The Fear Street trilogy bewitches with centuries of slasher gore

► Fear Street Part One: 1994, Fear Street Part Two: 1978 and Fear Street Part Three: 1666 are available to stream on Netflix.

At first glance, Fear Street is cut from the same cloth as Stranger Things, Netflix’s blockbuster teen horror series. Fear Street is a single story presented across three separate films, each set in a different era, and released online in consecutive weeks. Fear Street Part One: 1994 introduces the characters; Fear Street Part Two: 1978 expands on a massacre that might be connected to the events of 1994; and Fear Street Part Three: 1666 connects all three films together.

A mere five minutes into the first film, our smug rug is pulled from under us. Fear Street Part One: 1994 starts by explicitly and directly aping Scream (1996). A bored teenage girl (Maya Hawke – Robin in Stranger Things), working late at the mall peddling teen horror paperbacks, gets a creepy phone call; a murderer in a dark hood and a skeleton mask kills her – sound familiar? But his identity is revealed and he is killed off straight away. Who’s the villain going to be now?

Turns out, the town of Shadyside contains a Who’s Who of undead murderers, all of whom come back to life when summoned by the spirit of the witch Sarah Fier. The iconography of the witch looms over the town, which is dubbed ‘Killer Capital USA’ in the media and constantly compared, unfavourably, with its rich sister town Sunnyvale.

The idea that Fear Street buries underneath layers of sliced brains, angsty arguments and era-defining tracks is the burden of generational trauma. Can we escape from expectations placed upon us? Can we do better than our ancestors? Are we doomed to repeat patterns that were established long ago?

Fear Street effectively smuggles in these questions amid neon-soaked splatterfests, and mostly through the character of Deena (Kiana Madeira). We first meet her bristling with anger after having been dumped by her girlfriend Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), who is still closeted and now a cheerleader in Sunnyvale. Deena is convinced that she herself will end up in a dead-end job and with a drinking problem, the usual fate in Shadyside. Her connection with the witch Sarah Fier is revealed in Fear Street Part Three: 1666 – she too was a queer woman, wrongfully hanged to cover up for the misdeeds of a man who altered his bad luck by summoning the Devil.

Each of the three Fear Street films has a distinct look and feel, connected by plot and by the shared cast (the actors from 1994 also play their characters’ ancestors in 1666). The first film draws very heavily on the visuals of the 90s boom in teen horror, while 1978 emulates the first Golden Age of slasher movies, particularly ones set in rural areas. 1666 takes its visual cues from Terrence Malick’s later work more than any horror franchise.

Sarah Fier, built up as a terrifying supernatural opponent through legend and early internet serial-killer-chatrooms, has a hold on Shadyside – but not in the way people think. The biggest reveal of this teen-slasher trilogy is that it’s not actually about slashers at all, but about a woman’s revenge, a story that was left untold and erased completely from history books, from the towns’ histories and from the memories of their inhabitants.

Across three films Fear Street looks at the idea of entitlement and privilege, and how people wield them when they have them. Nick Goode (Ashley Zukerman), the handsome sheriff of Sunnyvale, is the direct descendant of the man who betrayed Sarah Fier, a line that has continued to benefit from that deception, and never questions his right to the power (both supernatural and social) he has inherited. The characters who allow themselves to want more, like Deena, are struggling, torn between accepting what’s expected of them and building the life they want. 

Director Leigh Janiak’s first feature, Honeymoon (2014), a low-key body horror about marital suspicion and distrust, used its limited budget creatively to explore with visceral power unspoken feelings. Here, with a budget, resources and three whole films’-worth of time to explore the ideas she’s most interested in, Janiak serves a successful blend of supernatural, teen and slasher horror. Fear Street might superficially resemble the goth, gory sister of Stranger Things, but it’s heavy with ideas and questions about our place in the (super)natural order of things.