Film Review: The Fear Street Trilogy — Strange Harbors (2024)

Gateway horror icon R.L. Stine’s marginally graduated Goosebumps predecessor is brought to bloody life in Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy. A series of three films -1994, 1978, and 1666 - Fear Street pulls an uneven potpourri of influences together with a familiar aesthetic, but the whole ends up being a surprisingly potent tapestry of terror, perfect for gorehounds and horror neophytes alike. Minor spoilers ahead…

90s kids grew up with R.L. Stine, myself included. The prolific horror author introduced an entire generation to the genre with his Goosebumps series, now a long-gone but never-forgotten nostalgia goldmine. And when I say “grew up,” I do mean “grew up:” As we moved on from Monster Blood, Night of the Living Dummy, and The Haunted Mask, Stine lay in wait with Fear Street, an earlier series of bloodier, angstier novels. Filled with YA melodrama, higher bodycounts, and more adult themes, Fear Street - for many of us - was the next step in our horror-obsessed evolutions. Flash forward to 2021, and Netflix has adapted the novels into a trilogy of films: 1994, 1978, and 1666. Applying the streaming service’s signature Stranger Things aesthetic and blurring the lines between film and TV with an arsenal of homages and callbacks, Fear Street carves a micro-franchise out of its source material - and with varying degrees of success.

Much of Fear Street’s marketing sells it as a film trilogy, but applying such a lens only highlights its weaknesses. The installments, all helmed by writer and director Leigh Janiak, each strive to tell their own self-contained narratives (until they don’t), but are wildly inconsistent until recontextualized. 1994 functions as a Scream and Stranger Things pastiche, setting up a slasher framework around the entire trilogy; 1978 offers a retro summer camp rampage à la Friday the 13th or The Burning; and 1666 finds its darkest chapter in the midst of a Crucible-esque witch-hunt; Fear Street is an ambitious epic for Netflix whose individual entries never quite rise above their influences and the movies they pay tribute to, but once the borders between them start blurring and the blood starts mixing, it becomes much more than the sum of its parts.

Fear Street revolves around the fictional town of Shadyside - or as some its denizens have dubbed it, “sh*ttyside.” Right next door to the sunnier and more prosperous Sunnyvale, Shadyside is haunted by its contentious relationship with its neighbor as well as whispers of a local curse: Every few decades, the town is the site of a mass murder committed by a seemingly normal resident who suddenly “snaps.” The Camp Nightwing Killer, Ruby Lane, The Humpty Dumpty Killer, The Farmer of Death, Pastor Cyrus Miller - the roster of colorful killers spans centuries. Legend has it that Sarah Fier, a witch hanged in the center of town all the way back in 1666, vengefully thirsts for the blood of Shadysiders from beyond the grave, and rears her head ever so often for murder sprees by proxy.

1994 (C+) starts off the trilogy on shaky ground. Fear Street wasn’t produced by Netflix (it was purchased), but you might not be able to tell from its formulaic first entry. From its neon-bathed aesthetic to its base 90s slasher pastiche to its overbearing soundtrack - a particularly egregious 45-second stretch finds a way to squeeze in three needle drops back-to-back-to-back - 1994 at times feels like an algorithm gone haywire, unable to balance its homages with its storytelling. Kiana Madeira and Olivia Scott Welch, as star-crossed lesbians Deena and Sam, are clearly the beating heart of the entire trilogy, but the blood doesn’t start flowing into their performances until deep into 1994; everyone is too busy dodging the largely un-scary skull mask killer along with a resurrected coterie of generic ghoulies. Fear Street 1994, as the very first entry of a trilogy, feels remarkably incomplete, inert, and tonally imbalanced - even its moments of spectacular splatter, which leans hard into a refreshing anyone-can-die mentality, feels off from its mostly sanitized narrative.

If you’re looking for a coherent, standalone story that slots perfectly within the Fear Street mythos, then 1978 (B) is undoubtedly the best of the bunch. Everything that feels off and algorithmic about 1994 is course-corrected in the leaner, more streamlined 1978, which flashes back to the Camp Nightwing massacre 16 years earlier. Bookended by Deena’s investigation in the future, 1978 recounts the story of the Berman sisters: Cindy (Emily Rudd) is the straight-laced, compassionate camp counselor, and Ziggy (Sadie Sink, Stranger Things) is the younger, rebellious outcast. The instantly arresting hook? When the night is over, one of them will be dead, another victim claimed by the curse of Sarah Fier. In addition to the surprisingly moving - yet tragically fatalistic - meditation on sisterhood, 1978 obviously recalls vintage summer camp slaughterfests like Friday the 13th, The Burning, and Sleepaway Camp, but unlike the scattershot 1994, it’s much more adept at aping its influences’ charms: Where 1994’s punctuations of salty language and gore seemed manufactured to punch up its teen melodrama, 1978’s F-bombs, raunch, and gruesome dispatchings are folded much more seamlessly into its slasher stylings. The pleasures of Fear Street’s second installment are visceral, but simple and recognizable - it’s summer camp, and there’s an axe-wielding maniac on the loose.

Nothing about Fear Street 1666 (B-) should work. A prolonged flashback smashed together with a conclusion to 1994, 1666 is more than awkwardly assembled. Finding Deena near the sanguine truth behind Sarah Fier and Shadyside, 1666 transports her consciousness back nearly three centuries, shortly before Sarah’s death at the gallows. More Crucible-lite than The Witch (the Miller family, anyone?), the final entry finds itself playing out a bloody parallel. Kiana Madeira pulls double duty as Sarah Fier, but so does much of the 1994 cast: Olivia Scott Welch plays Fier’s forbidden paramour Hannah Miller, and many of their co-stars return to play their characters’ 17th-century ancestors. 1666 is without a doubt the darkest of the Fear Street trilogy, fleshing out a backstory that gives Sarah Fier some great shading, but it’s much too rushed to be savored. Through wobbly Irish accents and a well-placed twist, 1666 tells the perfunctory witch-hunt story without much fanfare - Sarah and Hannah’s secret gay romance upends their village’s Puritanical order, while misunderstandings turn to hysteria, and hysteria turns into violence. But before we spend too much time in the past, Fear Street slams the door with its 1994: Part 2 title card.

But there’s something actually astounding about 1666: it builds a touching, satisfying ending with all of Fear Street’s disparate, inconsistent pieces. A swirl of themes, never fully realized, comes together in its final hour - a story of outcasts, queer women, and generational trauma. Taken by its lonesome, 1666 is as messy as they come, but it’s a mess that makes everything before it better: Its admittedly clever twist adds a depth of layers to 1994’s unimpressive rogues gallery, and all of its parallels are pieced together in a massive tapestry of horror that’s much more than the sum of its parts. The humor lands. The emotions swell. Everything is paid off. With 1666’s calculated reveals, the trilogy’s most cumbersome aspects are given new weight in a new light: Shadyside isn’t a singularity of bad luck, violence, and poverty, it’s a centuries-long victim of systemic oppression.

Fear Street is a sprawling modernization of R.L. Stine’s gateway horror series. It may be wildly inconsistent, but it is a true triptych: most potent when taken in together. Whether its deftness is a byproduct of the blurring line between film and television or its own ability to hold its feet to its thematic fires, Fear Street is mighty impressive in paving over its shortcomings. It’s a rarity for sequels to outstrip their predecessors, and even more so for third installments to bring everything together. Even with its flaws, Fear Street is horror worth celebrating.