Review: Fear Street Part Two: 1978 (2021)

This may be a minority opinion, but Fear Street Part Two: 1978 is the best of the trilogy. Perhaps this is a result of how well the film compares to the slasher films set at summer camp from the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Friday the 13th, which I dislike, or it’s simply that the film is sharper than its predecessor or sequel. The kills are grislier, the emotions more deeply felt, and the overall milieu more evocative. To be clear, the film still plays as a middle chapter in its approach to story and mythology. It expands the storyworld and reveals more about the background of the witch’s curse hanging over Shadyside, but it doesn’t resolve the overall plot. Rather, it gives a window into a formative chapter for an ancillary character from 1994, conjuring an affective, and rather realistic, portrait of sisterhood in the process.

Picking up where 1994 left off, Fear Street Part Two: 1978 flashes back to its titular year for the majority of the runtime to tell the story of the Camp Nightwing Massacre, in which a bunch of campers were brutally murdered during the final night of sleepaway camp. The key figures are ne’er-do-well Ziggy Berman (Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink), her prim and proper sister, Cindy (Emily Rudd), and Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland), the golden boy who’ll grow up to be sheriff in 1994.

After we meet the key figures and learn about the social dynamics at Camp Nightwing, Cindy’s boyfriend, Tommy Slater (McCabe Slye), mysteriously goes nuts and starts hacking people to death with an axe a la Jason Voorhees. Ziggy and Cindy try to figure out what happened to Tommy, which eventually leads them to a mysterious cave beneath the camp and the discovery of the witch’s curse. But the film’s ultimate goal isn’t to solve the mysteries about the curse; 1666 will do that. Rather, it’s to pay off the relationship at its centre.

1994 was centred on the relationship between Deena and Sam; Deena’s desire to save Sam from the curse motivates her throughout and the culmination of their relationship is the promised catharsis at the end of the film. In 1978, Ziggy and Cindy’s relationship is front and centre. However, it’s a completely different dynamic than Deena and Sam’s, not only for being a familial relationship instead of a romantic one, but also because it’s an adversarial one. Simply put, the girls don’t like each other.

In the opening scene, Ziggy is caught stealing from a fellow camper and we watch as the rival teens torment Ziggy, even stringing her up from a tree, recreating the legendary hanging of Sarah Fier. Nick Goode intervenes and saves Ziggy from further harassment, but when Cindy learns about Ziggy’s actions, she’s not there to comfort her sister, but rather harangue her. For Cindy, Ziggy is a perpetual embarrassment, the kid sister she has to constantly apologize for. Conversely, for Ziggy, Cindy is the girl who thinks she’s perfect, but who fails to understand anything substantial about the world. Both girls are partially right in their assessment of the other, but they must learn to comprehend each other’s strengths and work together to compensate for their own weaknesses. They must learn to become a team, even despite their differences.

The influence of Stephen King is apparent in this opening, both in the bullying on display and the relationship between the sisters. Where 1994 approached the horror narrative like a self-aware slasher film such as Wes Craven’s Scream, 1978 is more earnest and works in specifically Kingian elements. One such element is the sadistic bullying throughout the film, which shows that the mundane humiliations of the teenage years are often more disturbing than the most gruesome horror. The other, more important element is that the presence of the supernatural allows the characters a chance to work through their insecurities and come to a greater understanding of themselves and the world around them. The horror is an emotional challenge and the story is about whether they will overcome it.

Much of the film’s strength lies in its talented, young actors. The actors in 1994 are good, but these actors are even better. In particular, watching Sadie Sink and Emily Rudd play off each other is a pleasure, as there’s a genuine chemistry between them, which approximates a sisterly dynamic throughout. It’s not groundbreaking storytelling to establish a fraying relationship and then cultivate audience sympathy in mending it on screen, but it’s still satisfying.

Of course, much of the film is still devoted to gory kills, gruesome thrills, and pop-culture needle drops. The cinematography trades in the neon of the early 1990s for auburn afternoon glows and blue-tinted moonlight. The kills are even more grisly than in 1994. The presence of children throughout the camp as potential victims to Tommy ups the stakes for the characters and for the viewer; the threat of watching a kid get murdered on screen is a ruthless and effective way of amplifying the tension and horror.

Generally speaking, the emotional stakes feel more real in Fear Street Part Two: 1978, which is rare for the middle chapter in a trilogy. But because the relationship between Ziggy and Cindy is a story that begins and ends solely in this film, the filmmakers can pay it off. There is no need to delay resolution, as in 1994, or simply tie a bow on the narrative and answer outstanding questions, as in 1666. So it’s allowed to be genuinely vulnerable and resolute in its emotional storytelling. Maybe vulnerability isn’t what people want in a slasher film set at summer camp; it’s likely they prefer cheap thrills, with all the sex, blood, and campy fun associated with the subgenre. But I appreciate a horror film for teens that is willing to go this dark and this gruesome while being this earnest.

7 out of 10

Fear Street Part Two: 1978 (2021, USA)

Directed by Leigh Janiak; written by Zak Olkewicz and Leigh Janiak, based on a story by Zak Olkewicz, Phil Graziadei, and Leigh Janiak, based on Fear Street by R. L. Stine; starring Sadie Sink, Emily Rudd, Ryan Simpkins, McCabe Slye, Ted Sutherland, Jordana Spiro, Gillian Jacobs, Kiana Madeira, Benjamin Flores Jr., Ashley Zukerman, Olivia Scott Welch, Chiara Aurelia, Jordyn DiNatale.

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