HoopTober 8: Mosquito Takes Mandragon

Movie 43
Six decades: 2nd of 2 films from the 2020's

Although I understood why the first Fear Street movie turned a lot of folks off, what with its air of having been generated from an algorithm of zeitgeisty hot buttons and all that, I ended up really enjoying myself. No doubt Leigh Janiak's Netflix overlords are fully conscious of how this stuff plays to their audience (they're running a media business! gasp!), but I thought that film had a hell of a lot going for it and all these interesting ideas and concepts swirled up into something hugely entertaining.

I'm really bummed to say that my reaction to the second instalment, Fear Street: 1978, leaves me feeling the way a lot of the first film's naysayers did. Unlike the first film, this one does feel a little shallow. I'm not saying I want more social commentary or anything like that. I just think there's not a lot of interest going on here.

So, we've already established the whole Sarah Fier / witch thing resulting in people becoming obsessed slasher killers of one sort or another. That concept was established and mined beautifully in Fear Street: 1994. So I was expecting this film to take us further into the narrative somehow. Nope: it's just an example of that very same thing happening, only with one killer this time. So, it's nothing more than a bunch of teenagers running away (largely unsuccessfully) from a psycho killer.

What's the problem, I hear you say? And it feels weird to criticise the film for this, because I continue to have no problem with a plot exactly as thin as what I have described for any number of my favourite 80's slashers. And I can't really explain why, but this just isn't a good slasher film. The kills are pretty committed, there's loads of death.... I dunno. Maybe the kills are a little too frequent? It just feels like the timing is off in the whole film. Nothing really hits the way it's supposed to.

It doesn't help that the characters are much less appealing than they were in the first film. Honestly, I seem to be developing a real aversion to Sadie Sink and her incessant moody, hostile teen schtick in every single thing she is ever in. But in truth, none of these characters convince at all. Maybe it's a casting thing, maybe it's a writing thing - not sure, but for me at least, it's a sharp contrast to 1994.

And finally, much as I found people's criticism of some of 1994's "period detail" a little bit pedantic.... why is this set in 1978 and not 1981? Because the "camp slasher" this references is very much an early 80's thing. Was 1978 selected because of Carpenter's Halloween? Because there is nothing of that film's aesthetic being homaged here as far as I can tell. And also, kids in 1978 weren't all listening to glam-era Bowie and early 70's hard rock, sorry. I know it wouldn't play as well to us now, but these guys would have had the Bee Gees on constant rotation - '78 was the year of Saturday Night Fever, folks. These kids would have been pure disco.