Hi everyone. I like slasher movies.
Now you're probably thinking: "Glenn! Why would you say that? Slasher movies are the junk food of horror cinema. They cater to the lowest common denominator with their gore and nudity in lieu of suspense, mystery and Jack Nicholson going mental on a door. Whenever you turn down 'The Exorcist' or 'The Omen' in favour of 'My Bloody Valentine' you might as well be driving a Reliant Robin when you have a perfectly good Lamborghini in the garage."
First of all, how dare you criticise 'My Bloody Valentine' you ignorant philistine. Abscond from my visual range and feed yourself feet first into a hippo's maw, you malodourous cretin. Secondly, yes, I know. But sometimes I want a MacDonalds meal instead of a gazelle rump steak from the Savoy Grille. Sometimes I don't want oppressive atmosphere, thought-provoking subtext or Stanley Kubrick's unblinking death stare. Sometimes I want to watch a bunch of college students fuck, do drugs, fuck whilst doing drugs and then get murdered in unnecessarily brutal ways. Preferably all three at the exact same time.
Character development? I spit on the idea. Slasher movies don't need characters, they need gibbering, hedonistic slabs of walking meat to be sacrificed to the Blood God. Blood for the Blood God and heaving tiddies for Daddy DeadEye; that's all you need.
Unfortunately this formula, despite its simplicity, is often fucked up. People try to get too smart with it. Worse they try to make fun of it whilst also being the very thing they're making fun of. As a result neither side of the equation is fully committed to and we end up with movies like 'Scream.' It has both its good satire and slasher moments but what you end up with is ultimately unsatisfying.
Combine the postmodern meta-commentary of 'Scream' with the current trend in retro-cinema and TV and we end up with 'Fear Street 1994'; the first in a trilogy on Netflix apparently based on the series of young adult horror novels by R.L Stine (most famous for the 'Goosebumps' series).
As many of you probably get by now, I'm a big fan of the 80s. So the recent 80s renaissance we've been having isn't unwelcome from my perspective. Having said that, you can do it badly. Some seem to think it's enough to slather neon lighting on the screen to the point where it seems like the director is trying to examine the set for spunk stains. And on top of that the frequent use of synth music or simply bombarding the audience with a medley of 80s hits often feels like they're re-enacting the Ludovigo Experiment from 'Clockwork Orange'.
'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark' did something similar except it had to remind me that Nixon was a shit person every five minutes.
These sins and more are committed copiously in 'Fear Street 1994'.
The film is set in the small town of Shadyside, Ohio, which aside from being a prosperous and generally idyllic little community, has the slight issue that every now and then one of them inexplicably snaps and kills a bunch of people for seemingly no reason. So far, so America.
We follow Deena Johnson who is still pining bitterly over her ex-lover, Sam. Sam, in an extraordinary twist that sent me absolutely reeling from the sudden shift in my preconceptions, turns out to be a girl because screenwriters still seem to think being gay is this shocking and interesting thing. We all know it's a result of government chemical experiments, Netflix; it's not a big deal, get with the current year.
Deena's brother, Josh, on the contrary is a basement dwelling conspiracy theorist who spends all his time on internet forums and obsessing over the witch curse that is supposedly the source of all the town's woes. After two rival football teams have a fight for some retarded reason, Sam's dickhead boyfriend buzzes the school bus with Deena and her friends on it. Deena reacts to this by chucking a cooler out of the back of the bus and on to the dickhead's windshield and then acting shocked when the fucking car veers off the road and almost kills everyone inside including her beloved ex-girlfriend. Once again I get flashbacks to 'Scary Stories' when one of the main characters tried to set a jock on fire in his own car and then did the Pikachu face when he and his mates tried to hunt him down and rightfully beat him to within an inch of his life.
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| 'My actions have consequences? Well I never!' |
Naturally this whole exercise in teenage idiocy results in Sam disturbing the grave of the aforementioned witch and so Deena and her friends find themselves being hunted down by the undead spree killers of Shadyside's checkered past.
An interesting idea. Sounds like fun. Too bad the film blows its load early and hard.
First of all; the setting. There's nothing wrong with it. I like movies set in small towns and yes, they do have a certain nostalgia about them. But part of the idea of such stories is that the town itself almost becomes a character in its own right. As such you feel invested in both the characters and the town itself by extension. 'Fear Street 1994' doesn't really do this. In fact everything goes at such an insane pace that the town becomes a blurry backdrop. It doesn't feel like a living, breathing entity with its own culture or unique characters because I'm too busy chasing - not following, chasing - this one set of morons from one poorly built up scene to another. If I'm having to play catch-up with the characters then I'm most likely not enjoying the movie.
Speaking of the characters, most of them fucking suck. And I don't mean they suck because they're uninteresting or boring or have no arc to speak of. I mean they often suck as people. They're fucking Goons. Deena is an eye-rolling, sanctimonious doomer and at no point does she actually change or engage in any kind of introspection. In fact the movie seems to advocate this attitude to the point where other characters have to change their mindset in order to accommodate her and not the other way around.
