Yup, I’m doing it: writing up a list of detailed reasons as to why the Fear Street trilogy was so damn good: harrowing, cathartic, heartfelt, tragic and just what I needed at this specific point in time.
Let’s get some disclaimers down first. It ain’t high art. I’m pretty sure my ecstatically enthusiastic response is at least partly due to the fact that I was not in any way, shape or form expecting this to be good. I was actually looking forward to it being bad in the same way that R.L. Stine’s body of work is generally pretty bad: cheesy, pulpy, gory, lightweight nonsense.
So imagine my shock when I found myself increasingly engrossed in how this story unfolded. Just keep in mind that I went in with very low expectations, for if you decide to watch on the basis of my recommendation there’s every chance I’ve already overhyped it for you. And that’s assuming you’re into the horror/slasher genre anyway. Not everyone is.
Also, for any long-time fans of Stine’s Fear Street, you may want to keep in mind that this actually has very little to do with the books. It’s set in a town called Shadyside and… that’s about it. No Fear family (certainly no Simon or Angelica), no explanation about why Sarah’s last name is spelt Fier, and (strangest of all) no actual Fear Street. There’s a passing glimpse of a Fier Street, but doesn’t figure into the plot in any way.
I believe the very basic premise of a bus accident leading to a cheerleader uncovering the grave of Sarah Fear and getting possessed is lifted from the Cheerleaders trilogy (though the entire context has been changed) but for the most part, if you’re expecting any recognizable plot-points from the books… don’t.
The thing is though, this trilogy does Fear Street better than Stine. Perhaps that’s hubris to say out loud, but the truth is that Stine’s writing never went within a million miles of things like complex characterization or meaningful themes – they were cheap paperbacks that existed for grisly deaths, red herrings, and at least one big twist. And that’s okay! Fans knew what to expect and loved them for it.
But this trilogy takes the general vibe of Fear Street – teenagers with no parental supervision, high school rivalries, generational secrets, cliffhangers and fake-outs, the seedy side of the American dream – and crafts something vaguely familiar but wholly original out of it. It captures the spirit of the books while staking out its own narrative territory.
Suffice to say: spoilers below the cut. If you’re even vaguely curious about these films, watch them before reading this.
Format and Premise
The original plan for this trilogy was apparently for each one to be released in cinemas across an extended period of time, and that this didn’t happen is possibly the only decent thing Covid-19 has done for us. I’m really not sure how this idea would have even worked: release the films too close together and you’d get inevitable confusion over which ones a person had already seen. Release them too far apart and audiences would forget the carefully placed details and clues sown throughout each interconnecting film.
(And of course, there are those that would have seen one and missed the other two, or watched them out of order, or seen only the last instalment, thereby either missing half the story or not understanding the rest of it).
The trilogy’s rightful home was clearly a streaming service, in which the three films could be released at regular intervals across three weeks in July (coinciding with summer break in the Northern hemisphere). This creates a serialized story that’s easily accessed in a reasonable space of time without any confusion regarding chronological order, allowing for anticipation but also memory retention. Heck, I ended up binge-watching them all in one night anyway.
It’s 1994 and the town of Shadyside, Ohio, is reeling from yet another mass-murder committed by a seemingly normal person who just “snapped” – an occurrence that happens with alarming frequency in what’s now known as “Killer Capital, U.S.A”. For centuries the poverty-stricken neighbourhood has grappled with horrific crimes, ranging from a deranged milkman killing housewives, to a massacre at summer camp, to a 17th century pastor blinding and murdering over a dozen children.
Urban legend blames the spirit of Sarah Fier, a witch who cut off her own hand to make a deal with Satan, and who is said to periodically possess ordinary people to commit unspeakable acts as vengeance for how she was hanged as a witch in 1666. Their misfortunate is thrown into even sharper relief when it comes to the neighbouring town of Sunnyvale, a wealthy and pristine community that boasts minimal crime, economic prosperity, and plenty of stately mansions.
Teenager Deena Johnson doesn’t believe any of that witch stuff; she’s too busy feeling bitter after a recent breakup. Then an escalating series of pranks leads not only to the uncovering of Sarah’s resting place, but Deena’s ex landing in the hospital with a concussion… where she’s attacked by the very same killer that was shot dead the previous day… then by a girl armed with a razor blade from the 1920s… then by an axe-wielding maniac with a sack over his head…
In a desperate search for answers, Deena and her friends track down the sole survivor of the 1979 massacre at Camp Nightwing to get her story, the details of which makes up the greater part of the second movie; providing more clues and insights into how these killings actually work. The third and final film has Deena mysteriously transported back in time to 1666, where she witnesses (and participants in) the events leading up to Sarah Fier’s hanging and subsequent curse, uncovering the truth of Shadyside’s tragic history.
It’s perfectly calibrated in so many ways to be my jam. I mean, we’ve got a trilogy that moves backwards through time, each one a homage to a particular branch of the horror genre, each divulging more clues and information about the strange occurrences that are going on, with a plot led by female protagonists caught up in a supernatural mystery that they’re desperate to solve before death catches up to them. I love everything about this.
That said, it’s not difficult to grasp some of the major beats of the plot. The moment I saw the socio-economic difference between Sunnyvale and Shadyside, I knew someone had made a Deal with the Devil to enrich one side of the town by leeching off the other. One character has an iconic surname from the books that immediately threw up a red flag as to their true nature. And the attempt to conceal which of the two Burman sisters had died at Camp Nightwing was so clumsily wrought that most viewers didn’t even seem to realize it was meant to be a twist.
(The surviving character is introduced as C. Burman in a newspaper article – but why on earth would a newspaper use an initial instead of a first name? It was clearly a clumsy Doylist attempt to make us think the survivor was Cindy, when it was already obvious that it would be Ziggy – real name: Christine).
But I digress. The interesting thing that’s come up in a few online discussions is that this predictability in no way detracts from the story itself. It’s actually refreshing that the script leans into several tried-and-true tropes of the genre (while playing around with others) without trying to get too cute with subversions and deconstructions in order to simply blindside the audience. It’s rewarding to guess the twist and have your theories pay off, and the characters themselves are so compelling that you’re swept up in the suspense of the narrative anyway.
A good comparison is Spiderman: No Way Home. From the second we all saw Zendaya falling in the trailer, we knew she would get saved by Andrew Garfield’s Spiderman as a follow-up to his failure to save Gwen in his own franchise. And yet it was still profoundly satisfying to see it play out due to the anticipation of the lead-up, the sheer level of emotion involved, and the performance Garfield delivers.
The same goes for the narrative and emotional beats of Fear Street. Though there were some genuine surprises in the details of how the story panned out, most of the twists are telegraphed early and often – though are sown throughout with such confidence and revealed with such panache that it isn’t anything but rewarding to experience them unfold.
Meticulous Plotting
Most slashers are inherent mysteries to one extent or another. There’s a masked killer whose identity is concealed, slaughtering people for reasons unknown. This isn’t always the case (later instalments in the Halloween and Jason films are just straight-up bloodbaths) but one of the most famous franchises in the genre – Scream – is very much built around making a mystery of its central killer, with everyone in the cast presented as a potential suspect.
Fear Street takes this one step further and turns its entire story into a mystery that goes far deeper than “who’s the killer?” In fact, it’s what I’m going to coin a supernatural mystery, which is pretty difficult to pull off given that the components of the plot are based on largely original concepts that have to be introduced to the audience across the duration of the story.
To provide an example of this, think back to The Prisoner of Azkaban. When you get right down to it, it’s a straightforward Clear My Name narrative, in which readers are led to believe Sirius Black is the traitor who betrayed Harry’s parents when in actuality it was Peter Pettigrew. But to pull off this twist within a magical setting, we first have to be introduced to things like Animagi, werewolves, Boggarts, the Marauder’s Map, the Fidelius Charm and the Whomping Willow, which all provide the groundwork as to how the initial crime (the murder of Harry’s parents) took place.
Fear Street works on a similar premise, introducing several unfathomable events, seemingly unrelated supernatural phenomena, and other strange elements (nosebleeds, psychic visions, urban legends) that may or may not be clues as to what’s going on – all before the necessary context to understand everything is revealed.
Providing a framework for the inexplicable is essential for this sub-genre: when mysteries are built on the paranormal or the magical it’s vitally important to have a set of rules that make sense of what’s going on, no matter how arbitrary things may seem at first. Writers have to be extra diligent about not cheating or taking narrative shortcuts. If the audience wants a fair chance at figuring things out for themselves, then the rules have to be set down clearly and succinctly, and even seemingly random incidences need to figure into a coherent whole sooner or later.
