MINOR SPOILERS FOR A RECENTLY RELEASED FILM

I did it! I actually took the time to reread The Fear Street Saga books! And it’s a good thing I did, because the parallels between that trilogy of books and this trilogy of movies are… uh… Okay, so there’s next to no connection and I can’t get too excited about reading a novella written for teenagers, but still. Back to the topic on hand, Fear Street: 1666 ties all the threads from Fear Street: 1994 and Fear Street: 1978 together, revealing the truth behind all the bad things that happen in Shadyside. And I’m going to talk around that as this is a mostly spoiler free review. Yup, being super inconsistent about that with this trilogy.

A recap of the previous movies, the town of Shadyside suffers from a serial killer at least once every generation, while neighboring Sunnyvale is happy and prosperous. The films follow Deena, a girl who gets mixed up in some supernatural evil placed on the town by Sarah Fier, a witch from 1666 who cut off her hand to make a deal with the devil. Deena’s girlfriend, Sam, becomes possessed by the witch, so she seeks out a survivor from the last murder spree, a woman named C Berman. Berman tells the story of how she survived back in 1978, and Deena now has two important bits of information: where Sarah’s body is, and where her hand is. Believing bringing the two together would end the curse, Deena does so only to be transported back to 1666 into Sarah Fier’s body to learn the truth of the matter. And that’s where this movie kicks off.

The cast of characters in 1666 is populated by actors from the previous two movies. Deena’s brother plays Sarah’s brother, her girlfriend plays Sarah’s girlfriend, and so on. But we do get some new actors with George Fier (Mr. Randy Havens, AKA Mr. Clarke from Stranger Things) playing Sarah’s father. And Deena’s father too, right? Well, this is actually the first time we ever saw that Deena actually has a dad. He’d been mentioned previously, but we never once saw him in any of the movies. It stood out mostly because while a lot of teen horror movies use the “adults are useless” trope, it’s not all that common to go with “adults are not present at all.”

In fact, now that I think about it, Deena didn’t have a last name. Part of the overarching story is of a generations, with sheriff Nick Goode being the descendant of Solomon Goode (played by the same actor, naturally). But Deena also played Sarah Fier with nothing actually connecting her to the Fier/Fear family. Is Deena actually a Fear? Is she descended from Sarah and it’s all fate coming together? Seems like something the movie could’ve gone with, but then again, I don’t think anyone ever makes any reference to the actual road called Fear Street, so decisions were certainly made. I swear there’s a bunch of deleted scenes that would tie all that together.

So how much did these movies take from the books? Concepts, but not much else. The Fear Street Saga tells of the Fier and Goode families and the curse falling on both households. Long story short, in 1692 poor Susannah Goode fell in love with rich Edward Fier. But his father, the town magistrate, wanted his son to marry for money so he accused Susannah and her mother of witchcraft. Susannah’s father, William, gave away all of his money as a bribe to avoid his family being burned at the state, but the Fiers took the money and fled, leaving the two women to die. But it turns out William was a sorcerer and cursed the Fier family, spending the rest of his life hunting them down. Generations later, Simon Fier changed his name to “Fear” in an attempt to avoid a curse that said his family would die in a fire (since Fier is an anagram of fire). He then died in a fire. While there are some connections to the films, the movies created new characters and a new curse, so all those books did was remind me that I haven’t completely lost my ability to sit down and read. Always good to know.

Previous: Fear Street: 1978

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