Of course I speak largely of the plot thread involving the relationship between her and Sam. You've probably seen it before; gay couple breaks up, one is kind of stoic about the whole thing and the other is ass-mad because the other one has the nerve to not want to out themselves to their rural conservative Christian parents while they're still living under their fucking roof. As previously detailed Deena just about fucking kills Sam and her dickhead boyfriend by causing a car wreck and then blames it on a nosebleed later. She's a fucking goon and so are her friends, Simon and Kate; the latter deals drugs and drafts her little sisters to help her in her enterprise, and the former barely acts like a human fucking being. Goons to the left of me, goons to the right. This film was written by goons, for goons.
I don't know where screenwriters nowadays have gotten the idea that their characters need to be moving sentient piles of living excrement but cease and desist.
"But Glenn!" you yack into my face and mouth-hole with reckless abandon because you were raised by Welsh savages, "You said slasher movies don't need real characters!"
Sure, but that doesn't mean I have to be in physical pain watching them. And this only comes if they are either A: terminally boring or B: insufferable fucking goons. Putting that aside, this movie is obviously trying to be something a bit more than the rank and file slasher flick and so funnily enough I expect something a little more. If you'd rather I didn't expect such things then just make a fucking slasher movie and stop trying to be the next 'Scream'.
As for characters I liked, I suppose Deena's brother Josh is okay. He's one of the few people who wasn't a pain in my arse although he's utilised mostly as an exposition dump. Sam is also okay although she's basically a doormat who relents to Deena's demands after a good fingerbang. Beyond those two all the characters are shitty people and the movie literally tries to tell me they aren't. Like I don't have eyes or ears for which to interpret data. I know fucking goons when I see them, Netflix!
I also don't have a clue how the movie expects me to believe that Deena and Josh are brother and sister. They don't look anything alike. Maybe half brother and sister? I assumed that one of them was maybe adopted but we never see their parents and we never get an idea as to what their family life is like. I'm not exactly asking for 'Hereditary' levels of family drama here but show me... something. If it was ever mentioned then I guess I must have missed it because I was too busy shielding my eyes from the garish lighting and my ears from the constant stream of 90s radio shit.
The film isn't even consistent with its own rules. It turns out later that the witch's undead spree killers are hunting down specifically Sam to the point of ignoring anyone else because it was her blood that awoke the hag but one of them just up and decides to kill a couple of nurses for no apparent reason. They attack the others because they had some of Sam's blood on them but the nurses didn't seem to have any so I have no idea what the hell that was all about. Oh and by the way, the nurses that got killed were black and non-binary. Very progressive of you, Netflix; I'm sure the local LGBT Anti-Fascist group will stop shitting on your lawn now.
Again, interesting premise, and I found some of the ideas surrounding the town's past intriguing. Trouble is a lot of that stuff's barely in it. I put some of that down to the fact that there's two other movies to follow this that will no doubt go deeper into the lore so maybe I'm being a bit harsh on that front; but whatever information is provided is dropped in a single exposition dump pretty early on and voila, we're back to chasing the characters around to the Benny Hill theme. Film treats me like a fucking moron and expects me to go back for seconds and thirds.
Overall Quality Rating - 2/5
WILL I go back for seconds and thirds? Oh probably. I am a glutton for punishment and I kind of want to see how it all pans out, for better or worse. Who knows, maybe it'll improve. But this opening is weak. It was tiring to get through what with its goonish characters and constant 'REMEMBER, THIS IS THE 90S!' musical bombardment. It reminded me of 'Atomic Blonde' and the aforementioned 'Scary Stories to tell in the Dark', neither of which you want to remind me of.
Idiot Rating 3/5
There are one or two fairly ridiculous deaths, although most of them are your typical stabbings and slashings. The character's antics are often so over-the-top, ridiculous or outright nonsensical that one can gain a certain level of mirth from it when you aren't fantasising about strangling them with piano wire. I like the fact that the Sheriff spends most of the movie wandering around doing nothing while a group of dumb teenagers are scooting around town in a stolen ambulance and not one person in the whole place seems to give a single haggard shit. I guess that's America for you.
I've already been informed by others that the sequel is an improvement but given how much of a bring down this one was you can see my scepticism from space. All in all it says something that I enjoyed the 'Goosebumps' movie more than what is meant to be a gory, adult throwback to slasher's heyday. Fuck, it was barely a throwback. I would have liked it to have been a throwback, but instead we got some student screenwriter's annoying postmodern attempt at a throwback. Again, we have four 'Scream' movies and two seasons of a goddamn Netflix series that no bastard watched except me because I have a fetish for wasting my life. Don't waste yours.
I'm DeadEye and Goons get the helicopter.
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