Twelfth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #8 Fear Street Part 1: 1994

I will admit to never having read any R.L. Stine, upon some of whose works the Fear Street Netflix movie series is based.  I was under the impression that he wrote scary stuff but for kids - this Fear Street Part 1: 1994 has a light touch for the most part BUT when it gets gruesome, it goes allllllll in.

In this universe, there are two towns next to each other: Sunnyvale, where everyone is happy and rich and safe and has pet unicorns (not the last one), and Shadyside, where people are poor and struggling and there are murders every week.  Guess in which town this movie is set? 

Our heroine, Deena, has a support system of a younger brother (Josh, who is way into the brand new internet and a big fan of chatrooms) and friends Kate (smart, cheerleader and also prescription drug dealer) and Simon (Kate's sidekick and not much more character development).  After a Shadyside v Sunnyside candlelight vigil/football game, Deena's ex-girlfriend Sam, who moved to Sunnyvale, and a bunch of her new classmates get in a car wreck after harrassing the departing Shadyside school bus.  Deena, Kate and Simon help Sam, but only after she has inadvertently bled all over the buried bones of the persecuted witch, Sarah Fier.  This awakens the witch, who apparently periodically possesses local folk, sending them on murderous rampages over the last three hundred years.  All the previously possessed individuals start coming for Sam and it is up to Deena and her squad to defeat them.

FYI: Grown-ups do not really factor into things here, other than to stand in the way.

I have a couple of small quibbles with the setting: although I totally dug all the 90s music, some of it was rather on the nose (which I suppose you might not realize if you weren't around in the 90s to listen to it over and over again), plus a couple of those songs were not out yet in 1994; and also I'm a little skeptical that high school same sex romances would be quite that out in the early 1990s.

The acting was okay, the premise was okay and, as mentioned above, when the kills got gruesome they really went for it, but I dunno.  Maybe I was tired but this movie just didn't hold my attention.  Eight horror/"horror" movies in and I still haven't been super-stoked about any of them.  I'm always hopeful for the next one!