Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Fear Street Part Three: 1666 brings the nostalgia-humping Netflix series to a close, the loose adaptation of R.L. Stine’s teen book series jumping back a few centuries to toss a witch hunt into the sprawling mashup plot. It reincorporates a handful of cast members from the previous chapters — Fear Street Part One: 1994 and Fear Street Part Two: 1978 — lest this all get less convoluted, and promises fewer annoying needledrops, since nobody who’s still alive has fond memories of ye olde pilgrim daze. The series has inspired an is-it-movies-or-is-it-TV debate the likes of which we haven’t seen since Small Axe, and if I really don’t have a firm answer for that (it’s perfectly fine to be ambivalent about such things!), maybe I’ll be able to tell you if this wannabe slasher saga wraps up in a satisfactory manner.
FEAR STREET PART THREE: 1666: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: NO SPOILERS for the first two parts here, but I will say that the story picks up right where it last left off, and keeps leaping back/forward to 1994, with Deena (Kiana Madeira), her brother Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.) and C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs) trying to get to the bottom of the witch’s curse that has long rendered their town of Shadyside a hellhole with a long history of gruesome slasher-murderers who keep coming back from the dead to kill folks while rival town Sunnyvale is full of shiny happy people quite possibly holding hands. Got that? Well, what with something to do with reuniting long-dead witch Sarah Fier’s skeleton hand with the rest of her skeleton body, Deena finds herself in an extended flashback set in 1666, and inhabiting Sarah Fier her damn self. Please don’t ask why, although it may have something to do with giving a reasonably talented cast more stuff to do, and also possibly with keeping cast salaries under budget.
So Sarah’s brother Henry is played by Flores, and her secret lover Hannah, the pastor’s daughter, is played by Olivia Scott Welch, who played Sam in the first two; Ashley Zuckerman, who played Sheriff Nick Goode, plays his ancestor Solomon Goode, and a few other actors from the previous movies show up in smaller roles, including Sadie Sink, McCabe Slye and Emily Rudd. Sometimes Deena-Sarah looks at her reflection and sees Real Sarah, who’s played by Elizabeth Scopel. Got all that? I don’t think their town is officially dubbed Shadyside yet, but it’s got a church and some barns and a lot of dirt and poop and pigs and some creepy underground stone tunnels to be discovered later. We get to watch Deena-Sarah whip out her trusty knife and kill a breech-birth piglet before it makes the mama pig dead — something I’m grateful occurs offscreen — but everyone’s happy that seven of the piglets survived. Such are the realities of life in 1666.
At night, Deena-Sarah likes to sneak into the woods with her friends and “enjoy the fruits of the land,” which is code for tripping balls on psychedelic berries. She and Sam-Hannah push off a drunk fella with a visible sweatpants boner — sorry, that should be breeches boner — then steal off to a quiet spot to lift each other’s skirts and maybe stick their heads under those skirts, a scene that may give you the vapors. One of the town dickheads sees them and exposes them as sinners; meanwhile, the pastor does some really horrible, killy shizz while apparently in a state of supernatural possession. This happened because two women kissed in the 17th century, OBVIOUSLY, at least according to Boner Boy, the spurned incel. So Deena-Sarah and Sam-Hannah are condemned to hang for witchcraft. We, however, realize this is a bunch of anti-scientific religious-right hooey, and know it probably has something to do with the old widow who lives in a creepy hut and has a bunch of Satanic paraphernalia in that hut, and possibly the stuff one of the characters finds in the aforementioned creepy underground stone tunnels. How does all this tie into the crap that happened in 1978 and 1994? YOU SHALL NOT SPOIL.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: R.L. Stine’s The VVitch.
Performance Worth Watching: Madeira continues to show some star-power command presence, but she and Rudd are the lone standouts in the three films, which feature too many flavorless performances fulfilling the basic requirements of blandly written characters.
Memorable Dialogue: Deena-Sarah foregoes the contractions since we don’t want to be too anachronistic here in the 17th century: “They want a witch — I will give them a witch!”
Sex and Skin: A relatively smoldery makeout session, but otherwise, this movie features characters who are TBWATSUTF: Too Busy Wrapping All This Shit Up To F—.
Our Take: I must report that of course there are scenes in 1666 set in 1994, so shout out to those hammer-on-thumb Oasis and Offspring soundtrack cues. But the final chapter of this series is less overtly enamored with past horror movies (Scream being the primary reference point for the first, Friday the 13th for the second), director Leigh Janiak landing on more generic visual and tonal aesthetics, and mostly foregoes comedy for a parade of poker faces. As for the capital-A Authentic sort-of-Irish, sort-of-whatever accents, why bother? Isn’t it more fun to go full-on anachronistic like Dickinson?
Janiak uses natural lighting and moody fire-flicker atmospherics to create spooky scenes in 1666, although the inevitable back-2-tha-mall 20th-century stuff seems cribbed straight outta Stranger Things. Either way, both settings boast their fair share of poorly lit what-exactly-happened-there moments and curious instances in which characters have been brutally stabbed but still manage to hobble, walk and/or run around while noticeably not bleeding to death.
Suffice to say, the scattered bevy of plot devices are all explained and/or resolved, from the pulsing glob of goo to the occult pentagrammatic carvings to the book o’ the damned — well, sort of explained and/or resolved, in a hectic climactic sequence that’s too drawn-out to pack any powerful dramatic punches. It never quite comes together sensibly, although it may not be entirely worth fretting over if you’re enjoying the series’ ultra-gory teen-quest mashup sensibility. (I’m 49 take it/51 leave it on this dynamic, but understand its generational appeal.)
Good on Fear Street for treating a lesbian relationship like any other teen love story, although its privilege/patriarchy underpinnings are more wisps than subtextual foundations; its tying of past witch-hunt tragedies to the haves/have-nots Sunnyvale/Shadyside narrative dynamic is an ambition vaguely fulfilled, at best. No, it’s more about plot fulfillment and the reinvigoration of Super Soaker fetishes — and possibly just tasty fodder for the Netflix algorithm, which may appreciate the series’ success enough to demand Fear Street: 1956, Fear Street: 1801 and the like, since there are 300 years’ worth of killers in this narrative, and the beast must be fed.
Our Call: STREAM IT. If the first two Fear Streets scratched yer itch, then go ahead dial this one up. If you’re in for one, you’re in for three. I remain ambivalent, but the upside is, the series has me fired up for a Chopping Mall rewatch.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.
