'FEAR STREET PARTS ONE, TWO and THREE : 1994, 1978 and 1666' - Tuesday 20th July.

Having watched Parts One and Two upon their release, I saw the concluding chapter in the supernatural teen slasher horror 'FEAR STREET TRILOGY' earlier this week, which has been released on Netflix over three consecutive weeks in July - on the 2nd, the 9th and the 16th. Directed and Co-Written for the screen by Leigh Janiak and based on the book series of the same name by R. L. Stine, the series of three films has a total running time of 5½ hours, was filmed back to back over the course of six months from March to September 2019 and each of the three instalments has received generally positive critical acclaim. 

'FEAR STREET PART ONE : 1994'.

In 1994, at the Shadyside Shopping Mall, Heather Watkins (Maya Hawke), working late as a bookstore employee, is brutally stabbed to death by her unassuming friend Ryan Torres (David W. Thompson), who had previously shown no malice towards her. After murdering her and several other mall employees, Ryan is shot dead by Police. The news channels report the mall massacre as being largely business as usual for Shadyside, which they hail as the murder capital of the United States. Meanwhile, the neighbouring town of Sunnyvale is the complete opposite, and is reported to be one of the safest and wealthiest cities in the whole country. Plenty of the Shadyside teenagers believe this is because the witch, Sarah Fier, placed a curse on the town before being hanged for witchcraft back in 1666. 

Deena Johnson (Kiana Madeira) has no time for talk of the Fier witch, her brother Josh (Benjamin Flores Jnr.) keeps himself busy researching the town's sordid history, her friends Simon (Fred Hichinger) and Kate (Julia Rehwald) sell drugs, and she has recently split up with her closeted girlfriend Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), who has since moved to Sunnyvale. One night, a car accident in the woods puts Sam in hospital but before being carted off in the ambulance she has a vision of the Fier witch. The next night Deena and her friends visit Sam in hospital when one of Shadyside's past killers murders Peter and a number of others in the hospital. The town's Sheriff Nick Goode (Ashley Zukerman) arrives on the scene and is confronted by a mass of dead bodies and a blood bath. After learning of Sam's vision, the group comes to the conclusion that the car accident disturbed the grave of Sarah Fier and that as Sam touched her bones in her final resting place in a shallow grave in the woods, they also deduce that the killers only want Sam and that they cannot be stopped by reburying the body or killing the killers, for they will just keep on coming back.

Through Josh's collection of historical newspaper articles on the Shadyside killings, they discover that a C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs), was the sole survivor of the Camp Nightwing massacre in 1978, and that she died but was resuscitated. Deena tries to call Berman, but there is no response to her phone call. They hatch a plan to kill and revive Sam using drugs from a pharmacy. Upon ingesting the drugs Sam promptly vomits them up. Inside a supermarket at night, the Shadyside killers attack and murder Simon and Kate with an axe to the head and a bread slicing machine respectively. Deena meanwhile drowns a willing Sam in a fish tank. The killers disappear and Deena revives Sam using EpiPens and CPR. Later that evening, while Sam is at her house, Deena is called back by Berman who tells her that there is no escaping the witch. Sam, now possessed, attacks Deena who in turn subdues and ties her up. 

'FEAR STREET PART TWO : 1978'

The film opens up in 1994 with Deena and Josh Johnson restraining Sam, who remains possessed. All three go to C. Berman's house for help. Reluctantly, Berman allows them inside and begins recounting the events of the Camp Nightwing massacre which occurred on 19th July 1978. Ziggy Berman (Sadie Sink) from Shadyside is accused of stealing by a Sunnyvale camper, and her friends. They rope her to a tree and start to burn her upper arm with a lighter before camp counsellors Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland) and Kurt (Michael Provost) intervene. Ziggy's older sister, Cindy (Emily Rudd), and her boyfriend Tommy Slater (McCabe Slye) are cleaning the dining hall when Nurse Mary Lane (Jordana Spiro), who is the mother of Shadyside killer Ruby Lane, attacks Tommy, saying that he will die that night, before being escorted from the camp by the Police. Later, Cindy and Tommy go to the infirmary to investigate her motive where they interrupt counsellors Alice (Ryan Simpkins), Cindy's former friend, and her boyfriend Arnie (Sam Brooks) going for it. They find Lane's diary which reads that Fier made a deal with the devil by cutting her hand on Satan's stone, so granting eternal life. In the diary too, they find a map which leads them to Fier's house in the woods.

