Netflix reveals terrifying trailer for the Fear Street trilogy
R.L. Stine’s lesser-known, scarier YA series is finally getting screen time
’90s kids grew up with R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series but the famed children’s horror author also had a less popular and much darker franchise: Fear Street, which was targeted towards teens who could tolerate reading about people being murdered in gruesome ways. If you were one of those teens who dared to be spooked by Fear Street, you’re in luck: Netflix is releasing three Fear Street movies this summer.
The trilogy kicks off with Fear Street Part One: 1994 on July 2, followed by Fear Street Part Two: 1978 on July 9, and ends with Fear Street Part Three: 1666 on July 16. Netflix has also unveiled the trailer for the anthology, showing how peaceful things had been in Shadyside—that is, until the paranormal experiences and murders began happening again.
Similarly to the books, the trailer explains that the town is cursed. There had been a murderer who hunted campers at Shadyside’s Camp Nightwing two decades before in 1978. But with the killings happening again, the teens have to investigate what happened in 1666 that started it all, in order to free Shadyside from its deathly curse. Fans of Netflix shows will notice some familiar faces, including Gillian Jacobs (Love), Sadie Sink (Stranger Things), Maya Hawke (Stranger Things), and Kiana Madeira (Trinkets). The movies were directed and co-written by Leigh Janiak (Scream: The Series), and Phil Graziadei (Honeymoon), Zak Olkewicz (Bullet Train), and Kate Trefry (Stranger Things—sensing a pattern here?) share co-writing credits.
This isn’t the first time that there’s been an attempt to adapt the Fear Street series, either. Back in 1998, ABC aired a pilot for a series called Ghosts Of Fear Street, but the show wasn’t picked up by the network. (UPDATE: As pointed out by commenter BenSavageGarden, the ABC pilot was based on the Ghosts Of Fear Street books, which were aimed at younger readers but also set in Shadyside.) Bloody Disgusting’s Felix Vazquez Jr. describes the pilot as “a rough draft for what the producers were probably planning for the series, even with a weird opening credits sequence of computer animated skeletons dancing, for some reason.” But luckily, from the looks of the trailer, Netflix is going in a far scarier direction.