Fear Street Part Three: 1666 (2021) Review

Tagline: Three movies. Three weeks. One killer story.

Fear Street Part Three: 1666 (2021) Review

 

The third and final film in the Fear Street Trilogy, Part Three: 1666, dropped on Netflix on July 16^th 2021, and I think that was just so there would be a six in the release date. We’ve had two slasher stories before this, one very Scream-esque one set in the 90’s and another very Friday the 13^th-esque one set in the 70’s, but Part Three changes up the setting and style again, to an even greater degree.

As the title would suggest, we go back in time much further than before to 1666, which is quite appropriate even beyond the choice of a date with three sixes in it. This is an era of witch trials, and we see the origins of the Sarah Fier Witch. The change of accents is jarring, but the cast does a pretty good job. It reminded me of the third Ginger Snaps film, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning, with its change of setting, the re-casted roles, and the era in which it takes place. Yet again, Part Three: 1666 is its own thing, despite being part of the bigger story told over three movies. It’s a period piece for the majority of the runtime, and there are more dark/scary moments that happen earlier on compared to Part Two. There’s less time waiting around for the deaths to happen, but a big part of the middle is the witch hunt and trial.

Part Three comes off as the most serious entry in the trilogy, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The setting isn’t a fun one, but I appreciate that it feels different enough from the other two that it isn’t just repetitive. There’s an interesting reveal toward the end that I don’t want to fully spoil, but I’ll just say that 1666 gets traded up for another era in the third act that worked well to tie things back in to where the trilogy started. It manages a solid wrap up of the story, and brings all the parts together in a satisfying way, but they still couldn’t help doing the cliff hanger at the very end for a potential follow-up. Seriously, the story is over, the characters are done, the credits roll, it cuts from credits to footage of the town, it feels like it should just be over, and then there’s one shot included just to leave some sequel potential. As annoying as that was, I wouldn’t be opposed to another trilogy like this.  

That concludes my reviews for the three Fear Street films! Originally they were supposed to be theatrically released, but somehow coming out weekly on Netflix in July as a mini summer streaming event worked even better, I think. It would have been fun to see them with an audience and to have them come out spaced out throughout the summer, but the way the Netflix release went built up enough word of mouth and interest that it got me to watch them and be pleasantly surprised by the quality of the filmmaking. I don’t want to overhype them, but as cliché as it’s become for me to say, if you’re a horror fan, I recommend them, they’re a lot of fun.