Fear Street Part 1: 1994

Review

This series works as an homage to classic slasher eras and horror history while updating the formula and using pop culture’s love of the 70s-90s in order to tell a compelling story regarding queer love, hate, satanism, and undead slashers. The first movie is widely regarded as the weakest and I agree with that.

The first fear street movie is about two girls who were dating but had a falling out when Sam moved to the more affluent, “safer” community of Sunnyvale. When a prank between students of the two rival towns goes wrong Sam becomes cursed by ‘Sarah Fier’ and begins being hunted down by a shadysider who had recently gone insane and been killed. Deena and her friends begin trying to end the curse in order to save Sam by killing Sam temporarily so the killer stops stalking her. The movie ends with Sam being possessed by a demon and the friends realizing their horror story isn’t over yet.

My biggest complaint about this movie is honestly Deena. She’s literally the shittiest girlfriend ever and the fact that you have to root for her relationship just really doesn’t work for me. She spends the first half of the movie mad that Sam moved to Sunnyvale but like even IF she had any control over that, why would you be unhappy about your partner seizing an opportunity if it meant they would have a greater chance at success. Regardless of any curse on whatever town, people who live in Sunnyvale get greater opportunities and Deena should be happy that Sam is getting a shot at all those opportunities. This is like getting mad at your friend for going to an ivy instead of the same college as you just because you didn’t get into the ivy and you wanted to stay together. Like it’s just straight up rude no matter your personal feelings about someone’s choices.

I also had issues with the interspersed music throughout the movie, like they’re trying to show that Deena doesn’t ‘fit in’ and they start creep by Radiohead and it took like 30 seconds to convince myself not to leave. It’s just cringy and lowkey embarrassing.

On the good side though, I think this movie does a really good job setting up the overall story and being an intriguing opening to the series. I really like all of the slashers throughout this series and Skull Mask, Ruby Lane, and Tommy Slater do a really good job of upping the ante the further we get into the film.

The characters aren’t necessarily impressive despite my desperate love for Simon, they mostly feel like props poorly ripped from much better movies from the 80s and 90s. The only ones that are fleshed out are Deena and her brother, Deena being an unsympathetic protag for me and her brother just not being that interesting once you realize that his character boils down to, he likes the cheerleader and he plays video games. The lack of dimension for Sam is especially criminal because this whole trilogy boils her down to being the damsel in distress love interest with little to no agency. She only really gets back together with Deena because she thinks she’s going to die and after the first movie she becomes a demon puppet with no definable characteristics or personality. It’s just a shame that such a popular piece of recent queer media, and especially queer horror would fall back on such heteronormative tropes which can be misogynistic especially considering Deena is the more masculine partner while Sam is a cheerleader and likely bisexual.

Honestly, the more I think about this movie the more issues I find with it and it’s kinda disappointing because I had really high hopes for this series. I think the rest of the series makes up for the beginning but the beginning is definitely a low point which is kind of disappointing for me.