That logic applies here. In my first watch of 1994, it initially felt like the script was simply doing whatever it wanted to justify the usual suspense and gore of a generic slasher. There’s a massacre at the Shadyside Mall by someone who “just snapped”. Then a main character is targeted by all the past killers of Shadyside who come after her specifically. Finally that same character becomes a violent would-be killer herself. The first time around, it all seems totally haphazard.
But after watching next two films in the trilogy, it becomes abundantly clear that there’s something deeper going on. There is in fact a very good reason for the seeming discrepancies between the two types of killings – in fact, the difference between a Shadysider losing their mind and indiscriminately killing people in the vicinity and the undead specters of all the past killers coming back to target a specific individual is intrinsic to the wider scope of the unfolding story. And to their credit, our initial gang of protagonists – Deena, Josh, Sam, Kate and Simon – pick up on this relatively quickly.
Here’s another underrated trope: characters in bizarre situations coming to logical but wrong conclusions based on limited information. Whether the audience is in on what’s actually happening or not, it’s always fun to watch unfold – either we get the suspense and agony of seeing the characters struggle (and fail) to figure out what’s going on, or we’re trying to puzzle it out along with them.
In this case, the Shadyside gang come to fairly sensible conclusions based on common sense and pop-culture norms. They figure out that the serial killers are targeting Sam (as opposed to all of them) due to their weird behaviour in tracking her blood on Simon’s shirt and Deena’s shoe, subsequently assuming this is because Sam was the individual who disturbed Sarah Fier’s grave. There’s also the ingenious detail of having Josh watch a shark documentary prior to the action so he can draw an analogy to a shark chasing chum.
They’re right in the first instance (Sam is being pursued via her blood) but wrong in the second (it’s not because she disturbed Sarah’s bones – not exactly). Yet knowing that the killers follow the scent of a person’s blood becomes an essential weapon in the third film, and expanding their hypothesis of the angry spirit to include the return of Sarah’s hand to the rest of her body is what finally cracks open the truth of what’s really going on.
And that reveal is *chef’s kiss*. It is seeded and built up and eventually unveiled so beautifully across the three films. Because of the nature of the story, we don’t really question the “facts” as they’re laid down by the main characters: that a witch called Sarah Fier offered up her hand to the devil, that she was hanged by the townsfolk, and that she cursed the land in vengeance – a curse that echoes down to the present day in the form of various individuals getting possessed by her and engaging in mass slaughter.
We get several clues that point to the veracity of this tale. If you’re a book reader, this is exactly what happens in The First Evil with the cheerleaders. If you know anything about ghost stories, you’ll know that disturbing a grave or reuniting parts of a body are standard ways of antagonizing a spirit/laying them to rest. Across the course of the films we’re given rhyming stanzas and missing hands and mysterious nosebleeds that all seemingly point to Sarah Fier as the culprit behind Shadyside’s misfortune.
And yet there are some clues that don’t appear to add up; no single theory that accounts for all the data. The first film ends with Samantha’s name being inscribed on a stone in an underground cavern by a hooded figure, a scene that doesn’t seem to fit with anything we’ve been told about Sarah up to this point. The immediate effects of someone bleeding on Sarah’s bones are contradictory, as why would the witch show a person flashes of her life and send a posse of undead killers after them? A more likely scenario is that she’s trying to communicate something and a third party is determined to kill them before they can share it. But who?
As I started watching 1666, I told myself that they could hypothetically stick with the story of an evil witch and still have an entertaining story. I’m always down for a decent villainess, and they certainly want you to believe in the evil of Sarah Fier when the final instalment kicks off. Despite an early clue that she’s innocent of any wrongdoing (Pastor Miller’s possession occurs before she makes any sort of deal with the devil) some clever red herrings are thrown in that leads the viewer up the garden path…
First we have at least three different characters (Sarah’s father, Solmon, the Widow) comment on Sarah’s inherent strangeness, suggesting that she might be particularly attuned to supernatural forces. We see her find the demonic book at the Widow’s house and read out the names of the demons written within. Surely everyone’s ears pricked up when Solomon tries to console her after she blames herself for the pestilence, saying “even the weakest soul must offer their hand [to Satan]” – as of course, we already know she DOES lose her hand at some point.
And finally, once she’s grown furious at the way she’s been treated by the townsfolk, and desperate to spare Hannah’s life by any means necessary, she announces that she’ll go to the woods and make a deal with the devil to save them both. “If they want a witch, I’ll give them a witch.”
It was at this point I deflated a little. How often have we seen this character arc play out? An abused and righteously angry woman goes nuts and has to be stopped at all costs. Think Morgana from Merlin or Daenerys from Game of Thrones or Isabella from the BBC’s Robin Hood. Heck, even Karli from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. We can sympathize with her, but the narrative makes it clear that there’s a limit to how far she’s allowed to go in defense of herself and others. Once she crosses that line, then the status quo must be protected by any means necessary.
In this case, being hunted and persecuted and threatened with death is no excuse for Sarah to make a deal with the devil (I mean, technically it isn’t, I’m just saying we’ve had this tedious story told to us so many times!)
But then – the reveal. Sarah finds the Widow murdered and the book missing. She goes to Solomon for help, and he tells her to hide when the townsfolk come searching for her. She discovers a cavern under his house, in which a Satanic ceremony has clearly taken place.
It was not Sarah Fier that laid the curse upon the land, but her friend and neighbour Solomon Goode. His motivations were not as noble as hers – whereas she was out for vengeance and salvation, he was simply tired of trying to farm unproductive land.
Already disgusted by what the cost of what a deal with Satan would actually involve, Sarah rejects his “We’re Not So Different” Remark and tells him: “I’m nothing like you.” Because despite their superficial similarities, they’re not: ultimately Sarah won’t go through with any soul-sacrificing deal with a Satanic power to get what she wants, instead giving up her own life in order to save Hannah’s.
It’s a masterful use of misdirection, and the full context not only makes better sense of the clues we’ve already been given, but illuminates material we didn’t even know were clues. The difference in prosperity between Shadyside and Sunnyvale is given obvious clarity once we learn how Solomon’s deal was struck. The discrepancy between the two types of killings was brought on by individuals getting too close to the truth of what actually happened. The names on the stone wall were given to Satan by members of the Goode family, and Sam was among them because Plan A (sending all the killers after her) failed.
Why the Nightwing killer only went after Shadysiders wasn’t because the witch cursed them but because the Goodes protected the Sunnyvalers. The witch’s house that Cindy and Alice discover in 1979 on Nurse Lane’s map was actually the remains of Solomon’s. Most of Nick’s dialogue, as both a teenager and an adult, is now rife with double meaning.
It neatly explains why setting Sarah’s bones to rest didn’t stop the killers, and why they weren’t interested in the hand when they kill Cindy in 1979: because it had jack-shit to do with the curse. The red moss wasn’t sinister at all, but a symbol of Sarah’s lasting presence and her love for Hannah. Neither were the nosebleeds, which were a mechanism for unlocking Sarah’s side of the story.
There are three sets of investigators across all three films: Nurse Lane, the Nightwing counselors, and Deena’s team. All are struggling to find answers to the inexplicable, only to misinterpret many of the clues that they uncover. It’s only by the three of them passing on information to each other that they finally get to the truth, making the entire trilogy a masterclass of how to plot out a mystery that’s based in the inexplicability of the supernatural, but still remains consistent with its own internal logic – enough so that it can eventually be solved.
Commentary on Diversity/Female Characters/Class Issues/LGBTQA+/Victim Blaming
So the deal that was struck was this: a member of the Goode family gives a name to the devil, that individual becomes possessed and goes on a killing spree, and in return the Goode family (and by extension, all of Sunnyvale) grows affluent and prosperous, leeching off the blood sacrifices of those living in Shadyside.
The tragedy of this cannot be understated: the Shadysiders have no idea why their town is so profoundly, violently unlucky, and those that try to escape – Cindy, Kate and Sam – are inevitably dragged back by circumstance. Innocent people meet horrifically brutal deaths, their unwilling killers have their names blackened by history, and dozens of grieving and traumatized families (of the killers as well as the victims) are left behind.
