Film / Fear Street

Fear Street is a trilogy of Teen Horror films based on the books by R. L. Stine. In a unique move, each film was released just a week apart, with all of them made at once. The plot of each film is as follows.

Part One: 1994: In 1994, a group of teenagers find out that the terrifying events that have occurred in their cursed town of Shadyside, Ohio, may be connected to each other. They may also be the next targets.

Part Two: 1978: In 1978, Camp Nightwing is divided by the campers and counselors who hail from the prosperous town of Sunnyvale and the campers and maintenance staffers from the downtrodden town of Shadyside. When horrors from the towns' shared history come alive, they must band together to solve a terrifying mystery before it's too late.

Part Three: 1666: In 1666, the colony of Union is gripped by a hysterical witch-hunt that has deadly consequences for over three centuries to come. Meanwhile, the 1978 and the 1994 survivors try to finally put an end to the town's curse.

The films were released on Netflix on July 2, 9, and 16 of 2021 respectively. In January 2024, Stine confirmed that a fourth Fear Street movie was in development; this time being a standalone installment based on The Prom Queen, the fifteenth book in the series.

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The Fear Street trilogy provides examples of:

In General

• Abusive Parents:
  • 1994 has Sam's mother, who is of the emotionally abusive variety. She makes it clear during her phone call with Deena that she doesn't approve of her daughter's sexuality and scolds her at the police station—apparently more concerned about Sam being with Deena than about her having apparently narrowly avoided being murdered by her friends. When Sam comes out to her by kissing Deena, Ms. Fraser sternly drags her away afterwards.
  • Hannah Miller's mother Grace from 1666 is arguably worse than her 90's counterpart (both women are fittingly played by Lacy Camp). When word of Hannah and Sarah's relationship gets out, Grace slaps Hannah when she tries to defend Sarah as her mother is physically and verbally berating her for "corrupting" her daughter. While Grace is later shown to be dismayed when Hannah is accused of witchcraft and set to be hanged, she doesn't do anything to stop it and offers her daughter no sympathy when she breaks down as Sarah is executed. She even looks to be scolding Hannah some more as she watches Sarah die.
  • A subtler example from 1666 is Sarah's father George Fier. While he's not physically abusive like Grace, he makes clear that he disapproves of her sexuality. Though unlike Grace, he views it more as a failure on his part rather than seeing it as Sarah "bringing shame on the family." Not that his diminished-by-comparison disapproval is any less devastating to Sarah.
• Adaptational Diversity: The books primarily feature white characters with only the occasional non-white character. In the films, the main protagonist Deena is black, and there are a few other black characters as well, most notably her brother Josh. Additionally, Deena and Sam are a gay couple, as are Sarah Fier and Hannah Miller in 1666.
• Adaptational Villainy: In the books, the Goodes were generally portrayed as being good with some exceptions such as William. In the films, the entire family are the show's Greater-Scope Villains. In both versions, a curse is started by a Goode, but while in the books he did so out of grief for his killed family, in the movie he does it as part of a Deal with the Devil to make him prosperous.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: The movies are a combination of several different plotlines from the various book series: the Fear Street Cheerleaders series about the spirit of Sarah Fear/Fier tormenting the characters after a bush crash disturbs her grave, Lights Out about the Camp Nightwing massacre, and The Fear Street Saga trilogy showing the real origin of the curse and the start of the feud between the Fiers and the Goodes.
• Agonizing Stomach Wound: Generally subverted in all three movies.
  • Over the course of 1994, people get stabbed in the gut three times, but it's not shown to be a particularly debilitating wound, as the characters keep going and fighting back after sustaining it.
  • In 1978, Ziggy is stabbed god knows how many times by the Milkman, but hangs onto life long enough to make an eventual full recovery.
  • In 1666, when Sarah discovers Solomon's Deal with the Devil and he tries to convince her to join him, she refuses by stabbing him in the stomach. This barely slows him down for long, and he seems fine shortly after. Nick also stabs Deena in the gut when the story returns to 1994, though here, Deena walking it off is justified by the fact that she had made a stab-proof vest out of Robert Lawrence books.
• And I Must Scream:
  • The curse doesn't only get violent people to give into their cravings. It transforms innocent people into killers, traps their souls in slavery, and drains prosperity out of Shadyside. All while hunting the people close to learning the truth.
  • The killers themselves are mere puppets at the hand of the curse and can be stopped only by being killed, but it's implied they're still in there somehow. Ruby Lane killed herself by slitting her own wrists, Pastor Miller took out his own eyes after killing the kids in Union in a form of self-punishment, and Sam was able to stop herself from choking Deena out of love for her.
• Anyone Can Die: The films use this, often offing characters that would usually survive at that point. In 1994, Kate and Simon, two major characters who make it all the way to the climax at the supermarket, both die in brutal fashion. 1978 does something similar with characters like Alice. Also, Sam dies, is brought back, then gets possessed.
• Artifact Title: While the titular street makes an appearance in the third film, it is small and doesn't play a large part in the story. The curse affects the whole town, with no mention of the street being especially bad.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Fear Street 1994 features the characters listening to numerous songs: "Your Woman", "More Human Than Human", "I'm Only Happy When it Rains" and "Firestarter", all of which were released in 1995-1997. Likewise, Josh uses an AOL Chatroom with sounds that didn't exist until 1997, and the Calibri font (clearly labeled as such onscreen, to boot) that wouldn't be created until 2007.
