1/10 In exhibit #8574 of why Rotten Opinions decides the quality of movies based off of pushing agendas/narratives and not actual quality, I give you “Fear Street Part One: 1994” coming in at 83% on Rotten Opinions (that is scarier than anything in this debacle). In honor of October I always try to stick to more horror related streaming films/shows to review and decided to look into this trilogy, based off of R.L. Stine’s book series. Released last summer in July with the two sequels released weekly afterwards (why these weren’t released around Halloween is beyond me), I came in open minded and unfortunately left muttering “F$*k Netflix” out loud to myself by the end of the movie. This movie gives us all of the worst horror clichés, the worst tendencies of Netflix (stuff like this has me glad they are losing subscribers), no scares and tries to capitalize on other, superior franchises. Before I break all of that down with specific examples, I will get the couple of positives out of the way first. The only compliments I can give this horrendous movie is that the pacing moves along at a decent rate and some of the performances are fine. Not incredible or Oscar worthy but fine. Now that those are out of the way, let’s dive into why you should never waste your time with this garbage or trust Rotten Opinions. For starters, the story is garbage because we have already seen this before in past horror movies done way better. Almost every character is completely unlikeable or underdeveloped. Netflix has to force feed so much LGBT propaganda that makes the characters feel more like billboards during Pride Month than actual people. One of the worst scenes has every character just so happening to hook up at the same time, despite time kind of being of the essence since demonic creatures are hunting them down. Since there are five characters, we get our token lesbians hooking up and perhaps the most unrealistic part of the movie; a fat, young kid gets to hook up with a girl who is a million times out of his league who would either clearly already have a boyfriend (or girlfriend in the case of a Netflix movie) or just not be interested. We are told that she “sees something in him”, which besides clogged arteries I can’t imagine what else she would see but that is all just a get out of jail free card for the lazy screenwriters getting to skip explaining why she would be into him at all. As for the fifth man who doesn’t have someone to hook up with? He basically looks at himself in a dirty bathroom mirror and masturbates. Ya…that’s a thing that happens…in this movie. That character is also unclear when it comes to his sexuality because he keeps talking about how hot one girl is yet wears finger nail polish and dresses like a woman by the end of the movie. Netflix had to check all of their diversity quota boxes on this one. The only thing missing was a transgender midget, which I am sure Netflix had to issue an apology for excluding. Speaking of dirty bathrooms, there are just so many individual things that happen in the movie that make no sense. A guy hangs out in the girls’ bathroom in high school with no one coming in but the characters we need to see talk. There is massive graffiti that would have taken at least five minutes to complete in the bathroom that not only is able to be done with no one spotting/reporting who wrote it but the school decides to leave it up instead of painting over it. Multiple locations give us characters who are able to just stroll right into after closing time, as if every business and school leave their doors unlocked in a high crime city every night. The opening scene rips off “Scream” and other horror films that begin with a death scene and in this case we get a girl closing down a store in the mall. If you have ever worked in a setting like that, you know that the manager would be the last one to leave OR the mall would have security to lock things up but here we get neither so the opening kill can happen. The adults in the movie (besides the cops) are virtually nowhere to be found. These kids are getting terrorized and we never know where the Hell their parents are and why they aren’t there to comfort their kids or protect them. We get brief mentions of an alcoholic parent but there are multiple characters and zero parents to be found anywhere with the exception of the evil, homophobic (how original) mom at the end. Even the school bus driver is non-existent as glass bottles are pelted at the bus and the emergency door in the back opened without them pulling over or telling the kids in the back of the bus to calm down. None of this makes sense and all feels so lazy and uninspired. Half of the movie feels like it is spent on lesbians either fighting or making up like some teenage soap opera that we couldn’t care less about. “Hey this movie has monsters, murder, curses, witches, etc. But you know what would be even cooler? Multiple scenes of verbal girl fights! Let’s focus on those instead!” The kills in the movie are all completely standard and the only halfway decent kill also doesn’t make sense because the character dies by a machine that is running in a grocery store after hours. So A) the machine wouldn’t be on since the store closed hours ago and B) when our characters enter the magically unlocked grocery store, the machine is off because you can’t hear it running and it is rather loud. How did it magically turn on so a character could die? No explanation because the screenwriters are talentless hacks with no imagination. Co-writer/director Leigh Janiak also completely overuses hit songs of the era with absolutely no tact or thought. Just throw as many songs in with virtually no time in between tracks so people will find the soundtrack catchy. It’s a sign of immature directing to force music into every moment and never allowing silence or dialogue to build tension. Finally, I alluded earlier that this tries to capitalize off of another Netflix franchise, which is clearly “Stranger Things”. Janiak is the wife of Ross Duffer of The Duffer Brothers (the two guys who created “Stranger Things”). It feels like she copied her husband’s homework in class (but still got an F) with all of the similarities between the two (except “Stranger Things” isn’t absolute shit). Major lesbian subplot? Check. Scenes of horror in a late 80’s/early 90’s shopping mall? Check. Younger black sibling who randomly has tons of knowledge that will be relevant to the plot later? Check. Multiple cast members like Maya Hawke and Sadie Sink? Check. Nostalgia and references to a time period decades prior to today? Check. A town that is by all evidence cursed but that no one moves out of for unknown reasons? Check. Those are just a few of the examples that came to mind but there are more I don’t care to list as I would rather just forget about this movie. Maybe Janiak is a super nice, sweet person but I know that Duffer sure as Hell didn’t marry her for her film making abilities. The fact that I have to watch two more of these is deeply depressing and I can’t shout from the rooftops enough that you should avoid this movie (and most likely trilogy) at all costs.
#QueerStreetPartOneOutOfTenScore / #NineteenNinetyBore / #AHawkeBlock / #ShadyDied / #NotRLFine / #NoFearStreetSmarts
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