The reach of the “witch’s hand” is everywhere: Cindy and Ziggy’s father left them and their mother is an alcoholic. Josh and Deena’s entirely off-screen father is apparently unemployed and permanently drunk. Alice reveals that she self-harms and describes her own family thusly: “I watched my dad go to jail when I was six. I watched my mum steal so I could eat.” Simon is the breadwinner for his entire family, and his brother Timothy nearly died of an overdose. Kate mentions that her aunt was killed at Camp Nightwing, which “screwed my family up for a long time”. Even Heather, in her opening scene, mentions: “my mum used her last paycheck on scratch tickets instead of the gas bill” which requires her to work late (and leads directly to her death).
And of course there’s Nurse Mary Lane, a woman permanently haunted by the fact that her daughter Ruby killed seven of her friends and then herself with a razor blade. As a mother, she’s unable to comprehend why a sweet, good-natured girl could ever be compelled to do such a thing, and is forced to carry the stigma of her daughter’s crimes for the rest of her life.
For the most part, Shadysiders blame themselves. Those that believe in the witch think it’s a generational curse brought on by their ancestors having murdered Sarah Fier, and those that don’t (like Deena) have resigned themselves to a future in a dead-end town: “I know there’s not much of a future in Shadyside… best case is what? Dead on the mall floor after a double shift, or maybe, if you’re really lucky, you’re the one carrying the knife.”
Sunnyvalers certainly get in on the act: after Nurse Lane attacks Tommy at camp, someone remarks: “fucking Shadysiders ruin everything!” and a voice in the opening credits of 1994 states: “Shadysiders seem to have no desire to better themselves.” And heck, you can kind of see Peter’s point when he sneers: “it’s not a tragedy when it happens every week” at the memorial service for the latest Shadyside massacre. The killers pop up so regularly that you can feel the sense of dread and hopelessness that permeates the township – I imagine it’s like how American teenagers feel knowing that they could be gunned down by a school shooter any day of the week.
It’s such a profound metaphor for so many things: generational trauma, economic hardship, victim blaming... Everyone in Shadyside is so horribly resigned to the world they’re trapped in, from their dead-end jobs to their endless sporting losses, and the heartbreaking thing is that they have no idea that it’s not their fault.
Throw in the subtle racial divide (Sunnyvale seems to be made up of mostly white people, though Shadyside in 1994 is far more diverse) and two closeted lesbians as protagonists (hinted at being the reincarnations of another pair of lesbians who were scapegoated for the entire mess that Shadyside has endured for over three hundred years) and you’ve got social commentary baked into the very backbone of the plot. Indeed, the victim blaming on the part of the Shadysiders started early, when Sarah herself fears that her romantic/sexual feelings for Hannah are what’s causing the pestilence that’s plaguing Union, something her Puritan community neither understands or accepts, and which soon enough makes her an easy scapegoat for their fears.
And on a minor note, at least two of the Shadyside killers – Billy Barker and Michael Rooker – are said to have had facial disfigurements before they were chosen by the Goodes to become killers. So we can throw some ableism into the mix as well, since it’s very likely that they were chosen to be victims of possession on account of their physical appearances.
The best part of all this is that none of it is window dressing or an attempt to get cheap “woke points”. Rather, all of the divisions that exist between the status quo and the “othered” are an integral part of the trilogy, feeding into every aspect of the story as it unfolds: the characterization, the themes, the mystery and the solution.
Excellent Villains
Which brings us to the villain. I may have alluded to this in my Top Six Best Film/Television Moments of 2021, but the villains of Fear Street are what Star Wars didn’t have the balls to pull off with Kylo Ren. And honestly, it was a little amusing to see a couple of people on Twitter/Tumblr short-circuiting over the fact that a good-looking white guy with soulful eyes wasn’t coddled or excused by the narrative or handed a redemption arc on a silver platter.
Yet the way the trilogy stages their Hidden Villains is great, not just because they make us like Solomon and Nick (not trick us into it, because these men are genuinely likeable at times) but because they’re not let off the hook. That combination makes them far more interesting – precisely through how banal and weak they ultimately are – than any of the usual Tragic Backstories/Sympathy for the Devil glurge that Disney has lately ascribed to everyone from Kylo Ren to Cruella de Ville to Maleficent.
And the strangest thing is that by refusing to push the audience into overly sympathizing with these men I had the room to do it myself. Without feeling like it was being imposed upon me, I was able to grasp where they were coming from and what they were trying to achieve, which makes for a richer and more satisfying depiction of evil.
In hindsight, that Nick and Solomon Goode were going to end up the bad guys was pretty obvious. In the first instance their last name was Goode, which was the family name of major bad guys in the Fear Street sagas. Likewise, that Nick was a cop in a story so obviously about class issues with a Black protagonist pitted against him was something of a red flag. As for Solomon, he was just too nice to be anything but secretly evil (and of course, played by the same actor as Nick).
But between Nick’s sense of humour and rapport with Ziggy as a teenager, and Solomon’s open-mindedness and soft-spoken nature in his initial interactions with Deena, their turns to evil aren’t made out to be shocking, but rather profoundly disappointing. Even in the midst of our suspicions we like these men. We don’t want them to be evil. And the scariest thing about them is that you believe in their sincerity.
I think Solomon was genuinely horrified at what Pastor Miller had done to the children and truly trying to deescalate the situation at the town meeting. Nick was obviously sickened when he discovered the massacred children at Camp Nightwing, and clearly had little thought for his own safety when he threw himself in front of possessed!Tommy to protect Ziggy.
But here’s the genius of the script: it allows the two of them to have these moments of real humanity before laying down its truth bomb: those moments mean absolutely nothing if you chose to keep doing terrible things.
It sounds so obvious, but it was just so refreshing. So many people in fandom have this bizarre mentality in that because an otherwise-evil character cares about someone, it proves they’re actually good deep down. It ignores that terrible people are perfectly capable of caring about plenty of things: a murderer can like cake, or going on hikes, or dogs, or their PS4. And sometimes that degree of caring can extend to a person, usually if that person provides them with something they enjoy: company, amusement, validation.
At a time when the tiniest little speck of sadness or remorse will have fandom screaming “redemption arc!” Fear Street does the inversion: saying that it doesn’t matter how conflicted, guilt-ridden or justified you like to think you are – if you make a deal with the devil to kill innocent people then you’re the fucking villain!!
But the other half of fandom is under the impression that if a villain’s ultimate choice is to embrace evil, then any decency or guilt they demonstrated prior to this choice is not only negated, but that it was never real in the first place – just trickery or a performance.
What no one realizes is that there’s a third option: that bad people are capable of having genuine fondness for other people, and that this doesn’t matter in the slightest if they don’t chase that feeling towards becoming a better person. In this case, Solomon and Nick’s affection for Sarah and Ziggy is real… but they’re not strong enough as people to follow through on these feelings, especially when the two women end up as obstacles to something they want more: power and prestige.
At different points of the trilogy both Solomon and Nick turn on Sarah and Ziggy in order to protect the Goode family’s deal with the devil. The fact that they had a modicum of sincere love for these women makes them more horrifying, not less. It’s always scarier when whatever good qualities villains have ARE authentic, because it demonstrates that they COULD be good and ARE capable of it… but they chose not to be – a choice that is placed in stark contrast to the love that exists between Shadysiders who are consistently willing to put their lives on the line for others.
Think of Hannah insisting that Sarah keep running after she’s fallen to the ground, or Sarah sacrificing her good name and confessing to witchcraft so that Hannah will be spared at the hanging tree. Cindy offers herself up to the killers in an attempt to save her sister’s life, and Ziggy puts herself in danger to rescue Sheila, the bully that’s been locked in the outhouse. Simon and Kate willingly act as bait to draw the killers away from Sam at the supermarket, in repayment for Sam stepping out into the school hall so that no one else would get hurt by the resurrected killers. Despite her trauma, Ziggy calls Deena back to make sure she’s okay. Martin repays Josh for that surreptitiously-thrown paperclip and helps out the gang during the final showdown at the mall. Isaac, Hannah, Abigail and Lizzie give Sarah the dignity of a private burial. Ziggy tracks down Nurse Lane to return her journal and give her closure.
Time and time again the Shadysiders proved that despite their ill fortune, despite their cynicism, despite everything going wrong in their lives, they were willing to step up and be selfless in their defense of one another in the face of terrifying evil. For the sake of people they disliked, or barely even knew in some cases.
So when Solomon tries his Not So Different spiel to Sarah in the cavern, you know how it’s going to end – even though he makes some pretty good points: “Who’s innocent? Your neighbours hunt you, forsake you, curse your name. Everywhere is ignorance. Dread. Yet you resign yourself to it. They’re afraid because they know you’re different. And you are. Someone who refuses to settle for the rules of these dogmatists, who seeks more from the world. You’re like me.”