  • In the films, Ohio is not in it's normal location but in fact geographically where New Jersey is. This is shown in the opening sequence which uses a colonial map of New Jersey to show historical Shadyside and Sunnyside (located near real world Chatsworth, NJ.) This is because a frequent point of contention amongst fans of the books was that Ohio had no European Settlers in 1666. In fact European Settlement didn't even begin until 1745, and the town of Shadyside wasn't founded until 1879. As such, in order to keep the settling, Ohio was pushed to the East Coast which had been extensively colonized by 1666.
• Big Bad: The witch Sarah Fier, whose curse is the source of Shadyside's endless misery and murders. Except not, it's actually because of the Goode family, currently Sheriff Nick Goode.
• Big Good: What Sarah Fier actually is, as the one person who discovered Solomon's Deal with the Devil and tried to stop it. She's been trying to impart the truth about the curse from beyond the grave for over 300 years, but has been thwarted by the loss of her hand weakening her and the undead killers being sent to eliminate anyone she tries to tell.
• Black and Nerdy: Josh, a gamer and True Crime enthusiast.
• Canon Foreigner: Nearly everyone (including the entirety of Sunnyvale) beside Sarah Fier, and even she has little in common with her literary counterpart outside of being The Scapegoat for the evil force, which has been changed from Sarah Burns to the Goode family (who exist in the books, though none of the Goodes that are featured in the films are directly based on any of the Goodes from the novels).
• Central Theme: No matter how long it takes, the truth will get out.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Martin, the mall custodian, makes a brief appearance just before Ryan's spree, appears a couple of times throughout 1994, and gives Josh his number at the end of the movie as thanks for helping him escape his handcuffs. He ends up being instrumental to the group's plan to kill Sheriff Goode in 1994 Part 2, since he knows the mall and its security systems well enough to help devise traps for the resurrected killers who are after Deena.
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable:
  • In 1994, Deena and Josh give CPR to Sam after she has been forcibly overdosed on over-the-counter medication and then drowned. It takes a while and looks somewhat forceful, but doesn't break her ribs and she then only pukes up a little water (and no vomit) and is good to go without further need for medical attention.
  • Ziggy is saved via CPR in 1978, despite having multiple stab wounds and the same injuries that killed her sister Cindy. Subverted, in that it's implied that Nick Goode "saved" her via supernatural means, though that's not revealed until the third movie.
• Cute Monster Girl: Ruby Lane as the only female Shadyside killer still looks very appealing and attractive, even with all her scars. Simon gets lured in because "she was hot".
• Dark and Troubled Past: Invoked. The curse on Shadyside more or less dooms every citizen living there to a terrible existence and many of those who want to get out ( Kate, Cindy, etc.) die before they get the opportunity. Then 1666 reveals that Solomon framed Sarah Fier for his Deal with the Devil, and the victims' blood were for a ritual to suck prosperity out of Shadyside and to Sunnyvale. After the curse disappears, the two towns' roles is reversed.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Used repeatedly as a motif from the start of the trilogy. The protagonists are from Shadyside, after all. It's used both in the mundane, realistic sense and in the supernatural sense:
  • In the realistic sense, Shadyside is a Wrong Side of the Tracks town, something like a cross between The City Narrows and a bizarre form of Urban Segregation based on the fact that the town is plagued by a repeated problem where Shadysiders, who are otherwise decent people, break out into slasher villains. Despite this, it's a Close-Knit Community with a lot of hometown pride, and compared to the arrogant Sunnyvalers, they're easy to root for. People from Shadyside engage in a lot of casual criminality, sure, but the main drug dealer we meet, Kate, is a friendly, empathetic person, and everyone from Shadyside is much nicer than people from Sunnyvale; perhaps the best example is during 1978's Color War, where the Shadysider "prison" is run by a very friendly kid, and the Sunnyvale prison by a cruel one. Even in the distant past, Sarah Fier and the "witch" in the woods nearby come off as much friendlier and more heroic than the Puritan townsfolk.
  • In the supernatural sense, Sarah Fier's ghost is the Big Good of the entire series, despite being a terrifying ghost associated heavily with blood-red moss and darkness.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • It's made clear pretty early on in 1994 that Sam and Deena were dating and that part of the tension between them comes from how difficult being gay is in Ohio in the mid-'90s.
  • In 1994, after Deena confronts a cop (to steal his gun,) the cop tells her and Sam to "Call your boyfriends and tell them you need to relax" or You Need to Get Laid, and nothing is remarked on it. Nowadays that would be a fireable offence and grounds for a sexual harrasement suit.
  • In 1666, nobody, not even Sarah herself, comments on the age gap between Sarah Fier and Solomon Goode when people suggest they get married. In fact, she only seems mildly annoyed by her father suggesting they get together, and otherwise likes and respects Solomon. Such relationships weren't out of the ordinary in colonial America.
  • Also in 1666, Sarah's ostracization by the town starts when rumors about her being gay start going around.
• Demonic Possession: The witch Sarah Fier's ghost (later revealed to actually be the Devil and nothing to do with Sarah) possesses Shadyside residents periodically to render them Ax-Crazy and send them on killing sprees.
