Based on the books by the great RL Stine, the FEAR STREET trilogy of movies weaves together three updates of classic slasher films and the Salem witch trials to create a whole that is fresh and utterly compelling. I loved it.

Teenager Deena lives in Shadyside, a town plagued by a long history of poverty, bad luck, and brutal slayings resulting from a serial killer that pops up seemingly with every generation. She’s angry with Samantha, her girlfriend, who moved to Sunnyvale, a bordering town that is prosperous and where people live charmed lives. After a murder spree at a mall, they discover the local legend about a witch may be true, and seek to end the curse on Shadyside. To accomplish this, they must survive supernatural killers and go back into the past to understand the curse.

The first two films borrow heavily from classic horror slasher films like SCREAM and FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH, and the last has a heavy Salem witch trial vibe. Despite the obvious creative homage, there’s a magic here where FEAR STREET’s identity stays solidly at the fore, accomplished by putting people we care about with meta stakes in a familiar situation. The whole comes together beautifully. Despite it being YA, there’s a considerable amount of gore, and every kill is far more painful than titillating. This isn’t STRANGER THINGS, where the meddling kids get off scot-free.

There were a few flaws for me, notably how some characters take horrible wounds but a few scenes later they’re perfectly okay. In typical YA fashion, several of the teenage protagonists are really annoying until they start to grow on you. There are a few minor plot holes. The central romance is fine but undeveloped to a point where I didn’t care about it.

But whatever. This is a solid horror story told with a lot of heart, great stakes, excellent lore, and a meta plot that all ties together beautifully. In short, I loved it.

In WILLY’S WONDERLAND, a mysterious loner (Nicolas Cage) battles life-sized animatronic characters in an abandoned family fun center. It’s ridiculous, but if you don’t take it remotely seriously, it’s a lot of fun.

The film begins with the loner driving through rural America, where his car ends up kaput. Lacking the money to pay for the repairs, he’s offered a deal: spend the night cleaning up Willy’s Wonderland, an abandoned family fun center, and he’ll earn the thousand dollars he needs and get back on the lonesome road. The catch is the center is haunted by evil spirits inhabiting the animatronic character mascots residing there. Meanwhile, a survivor of a previous sacrifice shows up with her friends to exact revenge. The loner, now the Janitor, resolves to clean the building as promised while fighting his way through animatronic monsters.

Okay, so the Janitor has zero character development other than he’s hooked on canned punch, the survivor’s friends are disposable cannon fodder making terrible decisions, the animatronic bad guys aren’t all that tough, and the whole thing is kinda cartoonish with a paint by numbers horror plot, but whatever. I knew going into this one not to take it at all seriously and that I’d get to see Nicolas Cage beat up animatronic mascots, a promise that is signed, sealed, and delivered. In short, I liked this one and thought it was good, clean fun.

Jumping 27 years ahead after IT, IT CHAPTER TWO (2019) brings the Losers’ Club back to face Pennywise again as adults. The sequel features the same terrific execution as the first, with a similar cast of great actors, but suffers from predictability and a lack of a satisfying group dynamic so heavily present in the first film.

The Losers Club of Derry’s brutal high school united to defeat the malevolent entity calling itself Pennywise, after which they made an oath to fight it again if it ever reappeared. Now, 27 years later, all except one have scattered, lost touch, and also lost their memories of what they did as kids. Mike Hanlon calls them to bring them back to fulfill their oath, leading to a final confrontation.

What I liked: The horror elements are again utterly freaky. The casting is terrific. If this were a standalone film, it’d be pretty solid.

What I didn’t: Because they lost their memories, the adults have all the same flaws they did as kids, so we have to see them try to conquer them again, this time not as neatly. The group dynamic, excellent chemistry, and terrific tension and stakes in the first film are largely missing in the second. The oddly timed jokes fell flat for me. A gay reveal appears grafted on for whatever. All of this would have been fine for me but watching it, I felt like I’d seen it before, resulting in a predictability of going through the motions to the point of numbness. Stephen King elements that work well on the page don’t always translate on the screen and come off as overly saccharine. Overall, despite all the fun bits, it was just damned hard to care.

Overall, I liked IT CHAPTER TWO but think the film would have benefited from a new group dynamic, maybe the adults having fixed their childhood flaws to the point of excess, and a refresh of the central conflict with Pennywise to create something new and less predictable.

GAIA (2021, found on Google Play) is an intriguing ecological horror film that ultimately, for me, didn’t live up to its atmosphere and ambition. I liked it, but my feelings about it are mixed.

The film is set in South Africa, where Gabi, a park ranger, stumbles across two men living a primitive lifestyle in the forest, a scientist and his son. She discovers that the forest is laced with a mushroom network that is sentient, infectious, and wants to grow. She wants to return to civilization and take the son with her, the scientist wants to stay to study and worship the organism, and the organism wants everything. It all comes to a head in a story with Biblical overtones.

I liked it overall but just couldn’t connect with it on anything other than a base aesthetic level. The forest is beautiful, the actors interesting to look at, and the organism and creature effects are well done. Dream sequences seek to take the film to a higher artistic level and somewhat succeed in this.

There’s a clumsiness, however, to the plotting and character development. The plotting issues are just annoyances, but the character development issues were more problematic for me. I never really know who Gabi is or what she wants, and it drags down what otherwise could have been an interesting dynamic. There’s an environmental message here as well, part of which works well (nature is beautiful but something to fear) and some, while being correct, doesn’t (humans are destroying nature and will ultimately destroy themselves). As a result, when it wrapped up, I didn’t feel much of anything.

Overall, GAIA doesn’t quite live up to its ambitions, but it’s an intriguing, atmospheric, and beautiful ride. Check it out if you’re into ecological horror.