(Believe it or not, I’ve seen a few commentators argue that Sarah is no better than Solomon because she planned to make a deal with the devil herself, something that ignores her desperation in the moment, her lack of understanding as to what the price will be, and the fact that she certainly doesn’t want to go through with it once she realizes the consequences of such a deal).
But when Sarah tells Solomon: “I’m nothing like you”, she’s speaking for all the Shadysiders that his family is willing to throw under the bus to enrich themselves. His attempt to get her on board with his decision is as heartrending as it is pathetic, because there’s nothing in what he says that’s essentially false, and I do believe he’s sincere in his attempt to reach her, but ultimately they’re different in the only way that matters: Sarah is not prepared to hurt anyone to get what she wants.
Even when she gets a potential chance to speak out against Solomon at the hanging tree, she instead takes the opportunity to “confess” to witchcraft and save Hannah’s life. Love is more important than vengeance, or even justice, in this moment.
***
Another thing that’s interesting about Nick and Solomon as villains is that they’re not actually that interesting… which is what makes them interesting as concepts, if not characters. Ultimately, the evil of these men is simple weakness and greed. I watched this with a friend, and when it became clear that Solomon was the secret villain, he suggested: “he wants his wife back” (beautifully hinted at by the pan towards the two graves when Sarah first goes to see him).
Yet when the real Motive Rant comes, it’s clear that his reasons aren’t that noble. As he tells Sarah: “I’ve grown tired of watching fortune turn a blind eye to me,” despite telling her earlier in the film that his brother wanted him to return to the settlement, and that he clearly had a support system in place (including Sarah herself, who brings him a pig) to help him in his time of need.
And yet for all of this, I get it. You have no family, no prospects, no future – nothing in your life is working and you don’t want to give up your pride and admit you failed. It would be so easy to steal a book, make a deal, give a name. All you have to do is potentially give up the girl you fancy, and that’s easy too because she’s gay (remember, Solomon was the one who saw Sarah and Hannah in the woods) and doesn’t want you anyway.
In fact, if you watch Solomon’s progression through this film with knowledge of the full picture, you can see a very clear arc in his thought process: from his obvious affection for Sarah, to the way he reacts to her confession that her “dalliance” with Hannah was no such thing (which is obviously how he rationalized it to himself when he saw them in the woods), how he deliberately changes the subject to firmer ground, assuring her that she’s not the one that caused the pestilence (and the fact that he tells her “even the weakest heart, the most corruptible soul… must make the choice” suggests that maybe he’s projecting some self-loathing, as he’s certainly proved himself weak and corruptible), his mounting horror at the carnage he’s wrought with Pastor Miller and his realization that it’s all getting out of hand, trying to quell the angry mob when they turn on Sarah, and then grappling for justifications when she finds him out. The paradox of Solomon is perhaps at its most potent when he’s screaming “I love you!” at Sarah in the middle of trying to stab her with a knife.
So perhaps he didn’t understand the full implications of what he was getting into. He clearly tries to help Sarah on more than one occasion and even saves her life from the possessed Pastor Miller. But ultimately, when he realizes she rejects him and is prepared to tell the rest of the village what he’s done – he sacrifices her in order to protect himself. His point of no return isn’t in making the deal in the first place, or even when he kills the Widow or gives Pastor Miller’s name – it’s when he lets someone he supposedly loved go down for his crimes. That’s the moment he truly loses his soul.
Like Macbeth, there’s clearly a point in Solomon’s arc when events keep escalating into greater and greater horrors, and he thinks to himself: “I cannot fly, but bear-like I must fight the course.” It’s a largely off-screen Corruption Arc played out in under forty minutes, and it works incredibly well. Full credit to the writing and Ashley Zuckerman’s performance.
Young Nick has a similar moment when he confides to Ziggy that his recently deceased father has left him with “a legacy” that he’s expected to uphold, and it’s easy to imagine a scene in which an overbearing father inducts his horrified son into a family pact with the devil, in which he’s expected to sacrifice innocent people in order to uphold the family fortune. And yet at some point he clearly decided, of his own free will, that this was a price he was willing to pay, becoming a fully committed participant.
In the end, what makes these men evil is weakness, pride, privilege and greed. They’re excellent villains not because they’re complex or sympathetic, but because the banality of the choices they’ve made make sense.
And there is true genius in the particulars of the Satanic pact, as it really plugs into the Goode family’s sense of… well, goodness. I saw a few commentators incredulously point out that Nick sold his soul for a nine-to-five job as a sheriff in a small town… but that’s completely missing the point. His job is clearly about maintaining control over the two townships (remember, his brother is the mayor of Sunnyvale) in a public servant role, allowing him to closely monitor what’s going on across both communities and extend a veneer of “protection” to both.
Giving a name to the devil for them to be possessed is horrifying – but what if you could justify it to yourself by sharing your subsequent wealth and good fortune with the rest of your town? And after all, it’s not you that’s slaughtering innocent people, but another individual entirely. Heck, if you set things up properly, then you can be the person who leaps in and saves the day (this is what Nick did at the mall with Ryan Torres, and apparently what Solomon did after Sarah’s death according to the newspaper clipping in the opening credits: “Solomon Goode pledges assistance to victims’ families.”)
The benefits don’t just go to the Goode family but to all of Sunnyvale, which is another way the family can rationalize what they’re doing. They’re helping their community, they’re distributing the wealth and prosperity. What’s a few dead people every few years compared to that, especially when it’s just the worthless Shadysiders that are suffering?
If you can make a deal with the devil seem like a public service, a form of the Powered By a Forsaken Child trope – well, clearly Satan is an expert at manipulating people.
And how elegant was Solomon’s original lie about Sarah? Earlier in the film he describes the metaphorical terms of any deal with Satan as “offering your hand”. Later he literally takes off Sarah’s hand in an act of violence against her, and it’s easy to see the thought process would have led him to fabricating the narrative that echoes down into the present day: that she cut it off herself in a sacrifice to the devil. It’s a lie, but one that fits neatly with the established facts.
It’s chilling in its simplicity and effectiveness, and over the years this would have developed into the rhyme that haunts the Shadysiders:
Before the witch’s final breath, she found a way to cheat her death.
By cutting off her wicked hand, she kept her grip upon the land.
She reaches from beyond the graves, to make good men her wicked slaves.
She’ll take your blood, she’ll take your head.
She’ll follow you until you’re dead.
So we can add fake news and disinformation to the arsenal that the Goode family weaponize to maintain control over the populace.
Scope for Imagination
Having watched The Matrix recently, I was struck by the restraint inherent in the writing. There was so much that wasn’t overexplained: the Oracle, the One, Zion, the origins of the war with the machines – the script was focused only on the narrative beats that really mattered, and the gaps left behind was where the imagination of the fans could flourish.
I’m not sure if most fans even realize that the tantalizingly untold portions of a story are what makes them so rich and compelling – it’s as much what we don’t know as what we do that makes a story memorable. To overexplain things is to lose a story’s richness and mystery. How many overextended franchises could I namedrop at this point?
But Fear Street knows what to reveal and what to hold back on, and takes creative liberties in just the right way. For instance, the prolonged vision Deena experiences when she learns the truth of Sarah Fier’s death raises plenty of questions, mostly around the casting of the supporting characters. It would appear that Abigail and Constance (played by the same actresses as young Ziggy and Cindy) are Identical Ancestors to their 1970s counterparts, which is a fairly standard trope for flashbacks to earlier time periods.
But then what do we make of Benjamin Flores Jr playing Henry, the younger brother of Sarah, who herself is clearly portrayed by Elizabeth Scopel in reflections and quick flashes throughout the film? It seems very unlikely that the real Henry was Black, not with a white father and sister. One might assume that Deena is simply projecting familiar faces onto various characters, as is also the case with Kate/Lizzie and Simon/Isaac… but then, how would she know what Cindy or a younger Ziggy looked like?
Or perhaps there’s some sort of reincarnation at work, especially when it comes to the love story between Sarah and Hannah that’s echoed in Deena and Sam?
The truth is, it doesn’t actually matter. It was a creative decision made to reuse familiar actors in significant roles, giving the 1666 story more weight and dramatic heft. It works beautifully despite not fitting into one particular theory, as many of the scenes are far more powerful for having Emily Rudd, Fred Hechinger and Julia Rehwald return in a slightly skewed capacity.
