Fear Street Part 3 brings home the horror with a satisfying conclusion

The Fear Street saga comes to an end in a finale that answers the lingering questions of a witch’s curse while also jumping around quite a bit in time. We’ve already seen one generation’s continuance of fighting back against a mysterious curse that causes possessed people to kill the many residents of Shadyside. While Part 1 and 2 implied that various other decades experienced their own iteration of the curse, Part 3 goes straight to the source by sending the characters back to 1666, during Shadyside’s colonial era.

From such a setting, we can assume a few things. There’s little surprise that Shadyside’s past was a deeply spiritual one, where God was blessed for the good of the world and the evils upon the devil. Given that this is supernatural horror, there’s some validity to these hysterical claims. We get to meet Sarah Fier, the originator of the curse but it is not one of her own for evil. Rather, it’s to get revenge on a town that has wronged.

Sarah’s history involved a secret romance between herself and Hannah, one that was forbidden and suspected by accusers. That night of their fling, they also ingested some berries (the closest these people can get to being drunk) and Sarah happened upon a book of black magic. The following day, the town grows darker. Some of the food has grown worse and the animals are acting weird. Oh, and a pastor just killed a whole church of people, carving out their eyes and speaking in evil babblings. Though Sarah is blamed for her angering of God bringing down such terror, there’s another sinister force at play here.

As the final chapter, there’s a lot of brilliant closure to this story. I dug how quickly the 1666 half of this film took some heavier risks with the gore, including one particularly gruesome moment where a woman’s hand is cut off in excruciating detail. Where the film turns into more of an action picture is the jump back towards 1994 where our heroes of the first part, now armed with the knowledge of Sarah being wronged, aim to break the curse and bring closure. This essentially involves killing a bloodline and outsmarting ghosts with a showdown taking place back at the mall for a palindromic finale.

The ending has a lot of high and low points for wrapping up this horror saga. The best moments are by far the 1666 setting which weaves its own unique blend of colonial horror mixed with a moody atmosphere. 1994’s second chapter, as it would appear, feels more or less in the familiar territory of the Goosebumps pluckiness R.L. Stein was better known for the era. It’s a fairly common way to end most ensemble supernatural horror though and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some charm to the finale of kids beating evil adults and spirits. There’s a lot of corny one-liners amid Super-Soakers but there’s just something about that nostalgic sensation of adventure that still has its warmth, a sensation I’m willing to admit comes from my bias as a 1990s kid.

Fear Street Part 3 brings home the horror with a satisfying conclusion. Looking over the trilogy as a whole, there’s a fairly consistent tone that keeps the audience engaged enough to jump right into the next part. The witch’s curse is unique, the mystery alluring, the young cast in top form, and some of the kills are of exceptional quality. As far as teen terror goes, Fear Street has found a solid means of telling such a story over the course of three films.