Hysteria! is funny, loves heavy metal, and does up its 1980s setting well. But it’s also having a real good time keeping us on the back foot.

A fun, insightful, and occasionally scary coming-of-age horror series.

While the early episodes instill intrigue and build up the scares, Hysteria! loses steam as it progresses, succumbing to a generic narrative to explain its many mysteries (some of which don’t wrap up so satisfactorily). Still, don’t let that knock that stop you from wolfing down this fun spooky-season treat.

For the most part, “Hysteria!” threads multiple genres with tight precision; there’s classic horror in the supernatural elements, pieces of procedural and murder mystery DNA in the ongoing investigation, and a richly imagined teen drama tying it all together. .... The storytelling gets rockier toward the end.

It’s a mess, but it isn’t without audacity. That’s a calling card, if not necessarily a success.

So inaptly straight-faced that it casts Bruce Campbell as the chief of police and then denies him the opportunity to flex his action-comedy muscles, it’s a misguided nostalgia trip that never comes close to earning a devil-horn salute.

Ultimately, “Hysteria!” isn’t frightening enough to be a horror series, nor wacky enough to be funny. It loses its freshness and voice by ensuring the presence of every 1980s horror trope.