On a similar note, what the audience sees in 1979 can’t possibly be what Deena and Josh were told by an adult Ziggy, as much of the narrative takes place entirely outside her awareness (namely Cindy and Alice in the cave network beneath the camp). But again, it works – we’re shown what we need to understand the story and to question it would be pointless quibbling.
There are more interesting mysteries within the scope of the story itself. For instance, we hear that Sarah’s deceased mother is the one to have chosen the land upon which the citizens of Union settled; that she had some sort of spiritual connection to the land. It’s never explained, but it’s a thoughtful little detail that casts its shadow over the entirety of 1666.
Meanwhile, at least three characters comment on Sarah’s own preternatural gifts: Mad Thomas says: “I see all the dark secrets in you,” the Widow tells her: “[the devil] calls to you from [the book]…” and even her own father says: “there’s a strangeness in you.” Some of this is in setting up the misdirect that she’ll be the one to make a deal with the devil, but it also suggests an innate power that will allow her to reach out from beyond the grave and attempt to convey the truth to others.
And what was up with the Widow? She lives on the outskirts of town with a book that can summon the devil. Yikes. On their way to fetch berries from her, Sarah, Lizzie and Hannah discuss some theories: that she killed her own husband; that she had an Indian as a lover and learned magic from him. How’d she get the book in the first place? Was she protecting others from it, or using it herself? More interestingly, she’s played by the same actress that played Nurse Lane in 1979 and 1994. Is there a direct lineage between them? Does that have anything to do with why her daughter Ruby was chosen as one of the killers?
In many ways Mary Lane is a quintessential Hero of Another Story. Clearly devastated by her daughter’s murder spree and subsequent suicide, she undergoes a one-woman investigation of what really happened (if you pause the opening credits to 1994 at certain points, some of the scrawl is clearly Mary’s journal notes). We don’t know what led her to Camp Nightwing, but she was clearly on the right track considering this is where Sarah Fier’s hand was lost, and at some point she discovers the underground cavern where the names of the Shadyside killers are etched in stone.
Can you imagine how horrific it would have been for her to see her daughter’s name among them? Or the thought process that went into her deciding to take out Tommy before he inevitably turned into a mindless killer?
Which brings us to Ruby. We never learn that much about the possessed killers who are named by the Goodes: the reasons they were chosen, the deaths they caused, and how their killing sprees were eventually brought to an end. Ruby in particular throws up all sorts of questions considering she’s an outlier in many ways.
We can assume that the likes of Tommy and the Grifter were chosen for their physical strength, that Billy Barker and the Milkman were easy scapegoats due to their preexisting facial deformities, and that the possessions of Pastor Miller and Tommy opened up power vacuums that Solomon and Nick could jump into in order to pass themselves off as heroes. There’s also room to suggest that Nick deliberately chose Ryan Torres as the Skull Mask killer during closing time at Shadyside Mall in order to limit the number of casualties, being still haunted by the sheer amount of dead at Camp Nightwing (not that that was enough to stop him from remaining loyal to the pact).
But Ruby? Why would anyone choose her as a serial killer? We learn from her mother that she was a singer, that she was kind and gentle, and that after killing seven of her friends with a razor blade she slit her own wrists. She’s the only serial killer who speaks (or technically sings) and as far as we know she’s also the only one that managed to take her own life, as opposed to being killed like Ryan, Tommy and Pastor Miller were.
When we get the montage of all the Goodes giving the various names in 1666, the one who names Ruby is a fairly nebbish-looking guy, what with the glasses and the pervy moustache. Yup, I reckon this was a Hot For Student situation, and when this particular Goode got rejected, giving Ruby’s name to the devil was his revenge. Destroy her reputation and make her go down in history as a psycho killer. What an asshole.
That’s why she was singing “You Always Hurt the Ones You Love” – it was a clue as to who cursed her. And the fact that she slits her own wrists is an indication that she (like Sam) possibly managed to shake off the effects of the possession and kill herself before she was able to harm any more innocent people.
That’s a whole story I’ve crafted from just a few glimpses of information given in the actual films, which goes to show just what a rich tapestry they managed to weave. And that’s not even mentioning the dozens and dozens of other names on the walls (you can easily read them if you pause at the right time) of innocent people who were forced to become mindless killers: Jeffrey Ray, Rodney Fisher, Boyd Lee, Amy Dodd, Ed Carson – and whoever the Humpty Dumpty killer was (his name is seen in the opening credits montage, and director Leigh Janiak claims he was he was a killer that dismembered people before sewing their body parts together to create “new people,” though he’s never seen in the trilogy itself).
Likewise, there’s bound to be a good story in how Union got separated into Sunnyvale and Shadyside, and how the “one side leeches off the misfortune of the other” part of the deal came into being. Who ended up where and why? How much control did Solomon (or his descendants) have over that division?
And of course – who took the book at the end? Honestly, I don’t even care that much as it was obviously a Stinger in the tradition of R.L. Stein’s “gotcha!” endings, and I doubt even the writers know who it was.
We may well see more Fear Street in the future, but if this is it, I’ll have that odd mix of pure satisfaction for what we got, and profound curiosity about the untold tales. To be honest, as interested as I am in seeing more of the Shadyside killers and the history of the Goode family, other franchises of recent years have proven that running themselves into the ground is no fun for anyone. It’s better to get too little (enough to whet your appetite for more) than too much (and have the novelty of it destroyed). Let’s leave this trilogy be.
Fasten Your Seatbelt, I'm Gonna Get Deep
We live in shitty times. There are natural disasters brought on by climate change, venal politicians set on gaslighting constituents with blatant lies, a pandemic full of people too stupid or selfish to get vaccinated, mass shootings that are met with collective shrugs of indifference, and trillionaires who would rather fly into space than help those in need.
Basically, we’re all in Shadyside. Any day could bring us the equivalent of a person snapping and murdering a bunch of people. Heck, as Deena says, some of the time it feels like we could be that person. After telling the millionth customer at work that wearing a mask under one’s nose instead of over it is an exercise in pointlessness, I’ve quite happily imagined unleashing myself upon them with a blunt weapon.
But there is genuine despair and horror and fruitlessness in the Fear Street trilogy. Good people become killers for no discernable reason. There are deeply unfair deaths, and no real sign that any higher power is looking out for them. Shadysiders are collectively hopeless, traumatized and exhausted.
All of them are living under the burden of a curse that was inflicted upon them, one that they don’t fully understand but that they have to struggle against every moment of their waking lives. It feeds into so much: the poverty trap, economic hardship, racial inequality, the struggle for gay rights, class warfare, police corruption, a mysterious disease that could strike anyone at any time. The bad guys literally use disinformation to lie to these people about their own reality, put themselves in positions of power to control them, and after pitting them against each other, blame them for their own misery. How are you supposed to fight that?
During Solomon’s speech to Sarah, he says: “Your neighbours hunt you, forsake you, curse your name. Everywhere is ignorance. Dread! Yet you resign yourself to it!” That stuck with me, as – in the face of violent protests against life-saving mandates, in people refusing to wear masks, in religious leaders telling their congregations not to get vaccinated, in hospital staff and frontline workers being abused and assaulted – who on earth hasn’t wanted to start fighting back? Why do we have to just put up with their tantrums, their lies, their stupidity, their cruelty?
Why are we resigned to that? I don’t WANT to be a good, forgiving, compassion person to these assholes. I’m tired of waiting for karma. I’m baffled by the tsk-tsking that goes on regarding sites like the Herman Cain awards, where similarly exhausted people go to vent their frustrations, as though that’s somehow WORSE than attacking someone on the street for wearing a mask, or taking a hospital bed from someone who needed it because you decided to guzzle down horse worming medication.
We can’t say we weren’t on the same page as Sarah when she had her Then Let Me Be Evil moment and decided to take action against “the neighbour that would accuse me, the mother that would let her daughter hang…” especially after Hannah tells her: “it doesn’t matter if we did it or not, they think we’re guilty so we are.” Like the anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorist nutters, the witch-hunting mob chose their own reality to justify their violence.
I cheered on Sarah like I cheered on Morgana, and Isabella, and Daenerys, and any number of other female characters who were furious at the abuse they’d been put through and punished by their narratives for seeking vengeance instead of meekly forgiving and forgetting. I was ready for Sarah to cut off that hand and actually do something about the rank injustice that pervaded everyone’s lives.
