'Fear Street: 1978' is a merciless and brutal slasher throwback

 

 Now were onto part 2 of the 'Fear Street' trilogy, this time taking place at a summer camp in the late 70's where the curse of Sarah Feir is further fleshed out. Whereas the first entry was an homage to 'Scream', this one is a throwback to the classic slasher era films such as 'Friday the 13th' and 'Sleepaway Camp'. Even with the film owing a lot to those cult classics, it manages to stand on its own as a brutal modern slasher with a mean streak. Kudos to the filmmakers for pulling no punches and giving us some truly nasty kills and a lot of them involving children which takes some balls.

But the carnage candy isn't the only thing that '1978' improves on from the last film, but it also a lot of issues I had with the story, pacing, and characters. We are given a much more fleshed out world that makes '1994' easier to piece together almost to the point where I feel that maybe they should've shown this one first? But the problem there comes from the opening and ending scenes which continue from where the first film left off which would confuse you if you hadn't seen it. The story so far works better if you were to see the 1978 flashback scenes and then the 1994 scenes so maybe a fan edit will show up out there at some point.

Last time I made a point to criticize the choice of using music throughout, with a lot of it not even being accurate to the time the story took place. Here we have a bit of an improvement with a lot of the music shown to be a part of the story's world such as on 8-Track and Cassette players so it didn't quite annoy me as much. Marco Beltrami returns to score again and like before it's that classic style if you're a fan of 'Scream' like me so no problems there. 

Overall, I'm genuinely surprised how much I've been hooked to this trilogy so far and cannot wait for next week's finale. Don't let R.L. Stine's name fool you these are classic slasher flicks and ones I think most horror fans will get at least a fun afternoon out of them. '1978' amps up the gore, the fun, and the overall story of the Shadyside curse that could become a franchise in the making if this level of quality keeps up.

A

 

To read my review of part 1 click HERE.