When the group reach the house, they find empty graves dug up in the surrounding area and discover the witch's mark below the house. Alice and Cindy come across a stone wall with carvings of the names of all the Shadyside killers engraved on to it, and Tommy's name included. Tommy, now possessed, kills Arnie with an axe to the face. He chases the girls but they escape through an entrance behind a book case into a cave behind. Tommy reaches the camp and murders several Shadyside campers, including a counsellor. Nick takes several of the campers to the dining hall and instructs Kurt to take the remaining campers to the bus and ring the bell before they leave to alert the others. In the meantime, Cindy and Alice use the witch's mark in the diary as a map of the cave in order to escape. They come across a pulsating mound of beating organs, which, when Alice touches out of curiosity, gives her flashbacks of all the past killers and their hapless victims. Ziggy and counsellor Gary (Drew Scheid) try to rescue Alice and Cindy who have made their way to an opening under the outhouse. Tommy arrives and decapitates Gary with his axe. Ziggy escapes and hides with Nick. The two are later found by Tommy who injures Nick in the leg, but Ziggy escapes to the dining hall. Cindy locates an escape route leading to the dining hall while Alice stays behind having suffered a compound fracture to her ankle in a fall. Meanwhile, Tommy attacks Ziggy, but Cindy intervenes and kills him by stabbing him repeatedly. Alice arrives a short time later saying that she found the witch's hand. Her nose started bleeding and realised that she was sitting near Satan's stone, from where she dug it out.

The three decide to end the curse by reuniting Sarah's hand with her skeletal remains when Ziggy suddenly bleeds from the nose and on to the hand and has a vision of Sarah Fier. This in turn triggers the curse, resurrecting several Shadyside killers, including Tommy who rises and kills Alice, but Cindy slices his head off at the neck him with a spade. Ziggy and Cindy run to the tree where Sarah Fier was hanged in 1666, with the Shadyside killers in pursuit. They dig and find a rock inscribed with 'The witch forever lives', suggesting that this is not actually where Sarah was buried. The killers arrive and Cindy realises they are after Ziggy. She drops the hand and sacrifices herself. Ziggy is killed by multiple stab wounds to the abdomen and Cindy by repeated blows to the chest with an axe. The killers disappear, until Nick finds them and resuscitates Ziggy via CPR. Now back in 1994 again, Deena and Josh realise that C. Berman is in fact Ziggy, whose real name is Christine. They tell her that they found the witch's body and now, with the hand, they can bring the centuries old curse to an end. The camp eventually became Shadyside Mall, where Deena and Josh dig out the hand from under the same tree that remains a centrepiece of the mall. They take it to the place where the body is buried and Deena reunites the body with the hand. Deena's nose bleeds and she sees a vision where she is in 1666 as Sarah Fier.

'FEAR STREET PART THREE : 1666'

Having reunited the hand of Sarah Fier with the rest of her corpse, Deena has a vision showing the events of 1666 from the perspective of Sarah Fier herself. She lives with her father George (Randy Havens) and brother Henry (Benjamin Flores Jnr.) in the community of Union, the original settlement before it was split up into Sunnyvale and Shadyside. One night, while Sarah and her two closest friends Lizzie (Julia Rehwald) and Hannah Miller (Olivia Scott Welch) whom Sarah is secretly in love with, make their way to a party for the young adults, they sneak into the tent of a reclusive widow, where Sarah comes across a book of black magic. After fleeing, Sarah and Hannah run off and get intimate in the forest, but are unknowingly seen by Mad Thomas (McCabe Slye). The next day, Hannah's father Pastor Miller begins to act strange, and the settlement is struck with horrible misfortune as livestock dies and fruit and vegetables turn rotten overnight. Sarah confides in Solomon Goode (Ashley Zukerman) as the only trustworthy person she feels she can turn to and wonders if she is responsible for the community's run of bad luck. Meanwhile Pastor Miller has locked a number of children in the chapel. When the townsfolk gain access inside the chapel, led by Solomon, they see that Pastor Miller has murdered the children, by tearing out their eyes. Sarah finds Henry's lifeless body in the front pew and, while distracted, is set upon and almost killed by Pastor Miller before he himself is killed by Solomon using a pitchfork.