But then… Sarah proves herself a better person than me. She rejects vengeance. She protects the goodness of her own soul and doesn’t give in to hate or violence. She dies a martyr’s death for the sake of the girl she loves. It’s so tempting to sink to the level of these shitty people, especially when it appears they suffer no consequences for their dangerous delusions, when in fact we have to make like Sarah and remind ourselves: “I’m nothing like you.” Sometimes all we get a moral victory.
Unlike other narratives, where goodness is rewarded and kindnesses repaid, the moments of compassion and heroism on display in Fear Street don’t always pay off. Bad guys get away with their crimes. Good people die in vain. Even finally lifting the curse doesn’t bring back the dead, or clear the past killers’ names, or wipe away the grief and pain that the victims’ families had to live through.
But that moments of kindness can exist in the midst of such of bleak despair: without purpose, without pay-off, makes them all the more precious. Cindy reconciling with Alice and Ziggy. Simon and Kate choosing to make themselves bait to buy Sam some time. The friends moving Sarah’s body for a more respectful burial. Narratively, they’re not plot points. They don’t lead to anything. They exist only for their own sakes. But in these times of lies and violence and misinformation, they’re all we’ve got.
And so when the curse is finally lifted, when the truth is finally revealed, when a filthy Deena and Sam emerge from the pristine interior of Nick Goode’s house to see that Sunnyvale car get totaled by the garbage truck on its way down the drive: my God, the catharsis.
We live in an age of disinformation and shameless lies and brainwashed hordes of nutjobs that are still trying to tear down democracy because their narcissistic buffoon-in-chief won’t stop whining about how he was cheated. People are literally dying in agony, strapped to ventilation machines and unable to communicate with their own families, because they chose to live in a different reality than the rest of us.
But the truth will come out. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow – but it will. I really, really needed to hear that. I just sure as hell wasn’t expecting to hear it from Fear Street.
Miscellaneous Observations:
The trilogy opens with Heather reading the tagline of The Wrong Number: not only is this the real tagline and title of a Fear Street book, but the cover art is accurate as well. The author is depicted as Robert Lawrence, which is what the R.L. in R.L. Stine stands for.
Much like Drew Barrymore in Scream (of whom Heather is almost certainly a homage to) Maya Hawke makes us care about her character in a very short space of time. It always hurts more when a slasher victim is smart and fast and still doesn’t manage to get away.
It was initially kind of disturbing that Heather and Ryan die in such an intimate embrace (considering he’s just stabbed her) but on finding out that he’s as much a victim as she is helps alleviate the image. The real perp is standing over them as they die together.
That Heather pulls his mask off and cries: “it’s me, it’s me…” is another example of the abject cruelty the Goodes inflict on these people. They literally make people murder their friends and loved ones (furthermore, it’s no coincidence that Deena says these exact same words to Sam in 1994: Part 2 when they’re grappling in the cavern network – only that time, the possessed one’s true personality was able to break through).
This trilogy is also fantastic with its Chekhov Guns, from the security gate that won’t go all the way down, the early appearance from Martin at the mall, Heather using the paperback book as a shield (Deena will expand this idea into literal Plot Armour in the third film), the vents in the school toilets, even the throwaway mention of Timothy’s overdose is co-opted in their attempt to kill and resurrect Sam.
The opening credits to 1994 are worth pausing a few times: the newspaper reports and the journal entries contain actual information (in fact, the latter are clearly written by Nurse Lane as part of her investigation into the curse) and it cleverly manages to lay out the entire history of Shadyside and Sunnyvale in just a few seconds.
The moment I heard Deena using the gender-neutral name of “Sam” I knew this was going to be a gay love story (plus the fact that no one she was discussing Sam with ever used any telltale pronouns). A more subtle clue is her annoyed look when she spots the various couples hand-holding and making out in the school halls: she’s not pissed because she’s just had a breakup, she’s pissed because she was never allowed to do what they’re doing.
The Shadyside football team is called the Witches and Sunnyvale’s is called the Devils. See what they did there??
1994 definitely goes overboard with some of its needle-drops, but I did love “Creep” playing over the transition from the squalor of Shadyside to the pristine of Sunnyvale.
It wasn’t until my third watch that I finally understood the stuff about the graffiti, the spray cans and Martin being in a holding cell: he was the scapegoat (as so many Shadysiders are) for Nick painting the words to the Sarah Fier rhyme all over the mall – and possibly the school as well? Obviously he has to keep the legend of the witch alive to divert attention from the Goodes, so he paints it all over town.
That said, he kind of overplays his hand a little at the memorial speech when he says: “there can be no peace found in the past…” We get it, you don’t want people questioning history. We should have known it was him.
Kate’s gallows humour, Simon’s insouciance and Deena’s nihilism are clearly all coping mechanisms and it just breaks my heart.
“You won’t stop until you’ve completely ruined her life,” is a line that comes up twice – first from Sam’s mother and then from Hannah’s. Good to know that there are always going to be bitchy homophobic Karen mums in whatever time period.
The squabble between Deena and Sam breaking out at the same time as the brawl between the Sunnyvalers and the Shadysiders is a great scene, and a logical lead-in to the car/bus chase that kickstarts the real story.
The twin girls that Kate is babysitting – are they the same ones that appear in 1666, albeit very briefly?
Did anyone else think that Simon and Kate were a couple? They more or less acted like one, especially at the house where Kate was babysitting, but apparently they were just Platonic Life Partners. To me at least that makes the relationship more interesting – I wish it had been clearer so I could have enjoyed it sooner.
Another cute echo between 1994 and 1666: in the former Kate calls the pills she deals “blueberries”; in the latter her counterpart Lizzie produces literal psychedelic blueberries for the others to eat.
Why did the resurrected Skull Mask killer take out Peter, the receptionist and the doctor? It’s the one bit of an otherwise watertight plot that doesn’t really fit considering (at that point) the killers were targeting Sam and Sam alone. And don’t say “they were in the way” since Josh is standing directly in Nightwing’s way in the forest, and he runs straight by him to get to Sam.
Here’s a question that hasn’t come up: did Nick know about the secondary killings? That is, the resurrection of the killers in order to take out Sam after she gets a vision from Sarah’s grave? Most people assume he’s the one behind it, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. He seemed genuinely bewildered by the carnage at the hospital and later when he picks up Ruby Lane’s locket in the street. And of course, all the killers going after Ziggy at Camp Nightwing clearly wasn’t what Nick wanted, because he ends up saving her from them (and because he was a Goode, the curse spared her according to his wishes, though he ironically lost her afterwards by refusing to back up her side of the story).
My theory is that this part of the curse was organized by the devil himself, designed to protect his investment: an automatic failsafe should anyone get too close to Sarah Fier’s bones. For all we know, what happened to Sam and Ziggy was unprecedented, which explains Nick’s confusion both times.
And hey – perhaps this is why he put the note through Ziggy’s door: “it’s happening again.” If he’s not in control of the resurrected killers, it would explain why he’s trying to warn her, as he knows she was targeted at Camp Nightwing. The “again” refers not to Tommy’s massacre, but the killers going after her in particular. (Or perhaps he was just trying to re-traumatize her on the off-chance the kids made it to her).
Then of course, having figured out that the killers targeted Sam for the same reason they once targeted Ziggy, he gives Sam’s name to the devil in order to tie up that loose end (this definitely was him, as we see him do it, albeit from behind).
It fits together nicely, though I’m glad the films didn’t feel the need to spell it all out. It’s fun to speculate, and it provides some neat red herrings regarding Nick’s behaviour in the lead-up to the reveal.
Another good example of people coming to logical but wrong conclusions: Kate and Deena automatically assume that the Skull Mask killer skulking outside their homes is Peter because he was wearing a similar mask in his car and threatened Deena after the accident.
There’s a nice line from Josh in which he refers to the Skull Mask killer and then corrects himself: “I mean, Ryan Torres.” He’s trying to humanize him by using his real name, already instinctively assuming that he was unable to control himself while under possession.
“To make good men her wicked slaves” is a great red herring of a line, as many people were picking up on the possible double-meaning of “good men” and equating them with the Goode family. One of the most popular theories were that the possessed killers were the descendants of the people who hanged Sarah Fier and that the Goodes figured into that somehow, though ultimately it’s the “Goode men” who are making the “wicked slaves”, not Sarah.
For anyone non-book readers wondering about the inconsistency in spelling between Sarah Fier’s last name and the whole franchise being called Fear Street, allow me to elucidate. In the books, the Fier family was warned that their end would come about in a fire, as foreshadowed by the fact that their last name was an anagram for “fire”. To avert this fate, Simon Fier (who founded Shadyside) changed the spelling of the family name to Fear. Yes, it is as precisely as dumb as it sounds, and no, it didn’t prevent most of the family from perishing in a fire anyway (in a mansion that was on Fear Street).
