Time - USA (2021-07-19)

107

TimeOff Reviews

Serena begat Julien, right

In Fear Street Part 2: 1978, campers dig for clues about an ancient evil

The 1990s were a golden age for

youth-oriented horror. Teens had flocked

to drive-in creature features for decades,

but the huge cohort growing up in the

calm between the Cold War and 9/11

sought scares in every medium. Scream

and I Know What You Did Last Summer

launched franchises. While teens got

hooked on Buffy, their kid siblings de-

voured Are You Afraid of the Dark? Books

by R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike got

passed around schools like contraband.

Now, because the search for unmon-

etized intellectual property never ends,

Netflix is revisiting that era with a movie

trilogy based on Stine’s Fear Street. Less

iconic than the author’s middle-grade

Goosebumps books, this bloodier, more

mature teen series (which Stine revived

in 2014) is set in fictional Shadyside,

a normal suburb except for one street

aficted by a centuries-old curse.

The moderately entertaining,

nostalgia- soaked Fear Street trilogy of

filmmaker Leigh Janiak (Honeymoon)

shifts the premise slightly. In the first

film, set in 1994, Shadyside is a hell-

hole, scorned by its stuck-up sports rival

Sunnyvale. Following a gory intro at a de-

serted mall that recalls Drew Barrymore’s

turn in Scream, a story coalesces around

MOVIES

Street of nightmares

an angsty Shadyside band geek (Kiana

Madeira’s Deena) whose ex- girlfriend

(Olivia Scott Welch) has moved to

Sunnyvale and started dating a football

star. When a thoughtless act of revenge

awakens an ancient evil, Deena and her

friends must dig into the dark history of

their hometown to save themselves.

This makes for well-paced, cultur-

ally literate, if generic, slasher fare. Set

at a summer camp in 1978, the second

and tighter of the two movies sent for

review owes much to Friday the 13th.

(The last installment will turn the clock

back to 1666.) Along with references

ranging from Carrie to Castlevania, no-

brainer music syncs abound: Nine Inch

Nails in ’94; “Carry On Wayward Son”

in ’78. The presence of Stranger Things’

Sadie Sink and Maya Hawke should en-

sure youth appeal. Although this formu-

laic approach is no surprise, I’d hoped

for something less calculated. The Fear

Street movies are nothing more, but

also nothing less, than a competent

streaming- algorithm copy of the forget-

table flicks teens with fewer viewing op-

tions once rented on VHS. —J.B.

FEAR STREET PART 1: 1994 is on Netflix;

parts 2 and 3 debut on July 9 and 16

TELEVISION

XOXO, Gen Z

Gossip Girl was supposed to

be gone forever. By the time

its anonymous Upper East

Side dirt disher issued a final

XOXO, in 2012, ratings for the

briefly generation- defining CW

teen drama had nosedived—

perhaps because the recession

had made ostentatious wealth

uncool. But just as younger mil-

lennials did with Friends, Gen Z

embraced the show without any

expectation of realism. Now,

as part of its ongoing courtship

of that cohort, HBO Max has

revived the brand.

Tailored to today’s teens,

this GG is less “problematic”

and more superficially diverse.

In place of Serena and Blair,

the central frenemies are girls

of color: benevolent influencer

Julien (Jordan Alexander) and

her estranged scholarship-

student half sister Zoya (Whit-

ney Peak), late of Buffalo. The

lothario is a bisexual party boy

(Thomas Doherty). And with

teachers driving Insta gram

drama, the series is less about

feuding mean girls than it is

about people who know better

than to get lured into that fray.

Showrunner Joshua Safran,

who wrote for the original,

keeps the Whartonian camp

flowing. But the toned-down

boys are bland, and new love

interests lack chemistry. Still,

it’s surprisingly fine for a show

that shouldn’t exist. —J.B.

GOSSIP GIRL is streaming
GOSSIP GIRL: HBO; FEAR STREET: NETFLIXon HBO Max