Fear Street Part One: 1994 really wants you to know it loves horror. It loves it so much it raids the attic, puts on every costume at once—Scream, It, Stranger Things, The Craft, teen drama, witch curse, slasher, supernatural mystery—and then trips over all of it in the hallway.
The result isn’t so much a movie as a playlist: “Spooky Vibes – Gen Z Edition.”
Welcome to Shadyside, Sponsored by Murder
The setup is actually kind of fun:
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Shadyside = cursed, poor, violent, “murder capital of the U.S.”
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Sunnyvale = rich, safe, smug suburb that definitely votes for property tax cuts
We open in Shadyside Mall, where Heather (Maya Hawke, briefly slumming it between better projects) gets stalked and stabbed by her friend Ryan in a very Scream-lite opener. Ghostface has been replaced by Skull Mask Guy™, but the energy is the same: neon, knives, mall, then boom—credits.
Shadyside reacts with bored resignation, because apparently mass murder is their local weather pattern. Sunnyvale rolls its eyes and adjusts its polos. Somewhere, subtlety dies a quiet, unremarked death.
Our Heroine: Deena, Patron Saint of Bad Vibes
We then meet Deena (Kiana Madeira), whose primary traits are:
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Angry
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Gay
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Done with this town, this curse, and absolutely everyone
Deena’s ex, Sam, has committed the unforgivable sin of moving to Sunnyvale and getting a boyfriend. Deena handles this like any mature teen: badly, loudly, and with weaponized pettiness.
Her support squad includes:
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Josh, her conspiracy-nerd little brother, living on AOL chat rooms and murder lore
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Kate, overachiever who sells drugs to fund her escape
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Simon, the human raccoon version of a best friend
They all exist in that Netflix Teen Horror space where:
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Every line is either snark, exposition, or feelings
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Everyone talks like they’ve been workshopping their identity in a writers’ room
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No one has ever met a therapist
The Crash Heard ’Round the Curse
At a vigil for the mall victims, the Sad Kids of Shadyside and the Smug Kids of Sunnyvale get into a fight, because nothing bonds communities like fresh trauma and class resentment.
On the bus ride back:
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Sam’s boyfriend, Peter, tailgates the Shadyside bus
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Deena, in a moment of galaxy-brain brilliance, goes to throw a cooler at the car
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Her nose bleeds at the worst possible time
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The cooler flies, the car crashes, and Sam cracks her head right on top of Sarah Fier’s conveniently located witch bones
Look, is it subtle? No. Does it feel like someone dropped a witch grave randomly off the highway and called it lore? Absolutely.
Sam has a vision of the witch and is rushed to the hospital, where things go from “bad” to “congratulations, you are now the main target of a 300-year-old supernatural HR complaint.”
The Killers: Greatest Hits, Zero Depth
Soon, the group realizes they’re being hunted—not by generic psycho teens from Sunnyvale, but by resurrected killers from Shadyside’s past, including:
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Skull Mask Ryan (Mall Murder Guy)
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Ruby Lane (1960s singing slasher with a tragic haircut)
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Camp Nightwing Killer (big axe, zero personality)
Each has a cool design and about as much character as a Funko Pop. They’re not here to be interesting. They’re here to:
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Run down corridors
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Swing weapons
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Eat screen time while the soundtrack blasts
Josh realizes all the murders over the decades are part of Sarah Fier’s curse, triggered now that Sam bled on her grave. So the rules are:
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Sam = bait
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Killers = drawn to her blood
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Everyone else = expandable obstacles with names
In theory, it’s a neat twist: slashers as supernatural enforcers. In execution, it’s like watching a mobile game with unlockable skins.
