Fear Street: 1994, 1978 & 1666

 2021, Leigh Janiak (Honeymoon) - Netflix

I was not all that fond of Janiak's debut with Honeymoon. While it was sufficiently creepy and had loads of creature-feature ick factor, I found the reactions of the characters to be questionable, even in the context of horrible creatures creeping around in a lady's hoohaa. Euphemism intended to lessen creep factor.

This series of three movies positioned, as adaptations of popular RL Stine books, for the teen / post-teen age group, is so SO much better. Janiak gives us a trilogy of classic slasher killer supernatural possession witch curse revenge tropes, all elements at the heart of the classic horror movies of the 80s and 90s. But these movies are not just an homage, but quite the stand-out on their own. And she raises the bar, adding sexual politics and the turnover of often misogynistic tropes associated in horror movies. If the black friend always dies third, the women (well, all but the virgin) always get the sharp end of the kitchen knife. And don't you dare be sexually active.

Part One - 1994.

Maya Hawke works at the mall, just like she did in Stranger Things. Late night, as she is closing, the kid in the store across the mezzanine cracks and becomes a slasher killer in a Halloween mask. As he kills Maya, he is shot dead by the town Sherriff. 

We learn of Sunnydale vs Shadyside, side-by-side towns more just neighborhoods of each other, one affluent & successful, the other run down & under a curse -- they have more than their fair share of spree killings. It is a horror movie town. We meet Deena and Sam, two girls who had a secret relationship, until Sam moved to Sunnydale and strived to reinvent herself, ala boys. During an incident after a school sports game, where Deena confronted Sam, there is a car accident and an injured Sam bleeds into some strange red moss. She is instantly beset by visions of the past, horrible visions. And something has been stirred.

This raises the dead, quite literally, to come after the kids. Its a solid first act movie, as the kids expand on the curse Shadyside is under, learning more about the accused witch Sarah Feir, who was long ago hung from a tree (which now sits at the centre of the mall) and is blamed for the regular spree killings for 300 years. The kids have to learn more, much from weird kid brother Josh, and find away to do away with the curse before it, and the resurrected past spree killers, kill them all.

Unexpectedly, the kids have depth. Unexpectedly, the kids we actually like don't all survive. Deena may end up saving Sam, but at the cost of two of her oldest friends, in incredibly gruesome deaths. This is not a "you cannot kill kids" movie. This movie is for kids, so the kids die, and not just the horrible or slutty ones. Not that this movie would slut shame anyone. Sunnydale does enough of that for everyone. 

The movie ends as Sheriff Goode, who knows more than he lets on, blames the post Maya Hawke killings on the two friends who died last -- they were known Shadysider drug peddlers. And while traumatized by the heaping of insult upon injury, Deena, Josh and Sam have survived. It's over. Until they get a call, a call from the lone survivor of the last spree killing in 1978, who tells them, you cannot get rid of the Feir Witch so easily.

Part Two - 1978

I love how they slipped into this second movie so easily and so quickly. The lone survivor of the 1978 summer camp killings tells them the tale of that summer, and her experience with the curse from the evil witch Feir. She tells how she has lived in fear of Sarah Feir returning and with the guilt of not having saved her sister. And we slip into a movie-long flashback.

This is a summer camp without "adults". All the camp counselors are teenagers, raunchy, horny, awkward and bullying teenagers, from Shadyside and from Sunnydale. The tale begins as a number of Sunnydalers attempt to hang Ziggy, a Shadysider whom they just don't like. In case we didn't catch that Netflix wants this series to be the new Stranger Things, Ziggy is played by Sadie Sink from season 2 of the aforementioned series. Ziggy is at odds with her own sister, who is playing at being a Sunnydaler, wearing a polo shirt, her only polo shirt, and dating a tall, handsome boy from Sunnydale. Ziggy is weird and angry but catches the eye of a younger Nick Goode, who will grow up to be the Sherriff from the previous movie.

Its a summer camp, so we need to have a slasher. But we are learning of the curse, and the slasher in a burlap sack is Ziggy's sister's BF Tommy, possessed by Sarah Feir's curse when the kids blunder into a secret sanctum below the summer camp. Tommy is now an axe weirding murderer who picks off the campers and counselors in droves. Again, this is a kids movie for horror loving kids, so we are only mildly surprised when youngsters are chopped to bits by the axe wielding possessed murderer. But Ziggy and friends are doing their best to understand Sarah Feir's curse, and defeat it. Alas....

