Fear Street 1666 and 1994 part 2.
Jul. 20th, 2021 07:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyI suppose if I've bothered you with parts 1 and 2, I should finish the trilogy and discuss part three of the Fear Street trilogy, eh?
So. Back to FS:1666!
Right off the bat I'm going to tell you that this movie is split in two, but you'd probably figure that out if you'd been watching along as 1994 does NOT have a concrete ending and 1978 is also bookended by the fact that they're trying to solve the lack of ending for 94.
66 picks up right where 78 left off, with Deena bleeding on Sarah Fier's bones and being plunged back into 1666. Specifically into Sarah Fier's life. For the most part, the character of Sarah will be played by Deena's actress, but occasionally you'll get a glimpse of the 'real Sarah Fier" and you will think to yourself, "huh. So there's this generation's Fairuza." After the movie you will wonder if she's going to ever be in anything you'll see again. You might do this during the movie but I didn't so we'll pretend you won't either.
You should prepare yourself for everyone to be doing accents to varying degrees of success. I didn't mind most of them but my standards are probably lower than yours. :P
Anyway. Just about everyone in town is portrayed by an actor already used in one of the other movies, though there are a few people who don't show up again as far as I can tell. Don't get too excited though, as this story focuses primarily on Sarah Fier, Hannah... something or other (Miller? She's the pastor's daughter) who is the 1666 Sam counterpart, and Solomon Goode. Gotta tie that Goode family in somehow, right?
And that little writeup PROBABLY told you everything you need to know because this installment is basically just telling you the origin of the craziness in Shadyside and the truth about Sarah Fier and none of you are new to the planet so you know that anyone named Goode in a horror movie is actually a bad guy, and besides, we already knew from p2 that the Goodes were uh, no good.
But it's still kind of heartbreaking to realize that Solomon, who seemed to be one of the only people in Union with a brain, is flat out evil (when your deal with the devil gets 12 children killed and you don't immediately decide you done fucked up, you get to be evil) and that Nick is definitely the bad guy in the 78 and 94 stories, particularly the 78 story (my heart, she breaks for young Nick and Ziggy!)... yeah.
ALAS, they still did not fucking bother to give Sam a damn bit of characterization and thus I still do not give a single, solitary fuck about whether she lives or dies. When she escapes and there's a moment of "well, do we go after her and risk certain death or do we stay here and still risk a slightly lower chance of death?" you root hardcore for the staying there. I honestly thought they were going to pull something out of their hat, or at least coast on giving Hannah enough personality that you'd just transition that over to Sam but no. No, they really did not. Sam got to live because otherwise Deena doesn't get a happy ending and traditional horror movies would've killed her off already.
Which is SO fucking annoying. Would it have been so hard to give me a reason to root for Sam? To tell us anything about her? Here's what we know:
Her parents divorced and she moved half an hour away to Sunnyvale with her homophobic mother and new stepfather.
The move prompted Deena to break up with her even though Sam did seem to genuinely want to make things work.
Not wanting to deal with being out, she found herself a jerkass boyfriend.
She's a cheerleader.
Did not seem to care much at all that her boyfriend was brutally murdered in front of her.
Said she was willing to die to save the others but did not actually manage to do this until the others who didn't initially want to die for her were dead.
And this character was in all three movies and this, this is all we know. I've seen characters work with less but from the moment Sam was 'revealed' to be a girl, you knew damn well she wasn't gonna die. Movies, this means you gotta work harder to justify why we're keeping her, not just let her coast. Because most of that stuff I mentioned was pretty much gleaned in the scene where Deena and Sam meet up and argue before things go horror sideways for them. It takes maybe, if you're generous, five minutes.
Sigh.
I got distracted, I think. The 1666 bit was bleak, both in terms of story and in the lighting, but it did what it needed to do. Sort of. There's a moment where Sarah decides to gamble and save Hannah's life, and I assume that's why she didn't choose to do the smart damn thing and just tell the goddamn town that if they just fucking go under Solomon's house, they'll find a fucking altar to the devil.
I know you're not supposed to use your brains in these things, but all they had to do was NOT have this be under his house and I'd have just gone with the "who would believe a woman they already think to be weird, at best, over a guy they think to be weird?" But no. Under his house. They already think the dude is nuts and not trustworthy. I suppose she could've thought that they'd still hang her and Hannah anyway, even if they took him out, too, and took a chance on them NOT killing Hannah... but that just meant that she condemned one person to be sacrificed a year, to say nothing of the people they took out in their murder spree. Which meant Hannah could still be murdered at any time. So to keep my head from exploding, I tell myself that pact with the devil meant they'd probably cover their tracks. Or something. Except this was probably the one time in history they'd think oh, hey, this dude's obviously in league with the devil, too. Might as well toss him into the fire as well.
I will say that once we went back to 94 for part 2, they did get in one fantastic musical choice for a montage. I also appreciated them not killing C. Bergman as I hate the trope of killing the franchise's final girl in the next installment of the series. Haaaaaaaaaaate.
For me, the movies definitely go 1978 - 1666 - 1994. But you need 94 to make sense of the second half of 1666 so you can't just jump right into the good stuff.
In the end, I'm going to go with it was worthy of the Fear Street name even if I don't think a thing happened on Fear Street. I dunno, maybe Deena lived on Fear Street? If taken as the trilogy it was always meant to be, it works well enough. The books were never without flaws (even the best of them had plotholes you could easily dance a blue whale through) but I think over the course of three movies you'll find at least one character to like/love and perhaps at least one to mourn. Doesn't sound like much over the course of three movies, but there are fun parts enough in each installment that if you were curious about it, I'd give it a go. Just uh, beware the breadslicer. The director is super proud of that one and I could've lived a thousand lifetimes without it, and that might be the most Fear Street thing of all. Definitely the most Stine thing, anyway.
