Fear Street part 2 : 1978

By rights, Fear Street part 2 should be subtitled 1980, not 1978. 1980 was the year summer camp terror hit the big screen when Pamela Voorhees got revenge for the "death" of her son Jason by butchering the inhabitants of Camp Crystal Lake. Soon after Cropsy painted the shores of Lake Blackfoot red with his garden shears and then Madman Marz was let loose with an axe on the teens of Fish Cove.If you've seen Friday The 13th, The Burning and Madman you'll know exactly what to expect from Fear Street 2 but there's plenty of modern touches too to keep the Netflix kids grinning.

Fear Street part 1 : 1994, ended with Sam (Olivia Scott Welch) possessed by the spirit of the witch Sarah Fier and Deena (Kiana Madeira) and her brother Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr) are at their wit's end. Only one person, Miss Berman (Gillian Jacobs), has successfully dealt with the evil haunting Shadyside before and it's a time she does not want to revisit but the least she can do is tell her tale in the hopes it might help. We flash back to a time of Blue Oyster Cult and The Runaways, when sex and drugs were fun and not dangerous. Wild Ziggy Berman (Sadie Sink) and her prim and proper sister Cindy (Emily Rudd) are stuck at Camp Blackwing for the summer. Cindy loves the place but Shadyside Ziggy is hounded by Sunnyvale bullies because she doesn't fit the camp mould. Cindy's fella Tommy (McCabe Slye) has a bruising encounter with the camp nurse and afterwards Cindy finds a strange map in the infirmary and her gang heads out into the night to figure out what it means. As they get close to the places marked on the map Tommy starts to feel kinda odd...

The hatchet to the face halfway through this will kinda take your breath away. It's a stunningly violent moment that really works because FSP2 has taken it's time and built up to it. Unlike part 1 we get to know the kids before we see 'em get bisected. It makes part 2 feel like a more confident film, one that trusts it's audience to lap up the atmosphere before they bay for blood. We know from part 1 that a proper ending in a trilogy installment isn't necessary so part 2 doesn't have to aim for one. It can set the stage and take it's time ripping it apart. It does so graphically. Brains splash, heads fly, chests splinter. No one expected a series of films based on a YA series from R.L. Stine to be this brutal and director Leigh Janiak takes advantage of streaming freedom to play with audience expectations of this type of horror film. The camp is full of teens, young and old, surely the young ones will be ok. Right? Wrong. This mostly implied (thankfully) carnage puts everything on edge. If that little bloke with glasses ain't safe, then no one is. 

Well one person is, a name you'll remember from part 1 but 16 years younger. The mention of his name will remind you of the characters from the first film who are being sidelined here and make you realise the film's one big issue. It's totally unnecessary. It's filler, a story that could be told in a 10 minute flashback stretched to feature length to create a trilogy. Don't get me wrong, it's fun, it's well made and excellently paced but it doesn't need to exist at all. Hopefully, like teen horror films tend to do, it will be the starting point for a whole bunch of fresh faced actors. F13 was an early Kevin Bacon film. The Burning introduced us to Holly Hunter and Jason Alexander. Scream give us the wonder that is Matthew Lillard and hopefully FSP2 will make stars of Sadie Sink and Ryan Simpkins (as rebellious Alice), the two standouts in a busy cast.

Fear Street part 2 : 1978 is streaming now on Netflix. It's fun, it's vicious, it doesn't need to be here at all but if it helps introduce a new audience to the wonders of early 80's slasher cinema then it can only be a good thing.