In the classic ’61 “Twilight Zone” episode, five characters are in search of an exit. The clown, the ballerina, the major, the musician, and the tramp all find themselves entrapped and yearning to glimpse beyond the rim of their enclosure. We know them by the roles they play and, unsettlingly, their own senses of identity struggle to emerge beyond what their costumes tell them they are. This disquieting dynamic extends loosely from Rod Serling’s fingertips, coming to a stop at Shadyside to settle over a group of kids trapped in their own existence like flies on sticky paper, all situated on the grounds of a groovy summer camp.
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Just a week prior, Leigh Janiak’s “Fear Street Part One: 1994” dropped on Netflix and told the bloody story of a cursed town and the teens who tried to stop it. Janiak’s following entry entertains when it allows itself to. “Fear Street Part Two: 1978” contains some stellar performances and solid pacing but lets air out of its own tank with its playlist obsession.
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Following the first film’s events, the surviving new blood taps into the wisdom of a Sarah Fier survivor. The witch’s centuries-old curse continues to terrorize Shadyside in revenge for her torment in 1666 (when the third and final “Fear Street” entry takes place) in the form of possessed, blade-crazy slasher archetypes. The wisdom of the traumatized C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs), at first, is, “Run, far as you can, fast as you can. That is your only chance.” She pulls out a scrapbook and, amid an oppressive cacophony of ticking alarm clocks, begins to recount a harrowing evening at Camp Nightwing in July of 1978. There, she laments, her sister was murdered. All at once, a possession movie and a slasher camp joint, “Fear Street ‘78,” begins to simmer when it leans into the supernatural angle more in the second act. As it turns out, the camp was built over an unholy site, where local witch Sarah Fier had made a pact with the devil in exchange for eternal life. Fier’s entire story will have to wait until “Fear Street Part Three: 1666,” but the woman clearly does not appreciate the tourism over her territory, at the least. While romances brew and rivalries escalate, the body count rises, and a core group of camp counselors scrambles to survive the night.
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The mean streak of the ’94 entry continues here; one camp attendee has the unique unnecessary displeasure of having a headless corpse land atop her freshly fractured leg, while the camera mingles with another victim just long enough to watch them go through a series of social humiliations before suddenly meeting the axe. Passages of Robert Hiltzik’s ’83 “Sleepaway Camp” weave into people and situations like mean girl Sheila and the outright abuse she inflicts. It’s in the spirit of the hack n’ slash classics that came before it, with some refreshing character tangibility accompanying the victims on their way to the slaughter.
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The potential victims are crafted with care, but not so much that they all escape their doom. As estranged sisters Ziggy (Sadie Sink) and Cindy Berman (Emily Rudd) trade barbs and grudges, Sink acts with her jaw, mean-mugging her way through various levels of mistrust and grudges with everyone else in the film. Ryan Simpkins, playing smokey-eyed rebel Alice, has a scene-stealing light in their eyes that trade-off with a casual cynicism as the scene calls for it, echoing Imogen Poots nihilist skinhead in Jeremy Saulnier’s thriller “Green Room.” Alice and Cindy are the strongest when they’re together, letting the friction inform their sneers and, later, their begrudging allyship with one another. In between pranks and narrow escapes, Ziggy and potential love interest Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland) muse over the line of delineation between who they are and who they want to be and, ultimately, the how malleable those destinies might turn out to be. Among them all, Janiak extends an otherwordly curse into a generational one, binding and coercing its kids into undesired roles. Each person is distinct, partially due to the function of the subgenre (it is really a camp slasher if there’s no snarling bully?) but mostly due to the focus given by Janiak and co-writer Zak Olkewicz. Every performer pulls their weight so well that it confirms what the casting department seems to insist: having young actors play young can work just fine if you let them.
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With the character work and cast so strong, it’s baffling that Janiak allows an aural undercutting of it all. Brandon Roberts and longtime Wes Craven collaborator Marco Beltrami serve a thrilling score that swells along with the rising stakes. But indulgent needle-dropping in the first film becomes downright distracting in the second. Camp Nightwing is a Crystal Lake analog (or Crystal Lake itself) where Captain & Tenille compete with the dialogue and even death for the viewers’ attention. The soundtrack itself is righteous; there’s Foghat, there’s The Buzzcocks, and even a little Neil Diamond, as a treat. But immediately following the first big sequence of danger, Cat Stevens’ “The First Cut Is The Deepest” wafts in and commands attention mere minutes before Blue Oyster Cult warns not to fear the reaper. This continues throughout the narrative, wherein great songs elbow their way into the frame before the viewer can finish the emotional beat that came before it— this works for comedic effect, but not so much when someone the audience cares about is suffering. It’s almost as if the nostalgic callbacks compete with the story itself, dragging it along from scare to scare. It’s less style over substance, for both exist plenty here; it’s more style against substance. An audience should be allowed to take in hard-earned story beats and compelling performances before David Bowie bursts in like the Kool-Aid Man to shuffle them onto the next storyboard panel. It’s not too loud (that could be chalked up to a wonky home audio system, after all); it’s too intrusive. Janiak works so hard to evoke a feeling and speak in the language of youth that she interrupts her own performers’ attempts to do the very same. It might be a nitpick, but it’s consistent enough to impact the story and neuter some of its greatest moments, moments that the filmmaking team clearly worked hard to earn.
“Fear Street Part Two: 1978” repeatedly gets bogged down by its music and the atmosphere but earns its rightful place alongside the sleepaway camps and the crystal lakes. Janiak delivers all of the vicious fun of its slice and dice predecessors, with the bonus of characters who matter as they search for their own exits—from danger and themselves. [B-]