• Determinator: Deena is unshakably dedicated to finding a way to save Sam, first from the undead killers hunting her and then from Demonic Possession, even if she has to go up against a vengeful witch (in actual fact the literal Devil) and end a three hundred-year-old curse to do so.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: The curse can be ended if Sarah Fier's body and hand are reunited. Her body is found in 1994, and hand in 1978. But reuniting them doesn't end the curse, it reveals the truth about the curse.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Mary Lane briefly appears in 1994 as the neighbor with whom Kate drops off the kids she's babysitting after the Skull Mask Killer breaks into the house. She appears again in 1978 in a slightly larger role as the Camp Nightwing nurse, where it's revealed that she was Ruby Lane's mother and she tries to kill Tommy before he can succumb to his Demonic Possession and become a killer.
• Evil Is Petty:
  • In 1994 not only does Peter insult victims of a massacre at their vigil, but he harasses their friends while wearing a copy of the mask the killer was wearing when they were killed. Not in revenge for any serious slight, but because they dared to state that they weren't the scum he states they are.
  • Nick routinely arrests Marvin on trumpted up charges, not only because he knows he can get away with it but also just because he can.
• Expy:
  • Simon of 1994 is the Plucky Comic Relief with an over-the-top personality and a slight resemblance to Matthew Lillard, making him rather like Stu Macher from Scream. Except he's not a killer.
  • Sheila of 1978 is a raven-haired Alpha Bitch at a summer camp, shamelessly avoids any punishment from counselors, and torments a less-conventional girl. She seems rather like Judy from Sleepaway Camp. The latter film also has a character getting locked in a bathroom with bugs dropped on them, although it goes to a different character, and the bugs in that film are bees that kill the person they were dumped on.
• Face–Monster Turn: By all appearances, all of the killers were normal and even kind people before being forcefully transformed into merciless slashers by the witch.
• Final Girl:
  • Downplayed in 1994: Deena is the courageous, resourceful, and determined heroine of the trilogy's overarching narrative, the lone female survivor of the first movie (with Sam ending it possessed), and the one who ultimately faces off alone against the Big Bad in 1994 Part 2. However, she stretches the traditional limits of the archetype, as she's not white, not straight, not virginal (and actually has a love scene on camera), has a somewhat abrasive personality, and has four other people survive alongside her at the end of the trilogy.
  • Subverted in 1978: Cindy seems clearly set up to be the final girl, projecting the image of the rule-following good girl who doesn't swear or do drugs and won't even let her boyfriend squeeze her ass much less sleep with her, in contrast with her rebellious sister Ziggy, who is close to getting kicked out of camp for misbehavior (including stealing from other campers) and has a romance with a counselor, and her former friend Alice, who slacks off, does drugs, and is introduced having sex with her boyfriend. Crucially, Cindy also has the first initial "C", which seemingly indicates that she is the C. Berman who's already established to have survived. However, Cindy ends up dying, and Ziggy (whose real name is Christine) is the one who survives.
• Flies Equals Evil: The killers possessed or undead tend to be accompanied by flies. The pulsating mass... thing that is the source of the curse has a swarm of flies around it. After the curse is broken, the undead killers explode into swarms of flies that then disperse.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The witch's curse perfectly explains why Shadyside has such terrible luck but does not explain why Sunnyvale has such incredible luck. A Deal with the Devil made by a Sunnyvale resident, however...
  • In 1978, the Camp Nightwing slasher notably only kills Shadyside residents and never targets Sunnyvale residents. Even if Fier's curse was targeting Shadyside, you wouldn't expect him to be picky. This is part of that same Deal with the Devil the Goode family has, killing people of Shadyside as sacrifices to ensure the prosperity of Sunnyvale.
    • Nick Goode's comment about how he "let a lot of people die" has new meaning when we lear he created the slasher due to said deal.
  • At the beginning of the first movie, Heather is able to fend off the killer at first using a copy of Cheerleaders: The First Evil. Besides this hinting that Sarah Fier plays a part, the books are used again in the third movie by Deena, as makeshift armor.
  • The beginning of 1994 also shows Heather having some difficulty with locking the gate in the bookstore. This comes back in 1994 Part 2 when the plan to trap the killers in the mall stores almost goes awry when the gate yet again encounters difficulties.
  • The mixtape that Deena made for Sam in 1994 begins with "Hey" by the Pixies, and is titled after one of the song's first lyrics: "Hey, must be a devil between us". In 1666, it turns out that the Devil literally is what's keeping Deena and Sam apart, first by being the cause of the rift between Shadyside and Sunnyvale that made them break up, and then by outright possessing Sam.
  • During Heather's memorial in 1994, Sheriff Goode gives a speech telling the Shadyside and Sunnyvale students not to dwell on the past to try to find answers as to why Shadyside has so much tragedy. This seems like straightforward advise not to dwell on trauma. In reality, Goode doesn't want people looking for answers in the past because they might discover the fact that he and his family are the ones behind the violence in Shadyside.
