Fear Street Part 3: 1666 Parent Guide

Deena Johnson (Kiana Madeira) thought she had found a way to end the curse afflicting Shadyside. After learning about the massacre at Camp Nightwing from Ziggy Berman (Gillian Jacobs), she found the skeletal remains of legendary witch Sarah Fier and reunited them with her severed hand – but that didn’t end the terror. As soon as she touched the body, Deena found herself seeing life through Sarah’s eyes, over 300 years ago. Life in Union (as the town was known before it was split into Sunnyvale and Shadyside) wasn’t easy in 1666, and rumors of a witch threatened to tear the colony apart. Sarah shows Deena exactly what happened – but now Deena needs to find out how to stop it for good.

The history nerd in me spent most of the 1666 portion of this movie cringing. Based on historical context, Union is supposed to be a Puritan town, and Puritans in the mid-17^th century were a lot less tolerant of…well, everything. What you get here are modern characters with 21^st century opinions superimposed on colonial settings. Don’t try using this film as an educational guide to early America.

But you and I both know that’s not the point of these movies. If I’ve learned anything from the previous two films, the point is to wantonly butcher teenagers in gruesome ways for entertainment value. There is rather less violence in this film compared to the precedents, but unless you like seeing a pile of children’s eyeballs on a church floor, this still isn’t a movie for the queasy. I’d also recommend against eating, say, Fruit Gushers while viewing.

What distinguishes this film from the previous two is the volume of profanity, which has dropped precipitously. Since most of the film takes place in 1666, when cussing was much less acceptable than it is today, we’re down to about a dozen profanities. On the other hand, we’ve still got teen drinking, drug use, and sex, so this is unlikely to rank as a parent’s top choice for teen viewing.

All that aside, I have had a surprising amount of fun watching this trilogy over the past few weeks. It’s a perfect example of brainless summer horror, the kinds of movies that require no intelligent thought and a minimum of your attention. Sure, you’ll miss some of the fun details if you just zone out into this body-temperature bloodbath, but you certainly don’t need details to make sense of the films. Of course, this will only really appeal to fans of gory horror, but based on the popularity of these films, there seem to be a lot of you out there. Just don’t expect to lose much sleep over them – they’re still more gory than scary.