On that note, I kind of wish they’d found a way to incorporate the Fear amulet into the proceedings, perhaps as an heirloom passed down through Solomon’s descendants, as it was such an iconic part of the books. That said, it’s difficult to imagine an organic way of getting it into the show, and of course – it belonged to the Fears and not the Goodes.
Why do people in movies always cut their palms to get blood? WHY? It’s the WORST POSSIBLE PLACE you could chose to draw blood from: palms are slow to heal and you’re probably going to need your hands in a life-or-death situation. Go for the wrist or the elbow or something.
Sam does not get enough credit for stepping out into that hallway in order to spare her friends a grisly death.
We can forgive the fact young Nick brings back Ziggy with CPR despite her fatal stab wounds since it’s clear in hindsight that he had some semblance of control over the curse, but portraying Deena bringing a drowning victim back from the dead by injecting her with epi-pens is something else entirely.
The bread-slicer. Oof. Did they maybe take that death a little too far?
People made quite a big deal out of Ziggy’s array of alarm clocks, assuming there was some sort of hidden meaning to them. But it’s pretty clear that they’re nothing more (or less) than a symptom of her PTSD: she needs them in order to function throughout the day, with each one correlating to a specific household chore. They paint a sad portrait of her listless, unhappy life.
I loved the use of “Man Who Sold The World”. 1979 opens with the Nirvana cover and closes with the David Bowie original, and Ziggy wakes up to see Nick crouching over her just when the lyrics say: “you’re face to face with the man who sold the world.” Slow clap.
Another nice little detail strewn throughout the story is that Ziggy is watching Will Goode as the Mayor of Sunnyvale on the television just before Deena and Josh arrive. And I hate to admit it, but the first two times I watched 1979 I thought that Kurt (the Sunnyvalers counselor in the orange shirt) was young Will Goode, and couldn’t understand why they had cast someone clearly older than the actor playing Nick as the younger brother.
The opening montage of camp depicts some kids doing archery, and every time I watch this I’m surprised that it never figures into the plot in some way. The snakes in the nature cabin on the other hand…
I love the arc they build around Cindy’s polo shirt: first it gets stained by the red moss in the outhouses, then she tears it on her way to the witch’s house, then she rips it herself in order to make a splint for Alice’s ankle. Knowing that she saved up to buy it so she could distance herself from Shadyside makes for a potent symbol since she’s obviously unable to keep it pristine, and eventually destroys it herself.
Like I said earlier, it would be nice to get more on Nurse Lane’s story, as minus the framing devices she’s the only actor to appear in all three films. There was clearly a lot going on with her (and the Widow), even though narratively she mainly exists to provide necessary intel. You know what would have been really interesting? If her last name had been “Pierce”. Book readers will know.
What happens to Tommy is perhaps the most disturbing thing to witness in all three films, including the bread slicer since at least that was over quickly. That he’s a chill guy who backs off when his girlfriend says no, is friendly with the kids, and gets genuinely upset when Nurse Lane attacks him makes it all the harder to watch as he gradually succumbs to the possession. His slow decline is awful because you know as his true self he would never hurt any of these people, and the fact that he’s a ticking time bomb even as he futilely attempts to figure out just what the heck is happening to him is downright upsetting.
Also, what do we make of Nick in this film? The kindest possible interpretation of what goes down is that this is his first time giving a name to the devil, and he’s not exactly sure what’s going to happen. This actually makes sense in a number of ways: by this point his father is already dead and he tells Ziggy he’s uncertain about the “legacy” that he’s been left with.
He certainly seemed unprepared when he came across the dead kids in the mess hall; he even vomits outside as though completely horrified at the carnage he’s wrought. He later demonstrates some semblance of a soul when he comes up with the idea to evacuate all the kids on the bus, and tells Ziggy: “I’ve let a lot of people die tonight, but not you” (the first time around, we think he’s talking about how he’s failed as a counselor, but no – he really does mean that he’s let a lot of people die. Add to this the fantastic visual of him accidentally getting blood on his palms and wiping them down his shirt – it’s literal and figurative blood on his hands).
Also, why would he choose Tommy? On the one hand, perhaps he saw an opportunity (like Solomon certainly did with Pastor Miller) in creating a power vacuum and filling it himself. Tommy would have naturally been in a leadership role if someone else turned out to be the killer, and strong enough to take them down if required. Or perhaps he didn’t really believe that someone like Tommy could ever hurt anyone, and that choosing the least likely person to turn into a mindless serial killer might be the best way to test his father’s story.
And yet… if there was even the slightest chance that his father was telling the truth about what would happen if Nick gave a name to the stones, then the fact he chooses to unleash a possessed killer on a children’s summer camp during an outdoor game held at night is simply beyond the pale. Those kids were sitting ducks.
Plus, it’s very clear that he knows what’s going to happen. When the mayhem begins, he sounds off a list of the counselors who are missing… but neglects to mention Tommy, because of course he knows Tommy is beyond help. Earlier a young Officer Kapinski tells him: “one day you’ll follow in [your father’s] footprints,” which is a clue as to Nick’s motivation, especially when he tells Ziggy: “just let me do my job.” Perhaps he saw the whole thing as a sort of training day exercise, only to be caught unawares as to how visceral and gory it was going to be?
But whatever interpretation you go with, the most important scene Nick has is the one with Ziggy, during which he discusses how his father has left him a “legacy” that he’s unsure about, only to dismiss it with: “there’s nothing I can do about it.” Ziggy asks: “why not?” but he doesn’t answer her. That right there is what damns Nick: he doesn’t bother looking for a solution, he’s too deep in his own privilege to truly fight against the family tradition he’s been handed. By the time he’s an adult, he’s fully entrenched himself – of his own free will – in the mentality that he deserves all of this, and that a few Shadyside massacres every few years is payment enough for his own wealth and prosperity. By that point he doesn’t even question it.
Is it safe to assume that the young Asian Shadysider in the Sunnyvaler “prison” was Kate’s aunt? They don’t confirm or deny, but it seems likely. Also, what happened to Shelia? The last we see of her, she’s being knocked unconscious in the outhouse.
The real tragedy of Alice finding Sarah Fier’s hand is that it leads directly to her death. Had she not discovered it, Cindy would have killed Tommy and the ordeal would have been over. It’s only when Ziggy bleeds on the hand and gets a vision of Sarah that all the killers emerge to take her out, and it’s this that dooms both Alice and Cindy. And as Ziggy says, their deaths don’t actually achieve anything. Even if Sarah’s bones had been under the tree and they’d gotten the full vision of Sarah’s death, it’s unlikely they would have had the time or opportunity to take out Nick.
But Alice has got to be one of the most impressive examples of Rescued From the Scrappy Heap I’ve ever come across, especially given the limited amount of time devoted to redeeming her. At first I found her almost unbearably obnoxious, what with the drug use and the ragging on Cindy – but as soon as the girls hit the tunnels, she improves exponentially. She makes amends with Cindy, she reveals that she cuts herself, she crawls through the tunnels with a busted ankle, she makes that heartrending motivational speech – and then she’s immediately killed by Tommy. I blame Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea for these types of “shock” deaths. I saw it coming a mile away.
You can always thank a female director for not sexualizing the bodies of dead women. Truly, compare the depiction of Ziggy and Cindy’s dead bodies – which still manages to be a beautiful, almost religious-like composition – with the sexy poses forced upon the corpses of Gamora and Black Widow in Infinity War/Endgame. The difference is profound.
Likewise, the scenes back in 1994 in which Kate strips down to her underwear and Deena/Sam have a quick make-out session are completely non-exploitative. It’s impossible to say how exactly, they’re just not. It’s simply the difference between how Gal Gadot’s body was framed under Patty Jenkin’s direction, and how it was under Joss Whedon’s.
As I said before, the decision to reuse many of the actors for 1666 was a great decision, as it not only knits together characters and themes across all three films, but gives us the chance to see those that have already been killed off one last time (in fact, there’s something poignant in the fact that Emily Rudd, Julia Rehwald and Fred Hechinger’s characters survive this time around).
Obviously Ashley Zukerman returned as Solomon, but the guy who played Mayor Goode in 1994 also played Alderman Goode in 1666. Ditto Peter (Caleb), Tommy (Thomas), Josh (Henry), Ziggy (Constance), the Widow (Nurse Lane) and Sam/Hannah’s mother. No Alice though? I guess they didn’t want to overcrowd things.
