Cruella now has competition for which movie from 2021 can radio-scroll the most decade-based hit songs in one go.
I mean for something that’s based off of the work of R.L. Stine, they do make the smug, over-the-top acting and dialogue feel as if it were stripped right from the screen of a 90s Goosebumps episode but with a bloodthirsty R-rating chased to its blade. Gotta hand it to the creators though, if that at least gives us an excuse to portray realistic protagonists that are genuine assholes living in a world which isn’t somehow wrongly against their undervalued perfections for once who will go as far as to even mule children into keistering drugs for them — that’s a mouthful, I know — then I’m all for it. Shoutout to the crew for also hiring actors who ACTUALLY look like high schoolers and SECONDLY writing victims who are moderately smart for once! Yet, aside from maybe that and say a couple neat ideas (shark-bate Mia Wallace!) that kept me from being completely bored with this, Fear Street Part One: 1994 just seems like another wannabe Wes Craven remaster that combines slasher with fantasy to act as if it’s doing something progressively game-changing for the genre, not to mention it vulgarly wields this in the first place so it can have an excuse to pound-town stark moments of nostalgia in the notorious language of Stranger Things (2016-). But, the worst offender committed here would have to be ugh… how insufferably non-stop the melodrama is; count this as another one of those gory adult horror movies that irritatingly feels like it’s trapped in a bargain-bin *classic* Pixar movie. Trust me, I was real shocked too when I found out Christopher Landon wasn’t attached to this project.
Verdict: C-
“Fear Street Part One: 1994” is now available to stream on Netflix.
Burning the Celluloid 
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