  • When Sam dies in 1994, Sarah Fier screams a drawn-out "No!" This is an early hint that she actually doesn't want the people who bleed on her bones to die, since that's the only way she has of trying to reveal the truth about the Goodes and their deal with the Devil.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • The opening credits montage at the start of 1994 can be paused at any time: some of the writing is from Nurse Lane's journal and all the newspaper clippings can be read as actual reports on the massacres.
  • Pausing on any shot of the stones where the killers' names are etched reveal dozens and dozens more individuals who fell prey to the Shadyside curse, of whom we know nothing about.
• Futureshadowing:
  • In 1978, the witch's hut where Sarah Fier made the pact with the devil is far away from the main settlement. In 1666, Sarah lives in the main settlement and Solomon Goode, the person who actually made a Deal with the Devil, lives in the "witch's hut."
  • In 1994, Sheriff Goode walks with a bit of a limp. In 1978, this is revealed to be because he got axed in the leg by the Camp Nightwing Killer while trying to protect Ziggy.
• Genre Throwback: Each entry in the trilogy takes inspiration from a different era of horror. The first, 1994, takes inspiration from the more meta slashers of The '90s like Scream. The second, 1978, is a more traditional '70s/'80s summer camp slasher like Friday the 13th. The final entry, 1666, is evocative of period-centric horror films such as The VVitch.
• The Ghost:
  • From the 300 year period of the Shadyside curse, only six killers are seen onscreen. Most notably, the Humpty-Dumpty Killer from 1935, who gets properly mentioned in 1994, is absent whereas killers such as Isaac Milton and Billy Barker from earlier time periods are given a substantial amount of screentime.
  • Deena and Josh's dad is mentioned several times, and even manages to have a completely off-screen Character Development arc, but never appears in person. From his notes and the cans around the house, he is drinking whenever he isn't working long hours to support the family. Even the 1666 version of him is played by Randy Havens, who didn't appear in the previous films.
• Guns Are Worthless:
  • The revived killers are effectively immune to all conventional weapons, guns included. Sam and Deena steal a police officer's gun to fight Sarah Fier's undead minions in 1994, but throw it away once they see Ruby Lane shrug off a Moe Greene Special.
  • Subverted with the individual killers when they were still alive. They were possessed but still mortal, so all of them died to mundane injuries, gunshots included.
• Hearing Voices: The first sign that someone is being possessed is that they start hearing a voice whispering their name, as shown with Ryan in 1994 and Tommy in 1978. This also happens to anyone who gets near the pulsating mass at the center of the witch's mark, though in this case it doesn't indicate upcoming possession.
• He Knows Too Much: Revealed in the final movie to be the real motivation of the resurrected killers: whoever touches Sarah Fier's remains can learn about the real story of what happened to her and the real person behind the curse, and the killers are sent to kill whoever knows of this.
• Hero of Another Story: Mary Lane (mother of possessed killer Ruby Lane) clearly has a lot going on in her life, most of which is unknown to the main protagonists. After a short cameo in 1994 her role is expanded upon in 1978, where it's suggested that she took a job as the camp nurse in order to investigate the circumstances of her daughter's killing spree. What led her to Camp Nightwing specifically is a mystery, but she was clearly on the right track, as this was the location of Sarah Fier's hanging. It's discovered that she's been exploring the area in search of Sarah's missing hand, and had discovered the underground cave where the names of the killers were etched into the stones (including Tommy's, who she then tries to kill in order to prevent another massacre). The intel she leaves behind is crucial to Cindy and Alice escaping the caves and piecing together parts of the mystery (though they come to some wrong conclusions) and the fact that her ancestor was Widow Lane (as played by the same actress in 1666, and the original owner of the book that can summon the devil) brings yet more material to the table, which is only vaguely gestured at in the film itself.
• Heteronormative Crusader:
  • Sam's mother in 1994 is totally opposed to her sexual orientation, which is made clear when she talks to Deena over the phone, accusing her of ruining Sam's life. She is also very disapproving of their relationship later on at the police station, and drags Sam away after she kisses Deena.
  • Hannah's mother in 1666 reacts violently upon learning that Sarah and Hannah were having sex in the woods together. She physically throws Sarah out of the house, accusing her of corrupting her daughter, and even hits Hannah.
• History Repeats: A major theme of the trilogy, with events, actions, lines of dialogue, relationship dynamics, themes, and even camera shots echoing across the three time periods. Made most explicit in 1666, with the majority of the main casts from both 1994 and 1978 returning to play different but similar characters during the events surrounding the origins of the curse on Shadyside.
  C. Berman: In Shadyside, the past is never really past.
• Homage: All films contain specific homages to their inspirations:
  • The first death in 1994 is of a young, female Dead Star Walking with Hollywood pedigree (Maya Hawke) in a scene where she's harassed over the phone before being dragged to her death, unmasking the killer in the process. It's an homage to Casey Becker's death in Scream (1996).
  • 1978 is a more general homage to Friday the 13th Part 2, being a slasher film in which Sex Equals Death set in a summer camp about a Sackhead Slasher primarily targeting teens and hacking them up.
• Hotter and Sexier: There wasn't much sexual content in the books, with kissing being as steaming as it explicitly got. The films see the characters having sex on screen, and 1978 features nudity.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: A town called Shadyside doesn't sound like a particularly nice place to live.
• Implacable Man: Played with. When the killers are merely possessed, they are still human and can be killed like any regular human. The undead versions, however, cannot be killed, regenerate from any injury (up to being blasted into chunks) and will not ever stop until their target is dead.