I found it somewhat odd that pretty much everyone matched up with their contemporary counterparts, except for Tommy – who here is Mad Thomas, a drunken, greasy-haired, deeply unpleasant creeper. He’s the only one who bears no resemblance whatsoever to his more modern version. What was up with that?
Fandom is always complaining about bad accents and fake wigs, and those found in 1666 were no exception, but honestly – I think everyone did fine. The Irish accents didn’t take me out of the story at all. (Honestly, I think a lot of the mentality surrounding it is: “I know this isn’t the actor’s real accent so I’m going to assume it’s bad”).
There was a nice but subtle setup in how Solomon knew about the Widow’s book: he off-handedly mentions to Sarah that he sought out the Widow when his wife fell ill, and it’s easy enough to presume that he saw the book then – perhaps even paged through it as Sarah did.
There’s an anomaly in the events of 1666 that isn’t present in 1979 or 1994: that a pestilence accompanies Pastor Miller’s possession: rotting the food, poisoning the well, and frightening the animals. Why did it occur in 1666 but at no other point (at least as far as we can see) in the history of Shadyside and Sunnyvale? I wondered perhaps if Solomon performed the ceremony that summoned the devil and then got cold feet when it came to choosing a possession victim, forcing Satan to show his hand and force his new servant to offer up a name. The pestilence would last for as long as it took for a sacrifice to be made.
But the pestilence and the Pastor’s possession seemed to kick off at approximately the same time – in fact, I think Hannah takes Sarah to see her father muttering to himself before any of the other bad omens occur. Maybe it only lasts until the Pastor takes more innocent lives (for whatever reason, the killing urge of any given possession seemed to come over him more slowly than most – perhaps because he was a genuine man of God?) or until he himself was killed (ironically Solomon has that honour, in defense of Sarah’s life when the Pastor attacks her in the church – perhaps sensing her power, like others did? Whew, there’s so much to unpack in these films).
Perhaps it was just the devil letting Solomon know that he meant business. In any case, the pestilence seemed to lift after Pastor Miller’s death, though the townsfolk clearly assumed that the massacre of the children was a continuation of the curse as opposed to the culmination of it. Although there are no more signs of pestilence after that (because Solomon’s part of the deal had been fulfilled: a killer possessed and innocent blood shed), they clearly didn’t notice until after Sarah’s death – which would have naturally solidified their belief that she was the witch.
As I said earlier, you can see the nuggets of truth that help make up the story that Solomon established: how she emerges from the meeting house, the missing hand, the private words she said to him before her execution… it was a very elegant lie he wrought from pieces of the truth.
In the face of Solomon’s betrayal, there was true poignancy and light in the fact that Sarah’s true friends – Hannah, Abigail, Lizzie and Isaac – took her body from its place of execution and gave it a proper, dignified burial in a place that meant something to her: the rock where she and Hannah kissed for the first (and only) time. What a perfect contrast to Solomon’s violence: that gentle, secret burial. “No one else knows where she is. Except us.”
And guys, I really lost it when Hannah put the wreath of red moss on her head, a love token they had shared earlier, and we get the image of it growing over the ground and the rock in the years to come. As the inscribed stone her friends leave at the hanging tree states: “the witch forever lives.” It’s not a threat, but a promise.
This even explains why Sarah’s grave was so absurdly close to the surface and so easily uncovered: her friends had to work in secret and didn’t have the time or strength to bury her four feet deep. As with Nick using CPR to revive Ziggy, even the plot-holes have clever explanations.
Isn’t it crazy how quickly the sound of police sirens in movies went from something reassuring to something terrifying? Get Out was definitely the turning point.
Was Deena’s whispered line: “Goode is evil!” incredibly cheesy and absurd? Yes, but I loved it and wouldn’t change it for the world.
The neon, glow-in-the-dark phosphorescence at the mall! Loved it. Especially since the plan Deena and her allies came up with was pretty damn solid, what with the blood trails and the security gates.
I feel Ziggy was shortchanged in the mall confrontation: yes, she’s the one to lull Nick into a false sense of security, but she’s never allowed to fully confront him on her sister’s death and the Carrie-plan goes to shit immediately. Neither does she have any sort of meaningful reaction to Tommy or the Milkman, the killers that literally murdered her and Cindy. She handles herself well throughout, but she definitely needed something more.
It’s weird, but Solomon and Sarah had such an intense relationship, rivaled only by Nick and Ziggy, that it almost seems strange that the final showdown is between Nick and Deena – two characters that really had nothing to do with each other. Honestly, on the basis of absolutely nothing that textually exists in this movie, I chose to believe that Nick and Deena are the reincarnations of Solomon and Sarah, just to get the full-circle satisfaction of Sarah finally defeating Solomon after all those hundreds of years.
In fact, the moment Nick drops the d-slur is almost like a “mask comes fully off” bookend for Solomon, who pretended (maybe?) to be okay with Sarah’s love for Hannah, only for that confession to partly damn her when Solomon realizes she’s completely out of his reach.
I also loved that Deena knew exactly where to go in the underground tunnels, having experienced them as Sarah, and that this time around she’s in pursuit of Nick, instead of Solomon being in pursuit of Sarah. And the fact that Sarah’s knife comes back into play: she originally used it to stab Solomon; he takes it and uses it to cut her hand off, Nick whips it out all those centuries later to stab Deena, and then Deena takes it for the last time and kills Nick. Poetic cinema!
And I love that Sam manages to break through the possession just long enough to give Deena the edge she needs. AND that for all his pontificating and self-justifications, Nick is undone when (like Alice did in 1979) he’s forced to touch the beating heart of evil and come face to face with the price of his wealth and power: all the innocent lives his family has taken.
And then the wrap-up. The beating pustule descends back from whence it came. The maligned names on the stones are wiped clean. Josh meets his on-line friend in the real world (and she’s cute). Ziggy returns Nurse Lane’s journal to her, and presumably gives her closure on what really happened to Ruby. Josh and Deena’s off-screen father leaves a note telling his kids that he’s got another job interview. Heather, Kate and Simon are memorialized. Martin invents the MP3 player (okay, I guess??)
And Deena fulfils her promise not only to Sam: “when this is all over, I’m gonna take you on a date, we’re gonna eat cheeseburgers and listen to the Pixies,” but Sarah’s to Hannah: “we will go far away and we'll dance every night and kiss in the broad daylight.” And they do.
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Okay… I think that’s it. The well has run dry. I have said everything that could ever possibly be said about this trilogy. But to sum up…
In case it wasn’t obvious, I really loved and appreciated Fear Street for the surprising depth of its themes and the work that went into establishing and building its central metaphor. It’s about people who have been outcasts and pariahs all their lives, struggling to survive the poverty trap, class inequality, mass killings, and an endless barrage of lies and disinformation, in which outside forces literally make them prey on each other and then blame them for it.
But the Shadysiders were never at fault for the misfortunes that befell them, and in the very midst of their despair, they still loved each other. That love might have been futile, even worked against them sometimes, but because of that love, they were ultimately willing to rise up and end the cycle of violence that was inflicted upon them for generations – and all they needed to do was give a vilified woman the chance to speak the truth.
The story makes it clear that any scrap of decency the villains ever had means nothing in the face of the evil they commit in order to hold onto their wealth and power, and Deena’s pre-battle Rousing Speech in Shadyside Mall (once the site of Camp Nightwing and Union’s hanging tree) is intercut with flashes of the people who were sacrificed to the greed and selfishness of the Goodes, proving that their lives were more than just collateral damage, that they deserved far more than what was taken from them.
The trilogy had all the tropes I find most rewarding: heroic sacrifices, moral victories, refusing to hand out half-assed redemptions cards to self-pitying villains, long-fought-for karmic retribution, and female characters burning with justified moral righteousness.
So in this case, watching Sarah face off against Solomon at the hanging tree, in which he ostensibly has all the power and she none, only for her to speak the truth to his face and curse him for all eternity, as part of a reveal that allows the modern-day Deena to take this information and use it to defeat the Goodes and avenge her people, was a sequence that left me with chills I’ve not experienced for a long, long time.
The truth will come out. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But it will. The truth will be your curse. It will shadow you for eternity. I will follow you forever. And everything you take, and everyone you harm, will feel the grip of my hand. I will show them what you’ve done. I will never let you go.
Thank you Leigh Janiak, Phil Graziadei, Zak Olkewicz and Kate Trefry – that monologue alone was better than anything in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
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