Fear Street Part Three: 1666

The last installment of the Fear Street trilogy, 1666, not only solidifies the series in the folk horror subgenre but also raises questions about how to define the format—as film or television. Director Leigh Janiak’s ambitious final chapter reaches back to colonial times in America to search for answers about the curse on Shadyside, whose long history of killings stems from Sarah Fier, a witch who vowed revenge before early settlers hung her from a tree. The capper reframes the mythology by putting the trilogy’s hero, Deena (Kiana Madeira), into Fier’s perspective, where she sees what really happened. Along the way, the movie, if it already wasn’t apparent from the references to witchcraft and the occult in 1994 and 1978, goes full folk horror. That would be enough story for a full feature, except Janiak and her cowriters Phil Graziadei and Kate Trefry return us to the story proper, in 1994, to wrap up the conflict established in the first entry. Whether one defines the Fear Street trilogy as a long six-hour movie, three movies, or a television miniseries doesn’t really matter. However you cut it, the result is so damn entertaining.

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