Review: Fear Street: 1666

Image courtesy of Netflix.

The finale to director Leigh Janiak's "Fear Street" trilogy is a little slow to start, but the payoff in the second half of the film - which has an amusing subtitle a little over halfway through the movie - is worth the wait. Those who have complained that explanations as to how the plots of the various films all tie together have been somewhat thin so far should be satisfied as "Fear Street: 1666" brings all of its various strands together.

The film starts where the previous picture left off - with Deena (Kiana Madeira) in 1994, having somehow been given a vision by Sarah Fier, the witch upon whom all blame of Shadyside's curse rests. For the first 70 minutes of the movie, both Deena and the audience get to witness what takes place through Sarah's eyes during Puritan times in a town known as Union, which will later split into Shadyside and Sunnyvale.

Sarah (also played by Madeira) knows her way around a farm, and this is appreciated by some of her fellow townsfolk. However, she is having a secret affair with the pastor's daughter, Hannah (played by Olivia Scott Welch, who also plays Sam in "1994") and this soon slips out after one of the town's ne'er-do-wells spies the two of them in the woods. Sarah is also on good terms with Solomon Goode (Ashley Zukerman, who also plays Sheriff Nick Goode in "1994"), who appears to like her.

But when things start to go awry - fruit going bad, a dead dog in a well and a shocking act of brutality against the town's children by the pastor - the town needs to find someone to blame, and they point their fingers at Sarah and Hannah, accusing them of witchcraft. But before Sarah meets her fate, she discovers something that gives a clue as to why Shadyside has been cursed for so many years. 

When we cut back to the present, Deena is now armed with that information. She and her brother, Josh (Benjamin Flores, Jr.) join Ziggy (portrayed in the present by Gillian Jacobs) and mall janitor (Darrell Britt-Gibson, providing the humor in this film) to take on the evil presence that has taken over Sam, unleashed the batch of serial killers from the previous film and is being orchestrated by a certain someone who I won't mention because that would give the whole damn thing away.

Reminiscent of a previous season of "Stranger Things," the third "Fear Street" picture ends in that bastion of 1980s and 1990s culture - a shopping mall. Yes, it's the type of scenario we've all seen before, but it is a lot bloodier this time around. It's a fun way to send off the series, and the characters who we've come to like help to make the somewhat routine setup more enjoyable.

The first half of the film - set in 1666 - naturally has no period music, although some choice decisions are made in that department later in the picture (nice use of Oasis and Bone Thugs N Harmony). Although the third film is the least scary of the trilogy - especially after the secret is out about the reason for the curse - it's an otherwise enjoyable finale for a series that has been more ambitious than most of its genre. "Fear Street: 1666" may be short on surprises - I could see the plot twist coming from a mile away - but it does a nice job of wrapping up its threads into a mostly satisfying whole.