That Opening Scare

This article will be discussing spoilers for Fear Street Part One: 1994 and Scream. You’ve been warned.

Content warning: violence against women, blood

I was watching Fear Street Part One: 1994 (full review soon) and knew I was in for something special in the first few minutes. Why? That opening scare.

Opening scares in genre films are nothing new. Every episode of The Outer Limits, for example, has a cold open with a scary sequence to grab your attention and set your expectations for the rest of the story. Slashers, in particular, use this a lot.

That opening scare sets the audience up for the rest of the film. You establish the rules of the killer and the universe, including any key morality code the story follows. You also set the audience off guard, making them wonder when they’re going to witness the next attack.

The significance of the opening scare was revolutionized in Wes Craven’s Scream. Other slasher films would have either a lesser known actor suffer their untimely fate before the credits rolled or give a cameo to a known genre actor as a wink to the audience.

Not Scream. Scream killed its most famous actor, Drew Barrymore, in the first 10 minutes of the film. The opening scare featuring a teenager in a test of horror trivia to save her life would be iconic just from concept alone. Putting the actress they centered the entire marketing campaign around, one the target audience for the film literally grew up watching as a child star on screen, as the early pre-credits victim changed the game. The scene was instantly so iconic that there was even an attempt to campaign Barrymore for Supporting Actress awards for her role in a slasher film.

After Scream, that opening scare became one of the most elaborate sequences in many upcoming horror films. Everyone wanted their iconic touchstone moment that sold the film through infamy. It became so pervasive in genre films that horror films that weren’t even slashers would have a violent opening sequence just to have one.

Like all trends in horror, the opening scare in this fashion started to fall out of favor due to overexposure and audience expectations. It didn’t work like it should, so the genre stepped away from it.

It’s only fitting that Fear Street Part One: 1994 brings this back. For one thing, the Fear Street books always featured an opening sequence with a scare to set up the story. Maybe it was the first victim. It could also be the first appearance of a particularly cursed object or an accident with repercussions down the line. The event would connect to the story, but not drive the entire plot. A Fear Street film without a similar device would be a missed opportunity.

Look further. A mid-90s set horror film can get away with taking that elaborate cat and mouse chase, complete with phone call and additional victims hiding in plain sight, because it’s playing on nostalgia. Scream defined the mid-90s slasher, so a 1994-set Fear Street film is at full liberty to play on those same tropes.

Our poor victim is a teenage girl on the closing shift at the bookstore in the mall. She’s restocking the Fear Street books (literally the same covers I grew up buying, just with R.L. Stine’s name replaced) on the end cap when her boyfriend calls. He’s closing the not-Spencer’s Gifts down the hall in the mall. They’re going to meet up to go home together. Everything’s going to be great.

It would not, in fact, be great. Someone is following her in the bookstore, knocking books off the shelf before attacking. A great chase ensues, with twists revealed all along the way. The action is great, the editing is spectacular, and Maya Hawke (Stranger Things) gives a great performance in that “most famous actor dies first” role in a 90’s-set slasher.

The opening scare is a typical Fear Street novel condensed to a pre-credits scene. It hits all the big beats of the series in quick order, including the high school romance, the beleaguered adult trapped in petty high school drama, a quick thinking heroine getting away from a deadly attack, multiple encounters with the killer while the body count rises, and the final tragic betrayal where the story ends without justice really being served. If you hadn’t read a Fear Street book before watching the film, you have now experienced every Fear Street book ever written in CliffsNotes format.

I’m not discussing the rest of the film yet. Frankly, the rest could’ve been a disaster and my review would still find time to praise one of the best opening scares we’ve gotten in years. It’s good enough on its own to justify watching the entire film.