escalates for the worse when a group of Sunnyvale punks, along with Sam as an unwilling participant, decided to harass the school bus Deena and her friends are at while heading back to town. Their attempt to retaliate ends in a car crash, which lands Sam in the hospital and her boyfriend threatening Deena that he'll get her back for what happened.
And wouldn't you know it, at the night after the incident, someone in a Skull Mask get-up begins stalking Deena and the gang, lurking around and breaking into houses, seemingly preying on something or someone. Could this be, perhaps, a pissed-off boyfriend's sick and twisted attempt to get even? Or is there something far more dangerous and deadlier at play here? Something involving a witch's curse and a town's dark legacy as America's murder capital?
With its fast pace, fun characters and captivating lore, not only does Fear Street 1994 captures the feel and tone of the book series it is adapted from, but it also twists a refreshingly creative take on throwback slashers that simply delivers; rather than being a straightforward bodycount mystery, it delved into other elements such as witchcraft horror and a bit of survivalist thrills as the middle run of the plot becomes a chase flick with not only one, but three slashers on a hunt and its up for our small troubled group to think up plans to stop them, these being the best bits of the film.
The key point that makes this direction work so well is that it gave us a chance to know our characters a bit more and see their interaction with one another despite not altogether meeting eye-to-eye at the beginning. They start out as typical slasher victim labels of junkies, nerds, cheerleaders and an obviously marked final girl, but their development during the plot's downtimes made them closer and I genuinely love the writing done for them, may it be for laughs or feels, so much so that I worry the outcome of their predicament. And, seeing this is a slasher, they eventually have to chance a gruesome fate and when it happens, it's purely cathartic.
The supernatural theme, thankfully, didn't overly complicate matters as it remains pretty easy to follow and is used to greatly fair effect here through the slashers; without spoiling a lot, the three killers are basically henchmen working under the influence of a curse and it is through this power that keeps them ticking and going. What I love about these killers is that they're pretty diverse in their theme and the lore behind them do make me wish Fear Street 1994 isn't going to just contain itself within three films as the mythology behind the curse hinted more slashers at work from the past and we don't often get slasher concepts taking place during periods of times away from the 90s, 80s, or 70s. (We got a brief look of a 1950s milkman slasher and a deformed boy on a bashing spree in 1920s. How often do we get that?!)
When it comes to the kills, Fear Street 1994 remains generous with the bloodletting, though a good bulk of the numbers are from offscreen murders and quick carnal flashbacks. Whenever they do decide to show some serious onscreen carnage, its mostly practical with one memorable murder involving a supermarket's electric bread slicer that I doubt will leave everybody's minds as soon as the film ends. (Eat your heart out, Intruder (1989)!) Other highlights include evident homages to classic slasher scenes such as Scream (1996)'s opening act of murdering a big star like Maya Hawke of the Stranger Things fame, as well as Kate's babysitting fiasco as a possible throwback to John Carpenter's Halloween (1978).
It's a pretty strong start for Fear Street's trilogy of supernatural slasher terror and I, for one, cannot wait to see where this entry's cliffhanger ending will lead us to in terms of lore, twists and, hopefully, bodycounting. A strong love letter to slashers of old with a witty witchy twist, whether you love the books or slasher in general, I highly recommend not missing out on this unexpectedly entertaining chiller, or be damned by the witch's curse forever!
Bodycount:
1 female repeatedly knifed, bled to death
1 male shot on the head
6 victims seen and mentioned murdered
1 male ran through with a knife
1 female found with a cut throat
1 male knifed in the throat
1 female had her throat cut with a razor (flashback)
1 female seen knifed to death (flashback)
1 boy seen with his head being bashed with a bat (flashback)
1 victim seen being drowned (flashback)
1 female had her head ran through an electric bread slicer
1 male axed on the head
Total: 17
I used Libgen and the Internet Archive to read most of the books a year or two ago. Pretty fun, especially Saga prequel ones.
ReplyDeleteA lot of slasher-lite stories that used the genre trappings, though with only one or two deaths (which admittedly could get gory and over-the-top, like a skier getting their head sliced off by a wire, a face ground off by a pottery wheel, getting dunked in chlorine, acid that was smeared on a violin's chin rest melting through a girl's neck and basically causing her aorta to explode in front of an audience full of people, etc.)
Now, see, that's why I started looking into Fear Street books when I was looking for slasher novels. I wonder if Stine ever made a straight-up slasher novel...
DeleteI haven't read all of his stuff, but Curtains and some of his Point Horror novels may qualify.
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