In the end, they defeat Sarah's curse (for this round), allow the majority of campers to escape (people make unexpected good decisions to not hide in the wood shed filled with rusty blades) but with one twist. We have assumed all along that because it was Ziggy who was cursed, the one who bled on the hand-bones of Sarah Feir, that she was going to die and her sister was telling the tale. But no, in the final scenes, Ziggy is stabbed in the gut while her sister is horribly bludgeoned to death before her eyes. Ziggy dies, briefly, but is revived by the young Nick Goode. She survives, the curse is foiled. But she has lost everything.

Back to the future, nay 1994. The kids, having heard the tale of Sarah Feir's hand, and her horrible treatment at the hands of the villagers in 1666, believe they can assuage her wrath by returning her hand to her bones. The kids in 1978 thought the bones had been under the tree where Sarah was hung, but do not find them. But they do bury the hand there. Deena, in 1994 knows the hanging tree now stands at the centre of the Shadyside Mall (greaaaat choice there) and also knows the bones are under that strange moss in the woods, where Sam bled into. Hand meet bones, curse lifted? Again, not quite.

Part 3 - 1666

This is the most clever of the trilogy but also the most ambitious, as Deena is now seeing through the eyes of Sarah Feir, waaay back in 1666. She is not possessing her body, but all the cast of the other two movies get to play 1666 counterparts, including the recreation of the love affair between Sarah Feir and Hannah Miller (as seen as Sam). Sarah was not a witch, but a rebellious young lesbian, doing her best to rebuff the horny pioneer boys and make connection with Hannah. Nice rework of the classic witch accusation, as well as a rebuff of the classic tale that has built both Sunnydale and Shadyside.

But deviltry IS at work in Union, the community that laid the ground for Shadyside and Sunnydale. Something IS causing a rot to form at the centre of this community. It doesn't take long for the sinful ties between Hannah and Sarah to form the works of a witchy accusation, and we the viewers join in this suspicion when Sarah does in fact find a witch's den deep in the woods, along with the evil spell book that played a part in 1978. When Sarah says No to the wrong young man, she is instantly lied about, making a strong tie between the actual witchcraft at work, and her already known sinful ways. Alas, Hannah also gets accused along with her, but Sarah throws all caution to the wind to save Hannah, whom she loves dearly.

We have seen Deena in two movies doing everything in her power to prove her love to Sam, and now the ties between Deena and Sara, Sam and Hannah are so clear. Sarah is not the force of the evil inside Shadyside, but another fucking victim. And when we find out who the actual "witch" is, and lo it IS actual deviltry, an actual pact with not just Satan but many devils, we are kind of not surprised. Nor are we surprised by its connections to the fates of the two future towns. 

The Goode Family, that which spawns Sherriff Nick Goode we have met in the previous two movies, have been manipulating the souls of the residents since 1666. By forcing someone to be possessed by the evil they have summoned, the blood and souls are sacrificed for the betterment of some of Union, that which eventually becomes Sunnydale. And those doomed to live in Shadyside, they will always be the unwitting sacrifices. Sarah Feir was not a witch. Sarah Feir did not cut off her hand to show her dedication to Satan. She discovered Solomon Goode's evil pact, and he cut off her hand. But can an already reviled young woman convince her brethren of her innocence in defiance of a Goode man of the village? No. 

Back to the future, nay 1994. Deena is once again herself, but still armed with the truth from 1666. And now they have to defeat Goode, good Sheriff Goode, and his minions, the evil souls of evil possessed killers from so many ages past, summoned to do his killing once more. In a classic teen movie confrontation scene, that once again tells us viewers that Netflix wants this to be the next Stranger Things, the kids gather together in the Shadyside Mall, with a plan in hand to defeat the evil.

And they do. And all is better with the world. Finally, for real this time. But so many are lost. So so SO many.

This series was epic, in its telling, and in its scope. It not only drew upon all the tropes of the 70s to 90s horror movies we grew up on, but also deconstructed them in so many ways. It created heroes, villains, gave us tragedy that had weight and a redemption that was cheer worthy.

P.S. I am looking at YOU, The Tomorrow War.