SO I DATED AN AXE MURDERER (FEAR STREET, PART II: 1978)

It's not very often you'll find this blog referencing Macaulay Culkin's most popular movie 'Home Alone'.

However one quote from his character Kevin McCallister springs to mind after watching the relentless gore of the rather irritating 'Fear Street, Part I: 1994'.

"You guys give up? Or are you thirsty for more?" 

Leigh Janiak's 'Fear Street Part II: 1978,' is the second instalment of a supernatural slasher trilogy for Netflix.

The prequel begins with sister and brother, Kiana Madeira and Benjamin Flores Jr's Deena and Josh Johnson tracking down Gillian Jacobs' twitchy recluse C Berman who survived a teen summer camp massacre.

Both of them hope to glean from her how they can defeat the malevolent spirit of the 17th Century witch Sarah Fier who has been terrorising their town, Shadyside over the decades.

C Berman duly delivers an account of how she survived the infamous 1978 slaughter by an axe murderer in Camp Nightwing.

She does this with an almighty dollop of Stephen King thrown in.

At the start of 'Fear Street, Part II: 1978', we see 'Stranger Things' alum Sadie Sink running through a forest but not from a serial killer.

Sink's younger version of C Berman, known as Ziggy, is being bullied at the camp by some typically nasty teens from Shadyside's rival town Sunnyside, led by Chiara Aurelia's Sheila.

Accused of stealing from them and of being a witch, they tie her hands to the hanging branch of a tree and Sheila holds a lighter to her arm, only to be caught in the act by Michael Provost and Ted Sutherland's supervisors Kurt and future Shadyside Sheriff Nick Goode.

As Sheila's gang appear to corroborate the allegation of stealing against Ziggy, Kurt moves to have her expelled.

However he pulls back after realising awkward questions could be raised about how she sustained the injury to her arm and why no disciplinary action was taken.

Sending the Shadyside teenager instead to the camp's nurse for treatment, he gives her a final warning.

The nurse treating Ziggy is Jordana Spiro's Mary Lane, mother of Ruby Lane who we learnt in the previous film went on a murderous rampage after being possessed by Sarah Fier.

Mary Lane talks manically about how good girls can suddenly snap as she bandages the wound, alarming Ziggy.

Meanwhile Ziggy's goody two shoes older sister, Emily Rudd's Cindy and her boyfriend, McCabe Slye's Tommy Slater are cleaning the mess hall which has some weird red gunk on it that gets onto her shirt.

Suddenly Mary Lane enters and attacks them, ranting that Tommy will not make it through the night alive.

After she is concussed, the police are summoned.

Tommy is particularly shaken by the experience as Nurse Lane is carted away in an ambulance.

Kurt, meanwhile, stages the annual "capture the flag" contest, pitching teens from Shadyside, dressed in blue t-shirts against Sunnyside, dressed in red.

Ziggy plots her revenge on Sheila and finds a kindred spirit in Nick Goode who finds a better way to torment her tormentor than the 'Carrie' style paint trap she had planned.

Tommy, Cindy, her former friend Alice and her stoner boyfriend Arnie gather in Nurse Lane's office. 

As Alice and Arnie look for prescription drugs to get high, they stumble across her diary which contains an entry about Shadyside's curse and a map leading them to the witch Sarah Fier's home.

They decide to explore the house and come across a stone in the basement where Sarah Fier is purported to have cut off her hand in a pact with the Devil in exchange for eternal life.

However when they are there, they discover names of the Shadyside killers etched on a wall.

Soon Tommy joins that list, killing Arnie and pursuing Alice and Cindy.

Armed with an axe, Tommy goes on a murder spree but can Cindy, Ziggy, Alice, Nick and the others avoid him?

As with the previous instalment, Janiak teams up with Phil Graziadi and another writer Zak Okiewicz on the storyline for this adaptation of the RL Stine 'Fear Street' novels, co-writing the script with the latter.

Just like the previous film, the prequel features songs from the time, with David Bowie's 'Moonage Daydream,' The Runaways' 'Cherry Bomb,' The Buzzcocks' 'Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldnt've)?' and Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam's 'The First Cut Is The Deepest'.

Janiak also spends a lot of her time acknowledging other horror classics like John Carpenter's 'Halloween,' 'The Shining,' 'Carrie,' 'Friday the 13th' 'Friday the 13th Part II' and 'The Exorcist'.

And just like the first film, the constant referencing is a bit grating, like in a sequence where Ziggy and Nick Goode awkwardly shoehorn a conversation about their favourite Stephen King books.

A bit of graffiti daubed by Sheila and her gang above Ziggy's bed very obviously screams it is a reference to 'The Exorcist,' while the way a sex scene involving Kurt is filmed is a clear nod to 'Halloween'.

Janiak again demonstrates how she is a dab hand at the chase and action sequences of a slasher film and understands its beats.

However, like the first movie in the trilogy, 'Fear Street, Part I: 1994,' it is a pretty empty experience.

Janiak's main driver seems to be mashing up elements from all the horror movies she's adored instead of coming up with something truly original.

The dialogue is bland and, as with the first film, a relatively unknown cast - with the exception of Sink - struggles to make their mark.

With the third instalment taking us back to 1666, we look forward to a soundtrack of music from the period by Heinrich Schutz or Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Or maybe not.

('Fear Street, Part II: 1978' was made available for streaming on Netflix on July 9, 2021)

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