Fear Street Part Three: 1666 — 17/10
Ah! Back at it again with that gay shit. Fuck yeah.
Something that’s been floating around in my head as this trilogy has rolled out is the sore-thumb sticking point of a totally and definitely and most certainly guilty teenaged witch Sarah Fier being at the center of these centuries-spanning murder sprees which always see the disadvantaged, the put-upon, the misfits and outcasts, suffering the most. After all, couldn’t the hanged witch herself be counted among those victims? If you hadn’t guessed the answer was yes going in, the whole first act will be an experience of discovery and surprise. If not, “1666”, still anticipates at least some of the audience have clued in to the game already, and so the movie knows to balance letting this audience discovery play out, and when to head the audience off at the pass with misdirections. It allows the film to maintain its sense of unpredictability without cheating its audience - a much harder trick to pull off than usually given credit for.
If “1666” is gayer than the last one, it’s also more entrenched in the bigotry at the story’s center. Sarah and Hannah don’t have long to sit with their finally-expressed attraction to each other before the rumors start flying, dark magic gets brewing, and accusations of sin and witchcraft begin sticking. Sarah and Hannah both question if their feelings for one another may have opened a door for the devil to stroll into this tiny settlement and wreak havoc. It’s Solomon Goode, of all people, who insists that evil is not let in by chance. Speaking personally, a lot of this first half can be hard to watch, with all its internalized homophobia and the helplessness the two leads are drowning in. I’m not the first gay person to wonder if my feelings were just a sin indulged, a taste that somehow became a bite before I knew it. But as Solomon Goode says, “Dalliance or no... evil is not let in by chance. You have to give it your hand.” And the rest of the settlement do just that; in a heated meeting (of just the men, of course), suspicions arise, fear is mongered, and an embarrassed, romantically-rejected asshat seizes the opportunity to make the rejecting woman pay.
We soon learn that the witch of Shadyside in 1666 is Solomon Goode - is, in fact, another Goode every few years, always feeding souls to whatever devil made the first deal with Solomon, so that the Goode line can retain its prosperity and wealth. Sarah Fier, for her part, did inflict her own curse, but not on the town. Moments before her hanging, she promises Solomon that she will out the truth from beyond the grave, that she will tell her story, that she and every name he claims, every collateral life he steals, will follow him and haunt him forever.
In 1994, with the cat out of the bag, Deena, Josh and Ziggy and a delightful but rather suddenly enlisted Martin set up a trap for Goode in the Shadyside mall, which was built around the hanging tree where Sarah hanged in 1666 and Ziggy saw her sister die in 1978 — bringing the trilogy to an exciting, biting, and satisfying conclusion.