But 1994 feels untethered from these obligations. Where Get Out or The Babadook used horror to explore the razor-toothed hunger of white liberal (supposed) allies and the terror of feeling unable to trust your own mental state, plenty of other titles end up just pinning themselves to larger concepts in ways that range from clumsily obvious to grossly cynical.
The trouble with the “actually, it’s about trauma” or “actually, it’s about racism” approach is not the ambition to deal with these themes onscreen, but that so many recent movies (and TV shows) just stop after making the connection because they don’t actually have anything to say about these concepts. Horror is hardly the only film genre that’s fallen under self-exerted pressure to seek out greater, or at least more explicit, relevance, but it’s the one in which the gap between theme and execution can feel most glaring. Sometimes a curse is just a curse, and this one has periodically sparked murder sprees in Shadyside, which is tattered and struggling, while the nearby community of Sunnyvale thrives. At no point during the movie, which is the first installment of a trilogy that Netflix will be releasing (and I’ll be reviewing) over three weeks, is there a suggestion that the curse is a metaphor for repressed sexuality, or industrialization, or anything else. Fear Street Part 1: 1994 is a nasty, effective slasher about a group of teenagers who come into contact with the curse that’s been plaguing their town of Shadyside, Ohio, for three centuries - one that has something to do with an accused witch, Sarah Fier, who was hanged in a settlement in the area back in 1666. And yet, I’ll confess to feeling a sense of relief on realizing that the kickoff Fear Street film wasn’t about more than it says on the package. Give me a film that’s as haunted by the traumas of its characters as by its killers, ghosts, and ghouls, and I’m already halfway onboard. I like my dread slow-dripped and my scares born more out of cunning camera angles and disturbing imagery than shock-y jumps. I’m pathetically in the bag for arthouse horror. Vulture will be reviewing each installment of the trilogy as they release here. The first Fear Street premiered on Netflix on July 2. The delightfully nasty Fear Street exists in this strange space between movies and television, serving neither format well.