What's the best thing Netflix has ever made? You might point to some of their biggest shows, like Stranger Things or Bridgerton, or perhaps some of their most critically acclaimed films, like Roma or The Power of the Dog. There's a good case it's KPop Demon Hunters. All of those are defensible answers, but for three weeks during the dog days of lockdown, the answer was unquestionably Fear Street, a trio of films based on Goosebumps author R. L. Stine's slightly more mature book series of the same name.
Fear Street Part One: 1994 hit Netflix on July 2, 2021, with the next two films, subtitled 1978 and 1666, coming out the following weeks. (Today is the fifth anniversary of the trilogy-capper.) Though vaccines had become widely available, the lockdown was very much ongoing, and the rise of the Delta variant that put a damper on "Hot Vax Summer" and drove many back inside, where they needed something to watch. Even though there were some new releases, especially when HBO Max started putting new Warner Bros. movies on streaming the same day as their theatrical release, there just weren't as many shiny new films to watch as the moment called for. Enter the Fear Streets.