• Ironic Name: The Goode family, as it turns out, are responsible for all the murders which occurred since the late 1600s, due to a pact with Satan.
• Jacob Marley Apparel: Used somewhat inconsistently. The Skull Face killer actually wasn't wearing his skull mask when he was killed, but the undead version is, and he also has a bullet wound in his head and even looks like a corpse. By contrast, the Camp Nightwing Killer doesn't have any of the wounds he had as a human, and since his mask is never pulled off we don't know if he looks dead or alive. Ruby Lane, meanwhile, still has slashed wrists and looks alive, and does seem to be dressed the same way she was when she died. She's also the only one to talk (or sing as the case may be). As to the other killers, we don't know enough about the specifics of their deaths to know how their undead appearance matches how they looked when they died.
• Light Is Not Good: Much like its sister trope in Dark Is Not Evil, this is used both in mundane fashion and in supernatural fashion:
  • Mundanely, Sunnyvale is a bright, sunny, Everytown, America that is bright, successful, lovely... and seems to be populated entirely by The Proud Elite. Every athlete is a Jerk Jock, the Carload of Cool Kids in the film are introduced attacking a Shadyside bus, the only homophobes tossing the slur "dyke" around like it's going out of style are from Sunnyvale, and everyone from Sunnyvale engage in repeated Abomination Accusation Attack against Shadysiders, claiming they're all just serial killers waiting to happen. Even when ostensibly just playing a game with each other, Sunnyvalers go out of their way to be assholes to Shadysiders. The past shows that the people who would found Sunnyvale weren't much better, being fanatical Puritans ready and able to Burn the Witch! (well, hang the witch, anyway, given this is America, where no witches were ever burned.)
  • Supernaturally, the prosperity of Sunnyvale is entirely unnatural; it's born of the leading Goode family's deal with the devil, meaning that Sunnyvale's glory is directly related to the worst supernatural evil. Further, the first Satanist Goode was Solomon Goode, who used the local church-going Puritans as his personal army to kill Sarah Fier.
• Malicious Misnaming: Sunnyvalers are fond of referring to Shadyside as "Shittyside", no matter how inappropriate the situation. In fact, especially then.
• Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple: The series gives us Deena and Sam. The former is a Tomboy and Action Girl, while the latter is a more feminine cheerleader. The third film 1666 reveals their relationship parallels the supposed villain Sarah Fier's with Hannah Miller. Sarah was an unconventional farmhand who was "raised like a boy" and Hannah more traditionally feminine.
• Meaningful Name:
  • This applies to both Sunnyvale and Shadyside.
    • "Sunnyvale" indicates brightness, prosperity, and beauty, as "vale" is an alternate name for valley.
    • "Shadyside" indicates darkness, shadiness, and unimportance.
  • The Goode family shares their name with Sarah Goode, one of the first women accused of witchcraft during the 1692 Salem witch trials. (Albeit the real Goode was not a witch.)
• Mixtape of Love: Deena makes one of these for Sam, and finally gets the chance to give it to her at the end of the film.
• Movie Multipack: All three movies were filmed back-to-back two years prior to release, which makes sense given that the trilogy straddles the line between film and TV, being three feature-length films released on a weekly basis with a continuous storyline connecting them.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The lead character's name is Deena, which is a nod to the protagonist of The Wrong Number. That book is one of the ones featured in the opening of 1994, and the tagline even serves as the first line of dialogue.
  • Ryan/Skull Mask's getup is identical to a costume featured on the cover art of Stine's Point Horror novel Halloween Night II.
  • Sam disturbing the bones of Sarah Fier after a car crash and becoming possessed is taken from the first book in the Fear Street Cheerleaders series.
  • Lights Out, the book the Camp Nightwing setting of 1978 comes from, has a subplot involving the protagnist's fear of snakes. Ziggy also his this fear, althouh it's reduced to just two moments.
  • Nick Goode, the true villain, seems to be based on the duplicitous Robin Fear from the Fear Park trilogy.
  • Martin's address is 99 Fier Street, which was a location in the books that was the center of one of the trilogies.
  • The mayor of Sunnyvale is Will Goode, likely a reference to William Goode from the Saga trilogy.
  • The moment in the school hallway early in 1994 when a boy approaches Deena with a knife and it's framed as if he's about to stab her but then he just carves "RIP" into Heather's locker seems like a nod to the many Bait-and-Switch chapter cliffhangers in the books.
  • Kate and Simon's names likely come from the names of Kate and Simon Fier from the Saga trilogy.
• The Nose Knows: The undead killers are able to track Sam, Ziggy, and Deena through the scent of their blood.
• Nothing but Hits:
  • Part One leans heavily into its '90s Period Piece setting, and nowhere is this more true than with its soundtrack, filled with rock, metal, and hip-hop hits from that decade.
  • Like Part One, much of the soundtrack for Part Two is popular songs from the time period in which it takes place, in its case the 1970s, such as "Carry On Wayward Son", "Slow Ride", "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", "Ever Falling In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've?)", and "Sweet Jane".
• Number of the Beast: Sarah Fier's curse began in 1666.
