Fear Street Part Two: 1978

Director: Leigh Janiak
Starring: Sadie Sink, Emily Rudd, Ryan Simpkins, McCabe Slye, Ted Sutherland, Gillian Jacobs, Jordana Spiro, Kiana Madeira, Benjamin Flores Jr., Olivia Scott Welch, Ashley Zukerman, Chiara Aurelia, Jordyn DiNatale, Sam Brooks, Julia Rehwald, Fred Hechinger
Running Time: 110 min.
Rating: R

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

An improvement in nearly every way over its previous entry, Fear Street Part Two: 1978 breaks free from the shackles of its trilogy format to stand on its own as a darker, more tightly written and engrossing effort. If the entertaining but creatively mixed 1994 entry could have doubled as a series pilot, this feels more cinematic, going so far as to fill in some of the bigger holes in that first film, making it play better in retrospect. While it's already been established this isn't going to be a series of films startling us with their originality, a lot of thought clearly went into this middle installment, which avoids feels derivative despite patterning itself off a very specific sub-genre. It also proves Leigh Janiak has a bit more up her sleeve as a director than originally suspected, invoking the tone and spirit of an old school teen camp summer slasher in cleverly subversive ways. 

Revolving around three terrific central performances and a classic setting, the movie knows exactly what it's supposed to do and follows through, rarely bogged down by some of the expositional excursions and winking that made its predecessor seem just slightly less than the sum of its parts. In veering the furthest distance yet from the younger-skewing, mainstream-friendly vibe of R.L. Stine's brand, Janiak breaks a few unwritten rules that should satisfy more devoted horror fans. And if it's still up for debate just how effective the central mythos running through the trilogy is, there's no question this sequel enhances it, while also delivering enough urgency to firmly stand on its own, regardless of what comes before or after. 

Picking up where the action left off in 1994, Deena (Kiana Madeira) and Josh Johnson (Bejamin Flores Jr.) have restrained Deena's posessed girlfriend Sam (Olivia Scott Welch) and taken her to the house of C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs) for help. As a survivor of the infamous Camp Nightwing massacre of 1978, she knows a thing or two about the curse of the Fier witch and Shadyside's long history of murders related to it. Angry, depressed and drowning her sorrows in a bottle, she reluctantly agrees to recount the events of that summer as we flash back when Berman sisters Ziggy (Sadie Sink) and Cindy (Emily Rudd) attended Nightwing as camper and counselor, respectively. 

While younger, rebellious sister Ziggy is harrassed and accussed of theft by popular camp bully Sheila (Chiara Aurelia) the prim and preppy Cindy has fully shed any hints of her Shadysider status, even if current boyfriend and fellow counselor Tommy Slater (McCabe Slye) thinks she could stand to loosen up a bit. Co-counselor and ex-best friend Alice (Ryan Simpkins), along with her pothead boyfriend Arnie (Sam Brooks) seem to agree, constantly flaunting their disregard for the rules in Cindy's face. 

When Tommy has an unfortunate run-in with Mary Lane (Jordana Spiro), camp nurse and mother of past Shadyside killer, Ruby Lane (Jordyn DiNatale), an unspeakable evil is released into him as he goes on a muderous rampage, brutally taking out counselors and campers in the dead of night. Forming a bond with couselor and future sheriff Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland), self-described "weirdo" Ziggy becomes even more convinced of the curse while a still skeptical Cindy and troubled Alice must put their personal issues aside to survive the ongoing carnage. 

What boosts this entry tremdously is that it centers almost entirely around a single event. That alone gives it a laserlike focus it's 1994 counterpart lacked, as it frequently waffled between characters and situations to explain the complexities of the Fier witch curse. So after a brief prologue dealing with it, Janiak is freed to make a good old fashioned slasher about an ax-wielding madman terrorizing a 70's summer camp. And since the Friday The 13th franchise became entangled in a decade-long legal battle preventing any forthcoming films, this is the closest we're likely to get one. Of course,it's still Netflix, so it has a much cleaner look and isn't as authentically scuzzy, but the inspiration is present enough that Camp Nightwing may as well double as Crystal Lake. But the big surprise is that if this wasn't marketed as part of a YA trilogy and there were no preconceived judgments about Stine's literary output, this would have undoubtedly receive more praise than it's gotten. 

Drawing heavily from not only Friday The 13th, but Sleepaway Camp and even The Town That Dreaded Sundown, there's a substantial middle stretch where everything that could go right with this  film does. It's easy to imagine Stine grinning from ear-to-ear realizing this is getting away with showing things he'd never be allowed to describe for his younger readers as the adaptation finally gives him some Stephen King cred. If one of Fear Street:1994's better qualities was Janiak's refusal to hold back while replicating the self-referential horror of the 90's, she's takes it up a level here with a more interesting genre period to draw from with the 70's, featuring characters that just seem wilder, meaner, and even hornier, eventually paying for it in graphically unsettling ways. 

Realizing we've reached a point where what's left of the teen slasher has become sanitized and wiped clean of the chaos that made them touchstones for a certain generation, Janiak uses this setting to pay homage. And in capturing the pranks, crushes and goofy comedic moments that accompany them, it becomes just as fun as it is suspenseful. After an effective backstory sets up Tommy's reign of terror,  the possessed counselor starts picking off victims and it becomes kind of shocking how little is off limits. Also helping is the fact that this is actually a functioning camp that younger kids and pre-teens  attend, racheting up concern in viewers that they're in legitimate danger. And they are. 

Stranger Things' Sadie Sink carries the whole picture on her back as the rebellious Ziggy while Emily Rudd equals her every step of the way as uptight Cindy, We're initially given hints as to what caused their sibling rift, but there ends up being a lot more to each of their stories that comes through over the course of this ordeal. Similarly, Ryan Simpkins shares great chemistry with Rudd's Cindy as the punkish Alice, which is a relief considering they share a significant chunk of their screen time together trapped underground in arguably the film's slowest section. But this sequel does take more than a few important steps toward further fleshing out the feud between Shadyside and Sunnyvale, manifesting itself in a "Color Wars" battle that deteriorates into full-blown class warfare.  

Topping the preceding installment's soundtrack of impeccably selected 90's jams should be impossible, but this actually comes closer than it should, with some memorable tracks from Blue Oyster Cult, Kansas, Neil Diamond, Cat Stevens and The Velvet Underground. Music supervisors Lindsay Wolfington and Nora Felder also outdo themselves with their best needle drop yet, with both the David Bowie and Nirvana versions of "The Man Who Sold The World" perfectly bookending the film. The bloody, tension-filled, exhilarating closing sequence commences in an iconic image that feels like it has to be the final shot, but isn't. In a way though, it is, since much of what follows is the epilogue, which has to go back to 1994 to do some narrative housekeeping. There's even a Back to the Future Part III-style preview of Fear Street: 1666 tacked on at the end since all three installments were filmed in quick succession. 

It's here where we realize the drawbacks of a three-film format, as 1978 succeeds most on its own terms as a standalone slasher. I'd even go as far as to say that if you excised the prologue and epilogue and had no idea what preceded this, not much would be lost. As a self-professed Friday The 13th fan, the rewatchability factor on this one is high, but it also accomplishes exactly what the middle film in a trilogy should, further developing the important characters who appear in both timelines and increasing our investment in what happens next. In resurrecting the not so guilty pleasures of teen camp slashers, Janiak reminds us just how well this kind of movie works when helmed by someone who knows and respects the intricacies of the genre. And at a hefty two hours, it still somehow feels just right, suspensefully hitting its stride while laying a strong foundation for its final chapter.