Plotting by Spreadsheet
From here, the movie sprints through set pieces like it’s checking boxes:
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Hospital massacre – Peter dies, nurses die, the script shrugs
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Grave reburial attempt – They rebury Sarah Fier’s bones, nothing happens, oops
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School trap sequence – They bait the killers with Sam’s blood and try to blow them up
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Supermarket finale – Time to kill and revive Sam like she’s a cursed rotisserie chicken
The school sequence should be great:
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Kids versus undead slashers
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Sprinklers, neon, traps, improvised weapons
But it’s so hyper-edited and quippy that it never really lands as scary or tragic. When Kate and Simon die (one fed into a bread slicer, one axed in a hallway), the movie spends about nine seconds on grief before zooming straight into, “Anyway, let’s chemically induce death in Sam next to the shampoo aisle.”
I get that we’re doing a self-aware, kinetic slasher. But if you’re going to linger lovingly on the gore, maybe also linger for more than half a breath on the emotional fallout. Otherwise it starts to feel like a very bloody music video.
Witch Logic and Netflix Lore™
The mythology of Sarah Fier is supposed to be the engine of this whole trilogy. In this first part, it mostly works like this:
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She’s a witch. Probably.
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Or was she framed? Maybe.
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Her hand is missing. That seems important.
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Her curse makes Shadyside a permanent murder factory.
That’s about it. Any time something needs to happen, the answer is “because curse.” Need killers to regenerate from burnt chunks? Curse. Need Sam specifically targeted? Curse. Need teenagers to make decisions wildly above their pay grade while adults stand around being useless? Curse.
Sarah Fier isn’t a character yet; she’s a supernatural Post-It note that reads “TO BE EXPLAINED IN PARTS 2 AND 3.”
Which is fine if you’re bingeing all three movies back-to-back. As a standalone entry? It feels like watching the pilot of a series where the season finale already assumes you’ve read the wiki.
Representation, But Make It Painful
One thing the movie does right in theory:
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The central romance is between Deena and Sam, two queer girls
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Their relationship is treated as real, messy, central to the plot
In practice, the execution is… uneven.
On the plus side:
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They’re not a token couple
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Their conflict feels grounded: closeted vs. out, class division, fear, resentment
On the minus side:
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One spends half the movie bleeding, screaming, or possessed
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Their big reconciliation happens right before one has to be drowned in a lobster tank
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The “happy” ending is Sam tied to a chair, demon-possessed, while Deena whispers, “I’ll fix this” over ominous music
So yes, it’s better than “bury your gays.” It’s more “tie up your gays and save the agony for the sequels.” Progress, I guess.
Style Over Substance Over Everything
To be fair, Fear Street Part One: 1994 looks and sounds slick:
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The needle drops are constant (arguably too constant—some scenes feel like a 90s playlist wearing a plot as an accessory)
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The kills are creatively staged
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The pacing seldom drags; if anything, it races past character beats like they’re speed bumps
But underneath the energy and synths, it’s all a little hollow. The movie acts like it’s reinventing the slasher wheel while mostly just hot-gluing three decades of horror tropes into a Franken-movie that yells, “REMEMBER THIS?”
If you’re a horror fan, you’ll spend half your time pointing at the screen like, “Oh, that’s Scream. That’s Elm Street. That’s It. That’s Stranger Things if it got grounded for bad behavior.”
The film thinks this makes it clever. Sometimes it does. Mostly, it just makes you want to rewatch the originals.
Final Verdict: Curse of the Overstuffed Pilot
As the first entry in a trilogy, Fear Street Part One: 1994 is loud, bloody, and perfectly watchable—but also shallow, derivative, and emotionally weightless.
It’s the horror movie equivalent of a sampler platter:
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Some bites are great
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Some are lukewarm
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Nothing really fills you up
If you go in wanting a deep, standalone slasher with actual stakes, you may leave feeling like you just watched Netflix test a horror franchise in real time. If you just want stylish murder, teen angst, and 90s music cranked to eleven, you’ll probably have fun—just don’t think too hard.
Because once you start asking questions like “Why would they do that?” or “Does this curse actually make sense?” the real horror begins.