So. Back to FS:1666!
Right off the bat I'm going to tell you that this movie is split in two, but you'd probably figure that out if you'd been watching along as 1994 does NOT have a concrete ending and 1978 is also bookended by the fact that they're trying to solve the lack of ending for 94.
66 picks up right where 78 left off, with Deena bleeding on Sarah Fier's bones and being plunged back into 1666. Specifically into Sarah Fier's life. For the most part, the character of Sarah will be played by Deena's actress, but occasionally you'll get a glimpse of the 'real Sarah Fier" and you will think to yourself, "huh. So there's this generation's Fairuza." After the movie you will wonder if she's going to ever be in anything you'll see again. You might do this during the movie but I didn't so we'll pretend you won't either.
You should prepare yourself for everyone to be doing accents to varying degrees of success. I didn't mind most of them but my standards are probably lower than yours. :P
Anyway. Just about everyone in town is portrayed by an actor already used in one of the other movies, though there are a few people who don't show up again as far as I can tell. Don't get too excited though, as this story focuses primarily on Sarah Fier, Hannah... something or other (Miller? She's the pastor's daughter) who is the 1666 Sam counterpart, and Solomon Goode. Gotta tie that Goode family in somehow, right?
And that little writeup PROBABLY told you everything you need to know because this installment is basically just telling you the origin of the craziness in Shadyside and the truth about Sarah Fier and none of you are new to the planet so you know that anyone named Goode in a horror movie is actually a bad guy, and besides, we already knew from p2 that the Goodes were uh, no good.
But it's still kind of heartbreaking to realize that Solomon, who seemed to be one of the only people in Union with a brain, is flat out evil (when your deal with the devil gets 12 children killed and you don't immediately decide you done fucked up, you get to be evil) and that Nick is definitely the bad guy in the 78 and 94 stories, particularly the 78 story (my heart, she breaks for young Nick and Ziggy!)... yeah.
ALAS, they still did not fucking bother to give Sam a damn bit of characterization and thus I still do not give a single, solitary fuck about whether she lives or dies. When she escapes and there's a moment of "well, do we go after her and risk certain death or do we stay here and still risk a slightly lower chance of death?" you root hardcore for the staying there. I honestly thought they were going to pull something out of their hat, or at least coast on giving Hannah enough personality that you'd just transition that over to Sam but no. No, they really did not. Sam got to live because otherwise Deena doesn't get a happy ending and traditional horror movies would've killed her off already.
Which is SO fucking annoying. Would it have been so hard to give me a reason to root for Sam? To tell us anything about her? Here's what we know:
Her parents divorced and she moved half an hour away to Sunnyvale with her homophobic mother and new stepfather.
The move prompted Deena to break up with her even though Sam did seem to genuinely want to make things work.
Not wanting to deal with being out, she found herself a jerkass boyfriend.
She's a cheerleader.
Did not seem to care much at all that her boyfriend was brutally murdered in front of her.
Said she was willing to die to save the others but did not actually manage to do this until the others who didn't initially want to die for her were dead.
And this character was in all three movies and this, this is all we know. I've seen characters work with less but from the moment Sam was 'revealed' to be a girl, you knew damn well she wasn't gonna die. Movies, this means you gotta work harder to justify why we're keeping her, not just let her coast. Because most of that stuff I mentioned was pretty much gleaned in the scene where Deena and Sam meet up and argue before things go horror sideways for them. It takes maybe, if you're generous, five minutes.
Sigh.
I got distracted, I think. The 1666 bit was bleak, both in terms of story and in the lighting, but it did what it needed to do. Sort of. There's a moment where Sarah decides to gamble and save Hannah's life, and I assume that's why she didn't choose to do the smart damn thing and just tell the goddamn town that if they just fucking go under Solomon's house, they'll find a fucking altar to the devil.
I know you're not supposed to use your brains in these things, but all they had to do was NOT have this be under his house and I'd have just gone with the "who would believe a woman they already think to be weird, at best, over a guy they think to be weird?" But no. Under his house. They already think the dude is nuts and not trustworthy. I suppose she could've thought that they'd still hang her and Hannah anyway, even if they took him out, too, and took a chance on them NOT killing Hannah... but that just meant that she condemned one person to be sacrificed a year, to say nothing of the people they took out in their murder spree. Which meant Hannah could still be murdered at any time. So to keep my head from exploding, I tell myself that pact with the devil meant they'd probably cover their tracks. Or something. Except this was probably the one time in history they'd think oh, hey, this dude's obviously in league with the devil, too. Might as well toss him into the fire as well.
I will say that once we went back to 94 for part 2, they did get in one fantastic musical choice for a montage. I also appreciated them not killing C. Bergman as I hate the trope of killing the franchise's final girl in the next installment of the series. Haaaaaaaaaaate.
For me, the movies definitely go 1978 - 1666 - 1994. But you need 94 to make sense of the second half of 1666 so you can't just jump right into the good stuff.
In the end, I'm going to go with it was worthy of the Fear Street name even if I don't think a thing happened on Fear Street. I dunno, maybe Deena lived on Fear Street? If taken as the trilogy it was always meant to be, it works well enough. The books were never without flaws (even the best of them had plotholes you could easily dance a blue whale through) but I think over the course of three movies you'll find at least one character to like/love and perhaps at least one to mourn. Doesn't sound like much over the course of three movies, but there are fun parts enough in each installment that if you were curious about it, I'd give it a go. Just uh, beware the breadslicer. The director is super proud of that one and I could've lived a thousand lifetimes without it, and that might be the most Fear Street thing of all. Definitely the most Stine thing, anyway.