Saturday, July 3, 2021

Fear Street Part One: 1994 - Promising Start to a Trilogy of Horror Films based on the Highly Popular Fear Street Novels by R. L. Stine

There were quite a lot of new movies and series released this week in various platforms that made me excited and very much looking forward. Last night, I decided to watch this new one as I have been interested since I saw the trailer which reminded me of the good old 1990s slasher movie. Well let's get into it then.

Brief Story Line

Story was set in 1994 in the small town of Shadyside where there have been various violent killing sprees happening for a long time. When one of their friends became the victim of latest murders by a person wearing skull mask, high school students Deena (Kiana Madeira - Trinkets TV series etc) and her best friends Kate (Julia Rehwald) & Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr. - Game Shakers TV series etc) did not really pay attention to it. They were more focused on their personal issues, including their fierce rivalry with their richer neighbor town, Sunnyvale.

After an incident that involved Sunnyvale school students especially with Samantha (Olivia Welch - Shithouse etc) and her boyfriend Peter (Jeremy Ford), a person wearing the same mask started terrorizing Deena and her friends. Together with Deena's younger brother Simon (Fred Hechinger - The Woman in the Window etc) they tried to convince Sheriff Nick Goode (Ashley Zuckerman - Manhattan TV series etc) about this new killer, but it was thought to be just prank.

And so how would Deena and the others save themselves? You can find them all in this entertaining horror movie. 

End of Brief Story Line

As a person who have not read R. L Stine's Fear Street series of books, I honestly did not really know what to expect. All I know was he was one of those prolific horror writer famous for Goosebumps, this one and few other series. Despite my wife owns complete set of Fear Street novels, I never got the chance to read them, but my wife did tell me that she likes them which meant that I would have liked them too. Anyway, after knowing about a trilogy of horror movies going to be released on Netflix based on this, I was curious and wanted to find out more.

When I watched this film, the beginning part really felt like Scream movies, with the strong 1990s feel and the loud phone ringing sound that reminded me when the culprit starting terrorizing the victims. Plus it has several nice 90s songs as well. As the story continued with the murderer wearing mask, killing people using knife and the whole bloody part, made me having more nostalgic feeling. But then the story took a different turn, especially when suddenly there was a supernatural element. It then made me realize that this is not the usual kind of slasher movie.

The main characters in the movie were your typical high school students with their common teenage problems, though Deena's love story might come as a surprise as I did not see that coming. Of all the characters though, the one that I liked the most was Josh whose knowledge of what was happening in Shadyside and also his crush for popular girl in high school was just refreshing to see. But the rest of them were interesting to watch as well.

Back to the horror side, this movie use the normal formula of having many jump scare scenes which was fun and amazingly could be felt even though I watched on my TV. Likely it was due to the good sound effect. I could only imagine if I saw this in the cinema where I would likely be a bit shocked, especially if I watched it together with my wife. Even though there were supernatural elements, but it was not having truly scary disturbing image. The ending which I should have seen coming was pretty good as it set up nicely for the sequel. Before the closing credit, there was a trailer to the second movie, Fear Street Part Two: 1978, but there was no mid or post end credit scene. 

Overall this was a promising start for a horror trilogy movie. I love the nostalgic sense while watching the film and with the support of pretty decent, albeit unfamiliar cast (for me) making this one interesting to see. Those who are fans of R. L. Stine works should definitely give this a try, especially since it was said to be quite loyal to the source materials. I myself enjoyed this movie and would definitely see the sequels to complete my trilogy experience.

Happy watching!

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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