• Once More, with Clarity: In 1994 and 1978, those who bled on Sarah Fier's bones have a number of visions of Fier. In 1666 we finally see the events in question, and none of them were how they first appeared to be.
• The Place: A strange example since Fear Street is an Artifact Title and doesn't figure into the plot at all. The one time we do briefly glimpse the street in question, it's called "Fier Street" and only provides a means for the characters to get from Point A to Point B.
• Preserve Your Gays: Deena and Sam both not only survive to the end of the trilogy to get their happy ending, when many of the other (straight) main characters do not, but also prove themselves remarkably resistant to being (permanently) killed. Sam survives a car crash, being hunted by undead killers, being intentionally drowned and then resuscitated, and then spending the majority of the second and third movies possessed by the Devil. Deena, on the other hand, survives being hunted by undead killers, a satanic sheriff, and her possessed girlfriend, as well as being stabbed in the stomach twice^note the second time she got smart and was wearing makeshift armor made of books duct taped to her torso.
• Promotion to Parent: Seemingly common with Shadyshiders, possibly to emphasize the general crappiness of their situation.
  • Deena and Josh's father is rarely around, always drinking when he isn't working long hours. Deena is the one who's responsible for getting Josh to school, making dinner, and so on. She's not very good at it (they eat pizza almost everyday), and clearly resents this, but she doesn't have a choice.
  • Simon is apparently the sole breadwinner for his family, and has been for years.
  • In 1978, Cindy claims that she's the one who's really raising/taking care of Ziggy, due to their mother being an alcoholic and their father gone. It's really messed up their relationship.
• Recursive Canon: The series begins with a parent buying one of the books, and we see other entries on the shelf. This is an interesting example, as the Fear Street branding is absent, implying that in this universe they are standalone works without the titular location. The books later reappear in the third movie, when Deena uses a bulletproof style vest made out of the books to protect herself.
• Revival Loophole: Anyone who who gets their blood on the witch's bones becomes a target for the resurrected past killers, but they'll stop being chased once they die, even if they get revived afterward. This happens to Sam in 1994, and the group figures out how to save her thanks to it also having happened to C. Berman in 1978. Due to the real nature of the curse, it seems this is because death and resurrection prevents Sarah Fier from revealing the truth, and as such the undead killers have no reason to pursue their targets anymore.
• Ruder and Cruder: The books didn't have much as far as swearing for the most part. The films are far more profane throughout.
• Rule of Symbolism: The red moss from the woods outside Shadyside appears in all three films for symbolic value as well as practical in the second film. The nature of it isn't revealed until 1666 though.
  • In 1666, it's reveal to be a symbol of the forbidden love between Hannah Miller and Sarah Fier, as it's where they shared their first "dalliance" in the woods; Sarah even making Hannah a crown made from it. Hannah places the crown in Sarah's grave and the moss grows over it as a way of ensuring that love isn't completely lost to history.
  • In 1994 the moss is right above Sarah Fier's skeleton (the reasons are revealed later) but, following on from the above, it's where the two lesbian characters first reconcile after their messy break-up and argument earlier.
  • In 1978, Cindy and Alice, who are implied to have unresolved feelings for each other, have their heart-to-heart when they're sitting where the moss grows.
• Sackhead Slasher: The Camp Nightwing Killer. Though interestingly, it wasn't by choice.
• Seemingly-Wholesome '50s Girl: Ruby Lane, who murdered her friends in The '60s thanks to being possessed and who appears as one of the undead killers.
• Shout-Out:
  • Sunnyvale is one letter off from Sunnydale, the setting of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a town with a high mortality rate thanks to being located over the mouth of Hell, much like Shadyside with its regular spree killings caused by a deal with the Devil. Given that Sunnyvale is an invention of the movies, this is likely an intentional nod.
  • 1994:
    • The kids liken the disturbance of Sarah Fier's bones to Poltergeist (1982).
    • The police officer Nick Goode finds a note in his mailbox that says "It is happening again", which is also the message that Coop heard from the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks.
    • Kate promises her charges they can watch My So-Called Life.
    • Simon refers to Josh as “Rain Man” when he explains his knowledge of Ruby Lane.
    • When Simon finds out that the witch is hunting Sam's blood, he compares it to Jaws.
  • 1978:
    • Ziggy shares her name with David Bowie's alter ego, Ziggy Stardust. It's a nickname, indicating that she likely chose it herself because she's a fan of Bowie, especially given that, in 1994, she has a dog named Major Tom in keeping with the theme.
    • When Ziggy is trying to get back at Sheila for her trashed bunk, she tells Nick that she didn't have pigs' blood handy. He says that Carrie is his favorite Stephen King book after 'Salem's Lot. Ziggy later dumps slugs on Sheila, in imitation of Carrie.
    • Ziggy and Nick joke about starting a Judy Blume book club.
• Small Town Rivalry: Sunnyvale and Shadyside are neighboring communities with a long history of disliking and competing against each other. The more successful residents of Sunnyvale looking down on Shadyside isn't helping such matters.
• The Speechless: The undead versions of the killers never say a word, aside from various grunts or pants. The exception is Ruby Lane, who sings but still never actually talks. The possessed killers (that we see at least) never speak either, possibly because they've already become mindless killers. The only exception is once again Ruby, who is said to have sung as she killed her friends.
