Fear Street Part Two: 1978 – Film Review

Find the truth.

Movie Details

Rating: A-

Director: Leigh Janiak
Writer: Zak Olkewicz, Leigh Janiak
Actors: Sadie Sink, Emily Rudd, Ryan Simpkins, McCabe Slye, Ted Sutherland, Chiara Aurelia
Runtime: 1 h 50 min
Release Date: July 8, 2021
Genres: Horror, Mystery
Certification: R

Shadyside, 1978. School’s out for summer and the activities at Camp Nightwing are about to begin. But when another Shadysider is possessed with the urge to kill, the fun in the sun becomes a gruesome fight for survival.

To be completely honest with you – from one horror fan to another – I have been finding this year to be a major disappointment when it comes to the genre so far. We did get the excellently suspenseful A Quiet Place Part II back in May and Spiral: From the Book of Saw and The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It were both good, but for the most part, 2021 hasn’t had a whole lot of excitement for horror fans.

Some of the horror films that have the most potential that are scheduled for release later in the year include Nia DaCosta‘s new Candyman, M. Night Shyamalan‘s wacky thriller Old, and David Gordon Green‘s Halloween Kills – but as for right now, we do have the first two installments released in a trilogy of horror films that are shaping up to be one amazing thrill-ride.

Leigh Janiak‘s Fear Street Part One: 1994 was a wonderfully eerie throwback to 90s horror-slashers with clever twists throughout and a nice helping of heart and humor to go along with it. I’m ecstatic to report that the sequel, 1978, not only takes the Fear Street universe to new and daring heights, but it’s significantly better than the first film – a film that I also loved.

One of the reasons why this film is so much better than its predecessor is because of how interesting it is. The world-building and lore on display here are incredibly fun to delve into and are hugely rich. It’s clear that Shadyside’s past is massively dark and is harboring some seriously dark secrets, and part of the fun of these movies is trying to figure out exactly what happened all these years ago, how to stop the curse, and also, from watching the lead characters trying to put these puzzle pieces together as well.

And if you are a big fan of those old slasher movies from the 70s and onward, you’re going to have a complete blast with this film. A large portion of it genuinely reminded me of the first few Friday the 13th films but it never came across as copying them, but rather paying homage and making their own story. The Fear Street movies absolutely incorporate nostalgia into them but they always make sure that they have a story that’s interesting and stands on its own rather than relying on the viewer’s love for retro slashers.

The original Fear Street books were written by legendary children’s author R.L. Stine and serve as a more young-adult version of his immensely popular Goosebumps books. And although I have never read any of his Fear Street novels, apparently they’re fairly tame and even if you’re as young as thirteen you should be totally fine with reading them and not get any nightmares.

But the same thing cannot be said about these film adaptations. This film has an R-rating and I am so glad that it does, because sometimes whenever a character gets killed out of nowhere, you’ll see a pool of blood gushing out from them and it makes the scene so much more shocking. A lot of the scenes in this film wouldn’t have been nearly as effective had it been rated PG-13.

The cast here is also surprisingly strong, with Sadie Sink of Stranger Things fame getting the lead role of Ziggy Berman, who is kind of a loner who doesn’t have many friends and has a rocky relationship with her older sister Cindy (Emily Rudd). Sink is able to express a lot of deep emotions with not only her words, but some of her facial expressions as well. She hasn’t been in the industry for a very long time, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she is a widely beloved actress in a few years’ time.

Ryan Simpkins portrays a character named Alice in this film, and for the first little while, I genuinely hated the character. She is essentially that typical coming-of-age bully that you see in every one of those types of movies, but thankfully, the script gives her quite a bit of development later on to the point where I finally started to root for her. But that first stretch with watching her character was genuinely hard to get through.

It’s kind of odd how these Fear Street movies are so creepy and perfectly recapture the magic of 70s slasher movies yet they feel so comforting to watch. Why is that? I think it all comes back to when we were kids and we used to sit around a campfire and tell each other ghost stories. We were scared and uncomfortable when we were listening to the stories being told, but at the same time, we felt an odd sense of warmth from sitting around the fire with our friends. Fear Street evokes these exact same feelings.