Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021)

July 2, 2021 6:40 PM

In 1994, a group of teenagers discovers that the terrifying events that have haunted their town for generations are connected.

The town of Shadyside is plagued by violent mass murders and serial killers. A prank gone wrong may reveal the key to the town's 300 years of torment.

posted by miss-lapin (11 comments total)

Currently streaming on Netflix.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:41 PM on July 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

I mean let's be honest. If you are living in a town called Shadyside you should know what you are in for.

(Edit: I just googled and saw Shadyside is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh. No offense intended!)
posted by Literaryhero at 3:13 AM on July 3, 2021 [5 favorites]

Maya Hawke in this one & Sadie Sink in next week's. How many other Stranger Things alum will we see?

I was surprised by the last two deaths- thought "our heroes" would all make it.

I tele-watched with my sister who it turns out did read some of the Goosebumps books as a kid. We're in this solely due to a Jenny Nicholson tweet. Sis didn't know anything about it, so when the neighboring town was revealed as Sunnyvale, where I live, I told her it was a documentary & she believed it for 17.3 seconds.

I guess going back to 1987 and 1666 we might find out about how this hellmouth opened, but no satisfying conclusion for our heroes. Ah, well.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 10:32 AM on July 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

I liked the trope reversal in who survived! (1, 2)

As a person old enough to remember 1994, I enjoyed the things they got right, but also catching some anachronisms (Calibri wouldn't be released until 2007).
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:47 AM on July 4, 2021 [3 favorites]

The inclusion of Calibri irked the shit out of me, not just because it didn't exist then, but because y'all know chat in 1994 would have been Times New Roman.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:58 PM on July 4, 2021 [10 favorites]

I liked the "here are a bunch of slasher movie trope villains" attacking en masse. The rest of it was fine with some alright kills and slightly disappointingly cheap loud-noise jump scares. I'm bought in enough to watch the rest as they come out; it's a fun concept.

The music was on par with an episode of Bojack Horseman on how aggressively 1994 it was.

I'm not familiar with the source material so I could've done with more about the town at large and the people who live there but I guess there's two more movies to expand on the setting. Gotta love a small town with a mass-murder incident every 15 years and a police force that treats those events with a resigned annoyance.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:55 AM on July 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

I liked it; it was a good intro to the film series, especially since I read a few Goosebumps as a child but never graduated to the Fear Street series. Definitely have some theories about the introduction, after the explanation of how Sunnyvale recently had 30 years of zero violent crime, and Shadyside is the Killer Capital of the USA. It feels like maybe someone in Sunnyvale made a demonic pact to keep their town pure (I saw some devilish book scribbles) and use Shadyside as a sacrifice. I'll be interested to see if that pans out in later films.

It was kind of a bummer that Kate and Simon didn't make it, they really grew on me by the end. It was a genuine shock, at least, so kudos for that. (n.b. I'm not very well-versed in slasher films)
posted by lesser weasel at 6:37 AM on July 6, 2021

BTW, the director Leigh Janiak's first feature Honeymoon is very good and worth seeing, though more abstract.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:36 PM on July 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

Seems weird their dad would spring for a second phone line.
posted by ckape at 8:47 PM on August 9, 2021

I am a Gen Xer who was around this age at around this time and second lines for the kids were not unusual in the suburbs. We had one and so did maybe 5% of the other kids we knew. They were ordinary enough that they were listed in the White Pages under the main number and marked "Children" or something similar.

You have to keep in mind, it was before the internet caught on, before text messaging, and even before most people had cell phones. So kids aged 12-17 were on the phone all dang day. Some parents just gave up and got them a second number so they could use their own phone in peace.

I even remember the number my dad got me and my brother: 554-BOYS. He thought it was so cool but we were humiliated. I used to tell people it was 554-COWS.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:51 AM on August 10, 2021 [2 favorites]

Definitely OK, Not amazing, but the main characters were pretty well developed and there were some definite surprises. I was a little surprised that the solution of an OD worked on someone who drowned, but... The slashers were pretty generic, but I guess that's kind of the point. Actually, I will take it back, I liked all the main cast by the end and was definitely affected by how things played out.

I kind of wanted to see more of Nurse Betty, though.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:25 PM on October 5