Fear Street Part 1 : 1994

"When this is all over I.....am gonna take you on a date. We're gonna eat cheeseburgers, listen to the pixies and make out and have the best night of our goddamn lives. But right now you gotta die."

Never make plans bud, it's a great way to make your god laugh.

Do you ever wonder what would happen if two horror franchises hooked up and had a baby? Aliens and Child's Play might lead to a shower of seemingly cute little red haired xenomorphs running around ruining people's days. Or maybe the terrifying, honey dripping, scarred up lovechild of Freddy Krueger and Candyman? Or Hannibal Lecter's take on the mantraps from the Saw films. Yeeshh. The mind boggles. Imagine the results of a cross between Scream and It? Or don't and just throw on Netflix and find out with Fear Street Part 1 : 1994. Parts 2 & 3 are out this month also.

The sounds of Cypress Hill, Soundgarden and Sophie B. Hawkins fill the air. No one is looking down at the glowing rectangular screen in their hands. It's back when people actually communicated face to face.The internet is but a nascent thing that only the nerds of the earth are daring to use. Life in Shadyside, Ohio in 1994 may as well be 100 years ago but modern day violence is painting the town red. The staff of the local mall have just been butchered and once again the cops and townsfolk are at a loss as to why their town is a poverty stricken murder magnet while the neighbouring town of Sunnyvale thrives. A broken up couple lie on either side of the divide, Deena (Kiana Madeira), who lives with her brother Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr) in Shadyside and Samantha (Olivia Scott Welch), who's family have moved to success in Sunnyvale. An altercation between the two after a football derby leads to an accident that puts them and their friends in the cross hairs of something evil, a malevolent force that's been stalking the town for a long long time.

The start of this feels like straight up slasher fare with the opening few moments in particular calling to mind the start of Scream and the fate of poor Casey Becker. After an effective opening credit sequence which clues us into darkness lurking at the heart of smalltown life we're introduced to the main  characters and things start changing up. The days of black and gay people in horror films existing just to die first are thankfully over and the changes keep coming. The smart, popular kids are drug dealers and film fans. Jocks do not exist in this dojo and if they do they get disembowelled fast. Not one of the main cast fits into the usual pigeonholes you'd expect and as such it lends the film a nicely unpredictable edge. You ain't sure who'll bite the dust first and the film lets us spend enough time getting to know them so that it actually sucks when they ...... 

The very likable cast sells the story well. Madeira and Welch as the estranged couple have a nice chemistry and Flores Jr's Josh has fun as the geek who for once exists for something else other than being gorily offed. They keep the story grounded when the really silly stuff starts in around the halfway point. It's here the It comparisons kick in as various iterations of evil start to hack and slash at our cast members. If you're a half hearted horror fan you might nope out around here but the genre fans should enjoy it and the horror references flying thick and fast well always help in that regard. Famous scenes featuring axes hacking at doors are lovingly recreated, Spielbergian classics are namedropped and even Scott Spiegel's 1989 supermarket set horror Intruder gets a gloriously gooey homage in a scene that no doubt earned the film it's 18 certificate. Yup, it might be based on a series of YA books from R.L. Stine but it doesn't hold back. It's nice to see director Leigh Janiak building on the promise she showed with 2014's queasily effective Honeymoon too. This trilogy of films is a far different prospect to that one but it's nice to have a steady hand on the wheel and it's good to know the level of quality should stay similar throughout this series.

You'll leave this film with questions, many of them. Why is Firestarter by The Prodigy playing in a film set in 1994 for one? But other questions too. Why drop so many clues and not follow them up? Why is that recognisable actor playing the janitor given nothing to do apart from be mysterious at the end? Where are all the adults!!? What is up with Sunnyvale?? Normally stuff like this would annoy but when you only have to wait a week or at the most two, to have your questions answered it gets bearable. 

Fear Street Part 1 : 1994 is out today on Netflix. It's an enjoyably silly slice of nonsense and parts 2 and 3 are out on the 9th and 16th of this month respectively.