Later that evening, a community meeting is held in the chapel at which the gathered folk decide that witchcraft must be the cause of the grim events they are all suffering and that Sarah and Hannah are the witches responsible because they were seen by Mad Thomas. The two try to escape being hunted down, but Hannah is captured while Sarah flees, and the locals determine that Hannah should be executed by hanging at dawn the next day. She decides to locate the widow's book of black magic and use it to make a deal with the devil in order to save Hannah. However, she finds the book has gone and the widow had been murdered. She flees to Solomon's house for help as her only place of safe refuge, and hides in a back room where she discovers tunnels under the house, revealing some sort of ritual and the widow's book. It turns out that Solomon took the book and offers to share it with her, but Sarah rejects his notion and escapes into the tunnels. He catches up with her and the two fight, with her hand cut off as the pair struggle. She makes her way out of the tunnels, having stabbed Solomon in his side, but is found by the townspeople. At Sarah and Hannah's execution early the next morning, Sarah confesses and convinces the locals to spare Hannah's life, while sacrificing herself. Sarah swears vengeance from the grave saying that she will shadow Solomon for all eternity, she will never let him go and she will follow him forever just before she is executed via hanging. Shortly after, Hannah, and her three closest friends grieve for Sarah and properly bury her (handless) body.

As Deena's vision of the events of 1666 ends, and now back in 1994, she realises that the Goode family is responsible for the Shadyside curse, as the firstborn from each subsequent generation repeat the ritual begun by their ancestor Solomon. Sheriff Nick Goode begins to realise that Deena and Josh are onto him, and he tracks them down in the woods, but they manage to escape in the Sheriff's patrol car. They arrive at Ziggy's house, where she remains watching over a possessed Sam. Ziggy is shocked to learn that Nick and his family are the reason for her sister's death, but understands that they now need to kill Nick in order to bring the Shadyside curse to an end. Josh recruits the help of friend Martin (Darrell Britt-Gibson) who works as a janitor at the mall, and the foursome devise a plan to coax Nick to the mall and set traps to have the undead murderers kill him. Lured by the smell of Deena's blood, the group successfully manage to trap the killers behind the reinforced roller shutters of several of the mall's stores. Ziggy coaxes Nick out into the centre of the mall, and pours Deena's blood over him, so leading the undead killers in Nick's direction. However, Nick manages to escape into the centuries old tunnels now running beneath the mall. Deena follows him while the others fight off the undead killers. Nick pins Deena down and nearly kills her, but Deena is able to thrust Nick's hand on to the unholy pulsating mass of beating organs at the centre of the tunnels, which gives him a vision of all his killers' victims down through the ages. With Nick distracted, Deena gains the upper hand and finally kills him with a knife directly in to his eye socket, which makes the undead killers disappear and finally breaks the curse on Shadyside. Deena and Sam emerge through a perfectly maintained house in Sunnyvale. Keep watching for the mid-credits sequence involving the book of black magic. 

The 'Fear Street Trilogy' as a whole is entertaining enough with ample nods to the slasher horror genre that was so prevalent in the '80's and '90's and while it hacks, chops and thrusts it way through largely familiar territory there is still ample fresh perspective to add life to the old tried and tested formula yet. The first instalment is the bloodiest, most brutal of them all with plenty of gruesome murders by our gang of marauding undead serial killers intertwined with teenage angst, supernatural goings-on and surprising plot twists. Part Two is a tad more predictable in its Summer Camp rampage by a lone axe wielding killer but nonetheless ramps up the bodycount, the tension and the excitement that offers up more than a commendable bridge between Parts One and Three, and could almost stand alone on its own right. As for Part Three the segment set in 1666 offers up more explanatory narrative on the origins of the curse and less of the bloodletting, but the finale set back in 1994 cleverly knits the whole storyline together that brings this trilogy to more than a satisfying conclusion that is sure to please lovers of the genre and proves that Leigh Janiak is new force in the horror canon to be contended with. 

The 'Fear Street Trilogy' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-