• Supernaturally Marked Grave: The locations where Sarah Fier's body and hand are buried are both covered in a red moss. The moss came from from Hannah's crown, and seemingly grew in remembrance of their love.
• Survival Mantra: Josh has one in the form of the Konami Code for extra lives.
• Token Good Teammate: Sheriff Goode is pretty much the only person from Sunnyvale who isn't a complete and total asshole and the only one from that town who displays even a modicum of true empathy towards the Shadysiders in both 1994 and 1978. Subverted in 1666, when it's revealed that he is the current heir of the Goode family's deal with the Devil, and was personally responsible for both Tommy Slater and Ryan Torres' killing sprees as well as Sam's possession.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Sunnyvale's success comes from the Goode Family making a Deal with the Devil to murder Shadyside residents as payment for their town's success.
• The Undead: The spirits of the prior Shadyside killers are manifested physically to hunt anyone who bleeds on Sarah Fier's bones. They bleed black goo, and can shrug off any damage done to them, even reforming from being blown up.
• Villainous Lineage: Solomon Goode's deal with the Devil is inherited by the eldest son of each successive generation, who then becomes responsible for selecting a Shadysider to be possessed and turned into a killer every decade or so. In this generation, it's Sheriff Nick Goode, who took up the mantle as a teenager in 1978 with his first sacrifice being Tommy Slater, aka the Camp Nightwing Killer.
• The Voiceless: Once the possession takes hold of them, all of the Shadyside killers fall silent. The exceptions are Pastor Miller who mutters Biblical passages to himself, and Ruby Lane, who sings "You Always Hurt The Ones You Love".

Part One: 1994

• Academic Alpha Bitch: Kate, who is both the valedictorian and a Cruel Cheerleader, and is selling drugs to make enough money to leave Shadyside.
• Actor Allusion: Maya Hawke plays a teenaged girl who works in a mall, much like her breakout role.
• Aerosol Flamethrower: Kate fashions one from a can of hairspray and a candle lighter she got off the shelves of the grocery store, and uses it to save Deena and Sam from the Skull Mask Killer.
• Anachronistic Soundtrack: A number of songs on the soundtrack are from after the film's 1994 setting. White Zombie's "More Human Than Human" (which features in the trailer, and which Josh is shown listening to) and Garbage's "Only Happy When It Rains" are from 1995, "Firestarter" by The Prodigy is from 1996, and White Town's "Your Woman" is from 1997.
• Asshole Victim: Played with. Peter plays this straight as he's homophobic and sexist to Deena and threatens her anytime she's near Sam, his sole redeeming quality is he's genuinly concerned for Sam after the crash. Meanwhile, Kate is a drug dealer who seems apathetic towards the fact that a person she knew overdosed and appears negligent of her young charges (though does shuffle them off to a neighbor when someone breaks into the house, presumably for their safety) - but then we learn that she's selling drugs because she desperately wants to get out of Shadyside and comes from a bad background, not unlike Deena.
• The Beard: Peter is this for Sam, but since all of Deena’s friends know she's gay, it isn't effective. Even he seems to know.
• Black Dude Dies First: Inverted. Both of the black characters, Deena and Josh, are alive by the end of the film. Kate appears to be perhaps mixed race and dies, but isn't first. She is the first main character to die though.
• Blood from the Mouth: After being in a car accident, Sam coughs up blood onto Simon's shirt and Deena's shoe, which is why the Skull Mask Killer stalks both of them the following night.
• Both Sides Have a Point: During the Hospital argument Deena is correct that Sam is lying to herself and pretending to be something she's not. On the other hand, Sam is right that Deena has no right to tell her how to live her life both in general and because Deena was the one who broke up with her.
• Call-Forward: Kate brings the children she's babysitting over to an elderly neighbor, Ruby Lane's mother, who we would come to see more of as the camp nurse in Part Two: 1978. Although technically a Call-Back, since the sequel is actually a prequel.
• Cassandra Truth: The police understandably don't believe Deena and Sam when they say the Skull Face killer has come back to life.
• Celebrity Paradox: The Fear Street books seen in the opening are written by "Robert Lawrence", meaning R.L. Stine exists in this universe and instead uses his first and middle names as his pen name.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Kate is established to be a drug dealer, despite having known someone who OD'd. In the climax, Sam needs to be killed and revived to break the witch's curse, and they decide to overdose her on the drugs. It also serves as the alibi that the police use to explain the deaths, saying that she and Simon were junkies who went on a killing spree.
  • Deena is a drummer in the school band, and she's seen practicing with her drumsticks early on, and later breaks one of them. The broken drumstick can be seen in the background in her room when she and Sam are laying in bed after everything is over, and it ends up being what Sam stabs her with after she gets possessed.
  • Three things seen early in the movie become useful later on as part of the group's plan to deal with the killers at the school: the mannequin that a student dragged down the hall in a macabre reenactment of Heather's murder is used as a stand-in for Sam to distract the killers, the vent that Kate and Simon were hiding their drug stash in is used by Sam to escape after the killers have been baited into the bathroom, and Deena's lighter that she was fiddling with while waiting for Sam at the vigil is used to light the gasoline on fire.
• Closet Gay: Sam is still in the closet about her lesbianism. She comes out in the end though.
