[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Fear Street 1994.]There are a whole bunch of stellar set pieces in the first installment of the Fear Street trilogy, Fear Street 1994, but I’d like to bet one in particular stands out. Maybe something that’ll change the way you look at sliced bread forever?
While making their last stand in the grocery store, Kate (Julia Rehwald), Simon (Fred Hechinger) and Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.) need to spread out and distract the Shadyside killers so that Deena (Kiana Madeira) can help Sam (Olivia Scott Welch) die and come back to life to break free of the witch’s curse. While hiding in the bakery, Kate is attacked by the Skull Mask Killer and, well, there’s no easy way to put this - her head is put through the bread slicer.
Not only is it a wildly gnarly and creative kill scene - an unforgettable all-timer - but it’s also an especially emotional moment because Rehwald delivers so big as Kate. Here’s a character with an infectious fight and energy you can’t get enough of and we’re in the tail end of the movie. They can’t possibly kill her off now, right? Think again.
During our hour-long Collider Witching Hour conversation with director Leigh Janiak, a top priority was asking about the genesis of that particular moment. She began:
“I don’t remember the genesis of it. I remember that we were very excited about having our climax of the 90s take place in a grocery store. Part of the fun of the 90s movie for me was being able to kind of take suburbia and take these places that are really familiar and tear them apart and destroy them, so I loved the idea of being able to be in the grocery store. We kind of went through this whole thing of, the characters have different areas of the store that they’re in and they’re all trying to protect Sam, and Kate ended up in the bakery.”
Once Kate landed in the bakery, that gave Janiak the opportunity to make the most of a certain gory idea that appealed to her:
“I have these weird things that I like, like I like the idea of cake mixing with blood. I just think it’s a cool image and so at one point we just started riffing on what could happen in that sequence and then we came up with the bread slicer. It was one of those things that when you’re reading it, it’s horrible, but then you get closer to doing it and you’re like, ‘Wait, this is actually crazy,’ and, ‘How are we gonna do this?’”
From there it was on to a conversation regarding the plausibility of putting a human head in a bread slicer. Janiak continued:
“There were all of these conversations with our art department - with Scott [Kuzio], with Sean [Brennan], with Jess [Royal] - being like, ‘I don’t think a human head would really do that.’ They were like getting at me! They were like, ‘I don’t know. This is a little unbelievable.’ And I was like, ‘It’s f*cking cool so we’re gonna do it!’ And then they bought a bread slicer. They wanted to prove me wrong so they had this idea that they were gonna throw watermelons through this bread slicer and they were convinced that it wouldn’t work, and the watermelon just went right through. It was a big cheer moment, like we were at the production office and everyone just started clapping and cheering and it was amazing! And so then everyone was sold that this could happen.”
Yes, coming up with a fresh, wild kill concept can be slasher movie gold all on its own, but adding heart and a true emotional connection can take something like that to another level. Janiak said as much and gave a good deal of that credit to Rehwald:
“I think it’s shocking because it’s horrific and gross and terrible, and I think also because you love Kate. Julia did such an amazing job of creating this character that you kind of see change and grow and we’re late in the movie. This is the thing, it’s late in the movie to kill a character that is such a main character, but it’s not late in our trilogy, so that was kind of the mindset behind it that we needed real loss in order to keep our characters driving forward into the other movies.”
Eager to hear even more about the making of Fear Street 1994? You can catch our full conversation with Janiak in the podcast below: