Review of Fear Street: 1994 (2021) by Tenacious_K — 21 Jul 2021

Netflix's first movie based off the fear street series falls on a flat note and shows an unfortunate lack of originality. I went in hoping for better, I read goosebumps as a kid, and growing up in the 90's I was well within the demographic for this but unfortunately this movie just can't decide what it wants to be.

Similar to another Netflix movie, the babysitter, this relies heavily on nostalgia and makes continuous references and call backs to video games and iconic movies in an attempt to connect with the viewer but unfortunately just comes off as forced.

As mentioned earlier the lack of originality is an issue here, the killers used here looked like the came straight out of your local horror house and were cheep to loan out as it is not yet the Halloween season.

Our cast of characters really come off as unlikable save josh, played by Benjamine Flores Jr, who feels like he belongs in a different movie all together. Other than this we have stereotypical out for herself till the last minute, stereotypical stonner who casting really wishes was Evan Peters, overly emotional and illogically depressed girlfriend, and her other half the so wooden she could've just been a cardboard cutout carried around by the rest to the cast victim.

Special notice here goes to Olivia Scott Welch who had such an emotionless delivery with all her lines she smashed my suspension of disbelief in this movie featuring immortal killers commanded by a witch by attempting to have me believe that anyone would be attracted to, much less want a relationship with, such an emotionless husk.

Effects and aesthetic on the other hand do deserve some praise, as a high school mall rat from the early 00's I really appreciated the usage of the local mall and how its stores were presented though outside of there, most notably the grocery store from the climax the appropriate nodes were missing.

One thing that was almost comedic was the Johnson family being able to afford having the internet at this time when we are constantly reminded of how poor and bad off their town is, and writers here clearly forgot that back then dial up modems were a thing, preventing all others within a house hold from using the phone while someone is online.

Finally, for the reason we all watched this, the kills. While there was a liberal use of blood here there was unfortunately only one original kill here with our stereotypical cheerleader losing the top half of her head to a meat separate.

Other than that it was just all generic stabbing and one axe kill, nothing original like we would've seen in one of the movies this attempts to pay homage to. I understand this has a crowd that will no doubt enjoy it, but personally I just felt disappointed for all the above reasons with the lack of creativity on display here really bothering me.