Fear Street Part Three: 1666 – Film Review

In 1666, a colonial town is gripped by a witch hunt that has deadly consequences for centuries to come, meanwhile teenagers in 1994 try to put an end to their town’s curse before it is too late.

The Fear Street trilogy of films is one that I didn’t know I needed until I got them these past three weeks. Growing up as a kid, I was a massive R.L. Stine fan but I had never read any of his Fear Street novels, but rather the Goosebumps series instead.

Leigh Janiak’s first two installments in this trilogy were extremely daring horror flicks that had beautifully nostalgic elements reminding us of great slashers from the 70s and 90s but the final entry in her trilogy, Fear Street Part Three: 1666 incorporates elements of gothic horror in the vein of The Witch, while also delivering one hell of a grand finale in 1994’s final bits of the story.

You would think that a film that jumps between two wildly different timelines would be jarring or confusing but gratefully, this film is never either of those things. The first half of the movie shows us the origin story of Sarah Fier and how she was essentially falsely branded as a witch by all the fellow townspeople.

Some of the events that are depicted during the 1666 storyline are genuinely eerie and make for an incredibly interesting yet heavily creepy first half of the story. The cinematography by Caleb Heyman truly makes this world pop and gives it a sense of creepiness that will stay with you all the way up until the transition to 1994.

All of the costumes on display here are also highly intricate and extremely impressive. It’s a shame that the costume department in the film industry usually gets overlooked because they play a crucial role when it comes to filmmaking and yet nobody ever talks about them. But let me make it clear that Fear Street Part Three (and the previous two films that proceeded it) has wonderful costume design on display.

As soon as I clicked play on Part Three I was met with an overwhelming sense of joy and a hint of sadness mixed in for good measure. I knew right from the opening sequence that this finale was going to be grand and wasn’t going to hold anything back which got me incredibly eager to see what the rest of the film would be like, but it was also bittersweet – it felt like having to say goodbye to a good friend you make while on vacation. You enjoyed your time with them but you know you eventually have to say goodbye and so when the time comes, you’re met with a lot of emotions.

I think that was the goal with this whole trilogy – they wanted you to love the first two films so much to the point where, once you get to the end, you don’t want it to be truly over. The Fear Street movies most definitely feature a bunch of bloody kills, profanity, nudity, and drug use, but they also feel like comfort movies in the strangest but most delightful way possible.

And if you are somebody who only had an interest in this series for the slasher elements alone, then you probably enjoyed the first two entries seeing as how they were chalked full of chaotic moments like that, but Part Three is perhaps the most violent. A few of the kills here are remarkable and left me wondering “How did they do that?”. If a movie makes you wonder how the magic was done behind the scenes, it’s usually a good sign.

Something that I haven’t seen many people talk about – strangely enough – is the performances in this series. In Part One, Kiana Madeira served as an intriguing and charismatic lead while Maya Hawke and Olivia Scott Welch served as excellent supporting players. With Part Two, you had Sadie Sink as Ziggy Berman and Ryan Simpkins in a role that could have been terrible but ended up being surprisingly emotional.

In Part Three, virtually everybody is on their A-game. Madeira once again proves how much range she has in her leading role, being able to show extreme emotion with oftentimes just a facial expression, while Ashley Zukerman serves as a chilling side character once more. But perhaps my favorite actor in this film is Gillian Jacobs as a grown-up Ziggy Berman, who gets a surprising amount of screen-time this time around.

I obviously won’t talk about what kind of role she plays and how she is vital to this final entry’s storyline because it would divulge into spoiler territory, but just know that she gets a lot of exciting and fun things to do. Being a Jacobs fan for quite some time, it was incredibly cathartic to see.

Leigh Janiak’s final film definitely wraps things up in a creepy and riveting bang, making for one of the most memorable and inspired horror film series in quite a long time. There is an after-credits scene that strangely seems to suggest that there could be a continuation of this story in some capacity which was a bit annoying to see, but other than that, Fear Street Part Three: 1666 delivers all the goods.

Overall Grade: A-

MPAA Rating: R for strong violence and gore, language, some sexuality, and brief drug use

Cast: Kiana Madeira, Ashley Zukerman, Gillian Jacobs, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Darrell Britt-Gibson, Fred Hechinger, Julia Rehwald, Emily Rudd, McCabe Slye, Jordana Spiro, Jordyn DiNatale

Directed by: Leigh Janiak

Written by: Phil Graziadei, Leigh Janiak, Kate Trefry

Distributed by: Netflix

Release Date: July 16, 2021

Running Time: 114 minutes