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Fear Street Part 1: 1994 pays homage to the slasher genre early on, but its biggest influences are actually Jaws and Home Alone.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Fear Street Part 1: 1994, now streaming on Netflix.
Fear Street Part 1: 1994 largely pays homage to the slasher genre right out of the gates, mimicking the opening sequence from 1996’s Scream. It’s no surprise as this trilogy is indeed a love letter to this section of the horror universe, but as the film rolls on with its bloody crusade of witch hunting teens in Shadyside, we soon discover its biggest influences are actually Jaws and Home Alone.
How Does Jaws Influence Fear Street?
A microscope is placed on Jaws in the first act when the Skull Mask killer that the witch sends after Deena, Sam and the teens at a hospital blows by everyone, only targeting those with Sam’s blood on them and Sam herself. It’s due to Sam accidentally desecrating the witch’s grave, forming a blood connection after a car crash.
The crew soon deduces what’s happening and that the slashers who are out to kill Sam in the name of revenge can only hunt her down by sniffing out her blood. Simon immediately references Jaws, calling the slashers sharks, which is ironic, as earlier he was found at Kate’s home watching shark documentaries.
This allows them to bait the various slashers over the course of the movie, just like how the heroes would use chum and such to trick the sharks in the Jaws franchise. The Shadyside teens smear Sam’s blood on them to lure the killers away, allowing Deena to try to kill and revive Sam to break the curse later on.
How Does Home Alone Influence Fear Street?
While the Jaws movies came out in the ’70s and ’80s, Home Alone first debuted in 1990 with the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York arriving two years later. Thus, it’d stand to reason the teen brigade in 1994 would have learned a thing or two about setting traps from Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McAllister. But in this case, it’s not the Sticky Bandits they’re tricking — it’s slashers due to their blood-sniffing mode of operation.
It first happens when they head to their high school and use Sam as bait rather than a sacrifice to free them from being hunted. They set it up so that the rabid slashers rush after her, racing into the restroom, only for Sam to escape through the vents. The big twist is that they’re distracted by a mannequin set up to look like her, stabbing it up while she escapes and drops down the corridor. She signals the crew and they lock the toilets, which they’ve turned into an explosive trap, blowing the slashers up.
It’s an extreme take on when Kevin lit Harry’s head on fire with a blowtorch in Home Alone. While it’s way more incendiary here, it’s just as elaborate as they turn the school into home-field advantage, only to soon realize these slashers can reform from puddles of blood. It leads to them later using the grocery store to trick the killers into chasing them down again for Sam to pull off her resurrection skit — but sadly, this plan ends up failing.
Directed and co-written by Leigh Janiak, Fear Street stars Kiana Madeira, Olivia Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Darrell Britt-Gibson, Ashley Zukerman, Fred Hechinger, Julia Rehwald, Jeremy Ford and Gillian Jacobs. Part One: 1994 is now streaming on Netflix, followed by Part Two: 1978 on July 9 and Part Three: 1666 on July 16.
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