Although Fear Street: 1994 features three formidable villains of its own, the first film in the Netflix horror trilogy sets up even scarier villains for use in later installments. Fear Street: 1994 is a retro-style slasher recently released by Netflix. The movie is the first in a trio of adaptations inspired by R.L. Stine’s novel series of the same name.
Fear Street: 1994 will be followed by Fear Street: 1978, and the trilogy will be capped off by Fear Street: 1666. Already, Fear Street: 1994 has set up the villains of its sequels, and by the looks of things, they will be even scarier than the triumvirate of killers seen in the first film. Fear Street part one is a gory slasher, with a hard-R rating, but Pastor Cyrus Miller, Milkman Harry Rooker, and Billy Barker look even more lethal than the movie’s villains.
Fear Street: 1994 sees its heroes pursued by not one, but three slasher movie villains after they accidentally disturb the grave of a local “witch,” Sarah Fier. The group is stalked by the Camp Nightwing killer, an ax-wielding killer with a bag over his (or her) head, Ruby Lane, a crooning villainess armed with a cutthroat razor, and Skull Mask (a.k.a. Ryan Torres), a recently dead classmate of theirs wearing a Halloween costume. However, a rapid-fire montage mid-way through the movie’s action reveals that the movie’s small-town setting of Shadyside has been home to numerous killers even scarier than these three, from the possessed pastor Cyrus Miller to the killer Milkman Harry Rooker, to Billy Barker, a killer kid who would give Pet Sematary’s villain a run for his money.
It is hard to tell which of the new killers established in Fear Street: 1994’s fast-paced montage is the most threatening. From what viewers have seen, Billy Barker bashes in his brother’s brains in one of the movie’s goriest moments, but he is also a small child and therefore hardly as threatening to teen heroes as a killer their size. Meanwhile, Pastor Cyrus Miller has arguably the creepiest appearance of the trio, as a gaunt, black-eyed demonic figure. However, as he is only seen mumbling to himself and his killings aren’t depicted onscreen, it is hard to tell how dangerous a threat he would be in person. Thus, for now, the scariest of Fear Street: 1994’s upcoming villains is the lithe, diminutive Harry Rooker, a slasher who looks like Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger on a good day and is seen tearing the throat out of a defenseless housewife during his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance.
However, this analysis does dismiss what may be the trilogy’s most threatening villain of all, the witch Sarah Fier. Killed after being accused of witchcraft, she severed her hand and buried it to curse the town of Shadyside and has (according to the heroes of Fear Street: 1994, at least) been possessing locals ever since. While she is clearly the big-picture villain behind the rest of the killers, Sarah Fier has not been seen in action yet and may not be until the third movie of the series, Fear Street: 1666. Since the rest of these barely-glimpsed Fear Street trilogy villains have an onscreen body count already (save for Cyrus Miller), it remains to be seen whether Sarah Fier is as bloodthirsty as the killers she possesses, a question that only the upcoming Fear Street: 1994 sequels can answer.
