For this review of Fear Street I’ll be combining Part 2: 1978 and Part 3: 1666, you can read my review of Fear Street Part 1:1994 here. I decided to watch and review the Fear Street films as part of an effort to overcome my fear of scary movies before Halloween this year.
As usual, a huge SPOILER ALERT for all parts of Fear Street applies below this point.
Fear Street Part 2: A Love Letter to Slashers
Fear Street Part 2: 1978 was my favorite of the Fear Street films when viewed as standalone pieces rather than parts of a series. Perhaps it’s because the idea of a crazed camp killer running around with nary an actual adult in sight (seriously, why are all of these camps COMPLETELY staffed by teenagers and college kids?) felt more familiar to me (I have shockingly seen at least one Friday the 13th movie).
What took me by unpleasant surprise however was the realization that this killer was only killing Shadyside campers, not one single hair on a Sunnyvale camper’s head was harmed. These poor kids already came from the shitty side of town, were constantly bullied and belittled by both Sunnyvale campers AND staff, the last thing they needed was the threat of a crazed murderer who would only do harm to them rather than their counterparts from the “nice” side of town. In fact, during this realization, I could only remember one Sunnyvale resident having any harm done to them in the course of the series, and it was Sam’s boyfriend who gets murdered by the mall killer while they’re in the hospital in part 1.
In thinking about the body count in this film, I now can’t remember if they ever said if Ziggy’s camp bully Sheila lived or died, and in doing some searching it seems no one else knows either. Throughout the course of this film, I was debating if the “C. Berman” from the end of part 1 was the older sister, Cindy, or if Ziggy’s real name also started with a C. Spoiler alert, but those who paid attention in part 1 should have known as soon as Ziggy bled on Sarah Fier’s severed hand that she was the surviving C. Berman. Deena had called her specifically because she had “seen the witch” and lived. Even without that bit of deductive reasoning, the subtitles call C. Berman “Christine” less than a few minutes before the name reveal, which then lost any punch it would have had.
We end part 2 with the digging up of Sarah’s hand, which happens to be buried under a tree in the MALL (seriously, did NO ONE notice that when they disturbed the ground to pot the tree??) and the reconnection of the hand with her body that they had found in the woods in part 1.
Stray thoughts from part 2:
- Tommy looks a lot like Robert Pattison
- Okay with the Supernatural nod with carry on my wayward son (or it might not be, and it’s just forever coupled in my brain with Supernatural, which is also possible).
- They’re gonna Carrie her lmao
- Which liike. This is mean AF, but she’s a bitch
- Okay the bugs are 10x worse
- Okay we love a makeshift splint with realistic things from her bag
- Okay but would CPR help really, this feels like more of a blood loss situation
Ending With the Beginning
I will be upfront and say I do NOT vibe with period pieces when it comes to horror. For whatever reason, they unsettle me and I prefer not to watch them. It took a bit to grasp what was going on when we saw Deena as Sarah Fier, but after getting my footing I really enjoyed part 3. It becomes clear pretty quickly that Sarah was not, in fact, a witch. While she and Hannah Miller were no doubt targeted for their “sins” neither of them was involved in magic of any sort.
In the middle of the town’s “curse,” we get to see the first of the killers chronologically, Cyrus Miller. The town’s pastor cut out the eyes of 12 children and killed them. That scene was hard to watch, knowing what was coming. I truly wasn’t expecting a pile of eyes and fleshy goo in the middle of the church.
Early on I had a bad feeling about Caleb, who ends up telling everyone he saw Sarah and Hannah “lay with satan” and a bunch of other nonsense, all because Hannah wouldn’t sleep with him and Sarah humiliated him (sad to say him doing something shitty was predictable, as characters in these sorts of films usually do when someone humiliates them). The town gets whipped into a frenzy, and all of a sudden people are popping out of the woodwork saying “oh yeah, I saw Hannah Miller and Sarah Fier”. Soloman Goode seems to be the girl’s only friend here, trying to calm down the townsfolk, but everyone should have known something was up if they remembered what the witch’s house looked like in Part 2.
His house was the only one away from town, in the woods where the camp would later be. So it came as no surprise when Sarah runs for her life to Soloman’s house that she discovers the same underground area Alice and Cindy stumbled upon in Part 2. I hate to say that I liked that Sarah wasn’t actually a witch, but I really did. I thought it was much better than a witch’s vengeful curse on a town. I half expected it, but what I hadn’t expected was how the curse was truly maintained, and how killers were “selected”.
Goode and Evil
The reveal that the heir in the Goode line got to CHOOSE who would get possessed in exchange for whatever they wanted rocked me. This was no longer the lingering remnants of a deal with the devil 300 years ago, it was 300 years of active violence against a community for their own selfish desires. I’ve had notes from each film on how I didn’t get why Sunnyvalers had such a beef with Shadysiders, but it works into the plan if no one in Nick Goode’s community would care about the horrific murders. I found it funny that in the color war speech of part 2 the Sunnyvale counselor is saying it’s a fight between good and evil (with Shadyside being evil) yet Sunnyvale was clearly the evil force here for 300 years.
Stray thoughts from part 3:
- This is… interesting
- “As survivors our faces will remain always towards the sun” ahh so, Sunnyvale
- Ah yes, the bullshit man. Knew this was gonna happen
- All 3 of these have felt like they have draggedddddd on
- “They think we’re guilty so we are”
- I’d like her to at least wince when she cut her hand
- FINALLY we know he was chatting on AOL with!!!!
Final Thoughts on Fear Street
As standalone films, I thought the second part was the strongest, but part 3 is what made me actually like the series as a whole. Each film has felt longer than it is at points (I wish I could offer what I’d cut or use to fix any pacing, but alas I am empty-handed). Overall the actors did a great job, in each installment of the series. I thought part 2 was the most brutally well-done and part 3 was the best story-wise. Using super soakers to cover the killers in blood and get them to go after each other? LOVED it!
This series is scaredy cat approved, but not recommended for those who don’t like or can’t deal with gore.
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