Sex, drugs, and (carefully manufactured) rock ‘n roll at a 70s summer camp is what Fear Street part 2 wants to be all about. And, to be fair, it has a decent amount of sex (at least for a modern movie and certainly one based on a book for teens), some drug use, and a ton of needle drops. I was pretty bummed out though by this sequel, least of all for not really getting much else right about its referenced sub-genre of horror. It somehow made me nostalgic for a movie that’s only a week old.

1978 picks up right after 1994 ends with the survivors visiting the mysterious survivor of the 1978 massacre. When they meet, we get a flashback to how she survived. And in 1978, our new cast is at a summer camp so we can get a kind of Friday the 13th-ish slasher film this time (allegedly).

Here’s the thing though… I don’t think they nailed the tone of an old 70/80s slasher films. I guess they’d have to go with a lot more film grain, a lot more random sex, and more creative (or sick) kills. And I doubt anyone was going to pay them to make a movie that looks like someone’s last known photograph (thanks MST3K for the joke). They also didn’t offer up an actually interesting slasher since the person they use is BORING for the majority of it.

But fair enough – it can still be its own creepy or fun thing. But, for me, it wasn’t… it didn’t offer a particularly interesting mystery (since we kind of already know what’s going on), it doesn’t offer memorable characters, and it spends too much time in a moldy cave or an outhouse. I was mostly just bored and wondering why this movie was taking so long to do anywhere interesting. More interesting than the killer being “just some guy” anyway.

Sadie Sink is our latest borrow from Stranger Things (after Maya Hawke in the first one). And she’s probably the only actor I cared remotely about and that was probably only due to nostalgia for Stranger Things itself. I think she’s a capable enough actress and at least she had the more interesting part compared to her character’s sister.

Oh well… I’m hoping that 1666 will tie this up in a neat bow but I worry that, since we already understand the mystery, that movie might be a bunch of olde timey wheel-spinning too. We’ll see.

This one though just didn’t really click with me.

Score: 69