CRAVEN AMBITION (FEAR STREET PART I: 1994)

The problem with a lot of horror movies these days is that they invite you to spend too much time trying to work out what classics the filmmaker is paying homage to.

This compulsion of some directors to pay their dues can get in the way of emotional engagement with the characters.

At its worst, it's just a pain in the arse.

Take Leigh Janiak's 'Fear Street, Part I: 1994', for example.

Part of a gory horror movie trilogy for Netflix, it shamelessly plunders Wes Craven's 'Scream' and other horror classics with all the grace, decorum and guile of a football hooligan.

Based on the RL Stine series of novels, the trilogy tells the story of a cursed town called Shadyside.

Over the course of the three Netflix movies, we go back in time to the origins of a supernatural force that keeps unleashing murder and mayhem on the streets of the unfortunately named town.

In its first instalment directed by Leigh Janiak from a script co-written with Phil Graziadi from a story they crafted with Kyle Killen, the initial setting of the film is a neon lit shopping mall.

We see Maya Hawke's Heather Watkins closing the bookstore she works in, while she waits for a friend, David W Thompson's Ryan Torres.

However a la Drew Barrymore's Casey Becker in 'Scream,' Heather soon has to run for her life as she starts to get creepy phonecalls and then pursued by a slasher wielding a knife and wearing a skeleton mask.

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

Just like Craven's film, the best known actor in the movie is bumped off within minutes, as Ryan - for it is he - goes on a murderous rampage through the mall.

Ryan is subsequently gunned down by Ashley Zukerman's subtly named Sheriff Nick Goode after dispatching seven victims.

As broadcasters pore over every detail of the tragedy, we learn that Ryan is the latest in a long line of killers who have terrorised Shadyside.

Not only is he the latest entry in Shadyside's hall of infamy but the town will suffer again because of a curse cast by Elizabeth Scopel's 17th Century witch called, wait for it... Sarah Fier.

Benjamin Flores Jr's computer nerd Josh is well across the history of Sarah Fier.

However his sister Deera and many of her high school contemporaries are too busy fretting about their ongoing feud with their smug contemporaries in the neighbouring Sunnyside to care.

The latest manifestation of this rivalry is a brawl at a vigil for the victims of the mall massacre.

This results in some Sunnysiders trying to drive their unfortunate rivals in their school bus off the road until Kiana Madeira's Deena opens the rear door and tips the contents of an ice bucket onto the road, causing them to crash.

Deena, however, is also smarting from her firmly in the closet girlfriend, Olivia Scott Welsh's Sam dumping her after moving to Sunnyside for Jeremy Ford's annoying jock Peter.

Sam winds up in hospital following the bus incident but also has a paranormal experience as she is moved from the scene of the car crash and sees the dreaded Sarah Fier.

The following night, as she hangs out at her house with her stoner friends, Julia Rehwald's Kate and Fred Hechinger's Simon, they are stalked by the skeleton masked Ryan who is back from the dead.

Believing it to be Peter and his friends acting in retaliation, they go to visit Sam in hospital.

When Peter, who is also there, is murdered along with a receptionist and Deena and her friends are chased, it becomes clear that Shadyside's gallery of murderous rogues have returned from beyond the grave to terrorise the town once again. 

The town psychos seem particularly interested in Sam, with Josh's knowledge about Shadyside's extremely shady past proving invaluable.

With the axe wielding 1978 Camp Nightwing killer on the loose along with the 1965 razor blade killer Ruby Lane, a 1950 murderer known as The Milkman and Ryan, the dead bodies just pile up.

However Josh and Deena believe Charlene Amoia's Camp Nightwing massacre survivor Rachel Thompson may have a role to play in keeping these evil spirits at bay.

And so they set out to track her down while keeping the evil, psycho killing spirits at bay.

As slasher movies go, 'Fear Street: Part I' dispatches its victims pretty much as you'd expect, with loads of jump scares, loads of screaming and loads of gore.

However the constant hat tipping to other horror movie classics is tiresome.

It just gets in the way of the execution of the plot and is increasingly irritating.

When Janiak is not slobbering over 'Scream,' she's rather gauchely riffing on 'Night of the Living Dead,' 'The Blair Witch Project,' 'Jaws',' 'The Shining' and 'Poltergeist'.

There's nothing subtle about the fawning over these classics.

It just seems like she is applying blood splattered wallpaper over a poorly written script.

If the mall recalls George A Romero, it also resurrects a more recent memory of the disappointing and frankly ridiculous third season of 'Stranger Things' which the director's husband Ross Duffer is one of the creators of.

Like the third series of Netflix's hit supernatural show, 'Fear Street, Part I: 1994' is visually striking but it is staggeringly short on originality.

Ultimately, though, the movie comes across as a load of hot air in a really garish balloon.

While Jeniak can certainly handle an action or chase sequence, there is very little in it that is actually memorable.

The script has nothing quotable.

The absence of any parents or teachers in the movie also seems like an odd oversight in a film based around high school characters.

'Fear Street Part I: 1994' feels like a very disposable plastic horror movie and while the relatively unknown cast do their best with some really turgid dialogue, it reminds you why 'Scream' thrived after Wes Craven dispatched of Drew Barrymore's character.

'Scream' succeeded not just because it had the guts to kill off early on the character of a well known star, it had other experienced actors like Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette to carry the movie onwards.

'Fear Street, Part I: 1994' has no such luck.

Its characters have all the depth of a Nickolodeon channel sitcom and all the same irritating acting to boot.

With its 1990s nostalgia and a soundtrack that includes Radiohead's 'Creep' and Cypress Hill's 'Insane in the Brain', it seems like a feature length rip-off of the spirit of 'Stranger Things' and it is not a particularly brilliant one at that.

Just about watchable but instantly forgettable, the prospect of sitting through two more movies in the series is a pretty grim one indeed.

('Fear Street, Part I: 1994' was made available for streaming on Netflix on July 2, 2021)

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