In the opening seconds of the trailer for the newly released Netflix Fear Street Part 1: 1994 movie, a teenager frantically warns one of his friends: Some gal killed a bunch of people at the mall last night!
Mall? Check. Killer on the loose? Check. Teenagers who band together to get to the bottom of things? Welcome to so many of the most memorable horror movies. And to Netflix’s newest frightening title, based on R.L. Stine’s best-selling book series. It comes as horror fans are enjoying a bumper crop of buzzy new releases lately from the world’s biggest streaming platform. Including Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, as well as others we’ve written about in recent days including the gory, zombie-filled Netflix series Black Summer. And The Seventh Day, an utterly chilling horror title starring Guy Pearce about an inexperienced priest and demonic possession.
Netflix Fear Street trilogy
As noted above, meanwhile, Fear Street is actually a three-part Netflix trilogy that will make for an epic binge session for fans of the genre. The first of three movies in the series hit the streamer on July 2. And it’s already sitting at the top of the Top 10 movie ranking on the service.
The plot: The characters live in a town called Shadyside. The three films will tell distinct stories and track backward through time. Part One, as you can see above, is set in 1994, and the cast includes Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, and Benjamin Flores Jr. The second film in the series will debut on Netflix on July 9, while the third is coming July 16.
Can you guess how Part One begins? That’s right, with the murder of a young woman. That’s what leads us into the mythology of the town. Which also includes a dead witch named Sarah Fier (pronounced “Fear”) who haunts it.
What critics are saying
In an alternate universe where the coronavirus pandemic never happened, these three films were supposed to have been released in theaters. Nevertheless, here we are. And thus far on Rotten Tomatoes, Fear Street Part One has an 85% critics scores (based on 67 reviews). The movie “kicks off the trilogy in promising fashion, honoring the source material with plenty of retro slasher appeal,” reads the Rotten Tomatoes “critics consensus.”
Unfortunately, audiences have not responded as favorably. The Rotten Tomatoes audience score for Part One is only 64%, based on more than 250 ratings.
If you want to check out the first five minutes of Fear Street Part One, you can do it for free below. And you’ve got a few more days to finish the first film, before Part Two hits the streamer on Friday. From Netflix’s description of Part Two: “School’s out for summer and the activities at Camp Nightwing are about to begin. But when another Shadysider is possessed with the urge to kill, the fun in the sun becomes a gruesome fight for survival.”
"It began as a prank and ended in murder."
The first 5 minutes of FEAR STREET Part 1: 1994 are here 🪓 pic.twitter.com/7E1skixSbE
— NetflixFilm (@NetflixFilm) June 30, 2021