• Comically Missing the Point: At the hospital Deena and Sam go hurtling by in mortal terror, screaming at their friends to "run!" Simon gazes after them and wonders out loud: "did they get back together?"
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: The curse goes beyond the typical mass killing and goes up to resurrecting past killers because Deena gets the car Sam and her boyfriend were in to crash, causing Sam's blood to come into contact with Sarah Fier's bones. This also makes Sam the primary target. However, it's later played with when we see signs of the nosebleed that made Deena slip before she stopped herself may have been Sarah Fier's doing. Later films reveal that the nosebleed definitely wasn't an accident or even malicious, and it's implied to be Sarah's way of reaching out to people near the parts of her body to try and reveal the true nature of the curse. The resurrected killers coming after them was the actual curse trying to hide itself from anyone who would go after the ones maintaining it. It's never explained in detail, but Sarah is only able to reveal parts of the truth when someone's blood touches her body.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: While there are lots of gory deaths, Kate getting her head fed to a bread slicer machine was pretty ugly.
• Dead Star Walking: Maya Hawke plays the opening victim Heather, in an homage to Scream (1996).
• Deathly Unmasking: A dual version. Heather unmasks her killer as she dies, revealing it to be her friend Ryan. Ryan is then instantly shot in the head.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Kate and Simon are blamed for the hospital murders because they're dead and no one would believe that several long-deceased killers were responsible, as pointed out by Deena. She's not happy about it, but it beats looking crazy.
• Decoy Protagonist: Heather, the central character of the prologue, is set up to possibly be the lead, but is instead the first (onscreen) victim.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Heather and Ryan die within moments of each other, in what looks like an embrace. What seems like an inappropriately intimate tableau between victim and killer is eventually alleviated with the reveal that Ryan was as much a helpless victim as Heather was, having been possessed by the devil and forced to kill his friend.
• Disappeared Dad: Sam's father is revealed to have taken off after divorcing her mother.
• Disney Death: To try and break the witch's curse, Sam needs to die, as the curse is specifically said to hunt a person until their last breath. So she's drowned, and then revived with Epi Pens and CPR after the curse is seemingly broken.
• Downer Ending: For the first film in the trilogy, at least. While distracting the undead killers from Sam, Kate and Simon are gruesomely killed and blamed for both the supermarket and hospital massacres. Then Sam is possessed anyway and tries to kill Deena. The only bright spot is that Deena and Josh might be able to get her back.
• Everyone Has Standards: When it becomes apparent that the undead killers cannot be stopped, Kate, Simon, and even Josh are all willing to let Sam die to save themselves; Sam agrees to do it, leaving Simon to hold Deena back from stopping her. However, when Josh realizes there is a way to save Sam and stop the killers, Kate and Simon immediately change their minds.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Deena criticizes Kate for still dealing after someone they know OD'd, Kate says it doesn't count because they revived him. Later, they deliberately OD and revive Sam.
  • During Sam and Deena's fight outside the candlelight vigil for Heather, Deena goes off about how bad Shadyside is, and says that it's likely they'll get murdered, or "if you're lucky, you'll be the one holding the knife". She says this to Sam, who does end up being the one with the knife. And many of her friends do wind up murdered.
  • When giving Sam her sweater to wear, Deena tells her that if she gets blood on it she'll kill her. Sam does end up getting blood on it, and Deena ultimately has to kill Sam in order to save her.
• Gayngst: Sam, unlike Deena, is not out as a lesbian, as she fears people's reactions, such as her mother's.
• Gender-Concealing Writing: For the first fifteen minutes or so after Deena's introduction, her ex's gender is left deliberately vague — she's referred to only by the gender-neutral nickname of "Sam" with no pronouns attached, and when Deena is shown staring jealously at Sam and Peter, it's unclear which one she's focusing on — allowing for the reveal that Sam is a girl to be a surprise to an audience making the heteronormative assumption. The effect is somewhat undercut by the fact that anyone paying attention to promotional material would likely know this already, however.
• Gorn: The gore is suitably bloody and brutal for a film so indebted to classic slashers, from Ryan's death in the opening to the slit throats of Peter and Nurse Beddy all the way to Kate's head evisceration via bread slicer.
• Heroic BSoD: Josh and Simon both have one when they see Kate's corpse. Simon's distracts him long enough to get him killed too.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Sam attempts to pull this for the entire group once it becomes clear the killers can't and won't be stopped until they've murdered her. She steps out to face Nightwing alone, and almost gets axed before the others save her, having found a way to break the curse.
• Hidden Depths: Simon displays typical stoner behavior throughout the movie and is the most laid back of the main characters. It's later revealed that he is the main breadwinner for his family and has been for years. He has also won all of the "Employee of the Month" awards at his workplace.
• Hope Spot:
  • Heather tricks the killer into stabbing her friend's blow-up doll instead of her, then bashes them over the head and flees. For a second it looks like she's going to make it out of the mall...until she gets slowed down by the food court and the killer catches up to her.
  • The kids lock Sarah Fier's undead minions in the bathroom and set them on fire, seemingly killing them in the subsequent explosion. A few minutes later, however, they reform from their remains.
  • The curse's hold on Sam is seemingly broken thanks to her Disney Death, as the undead killers disappear. But then Sam herself is possessed the curse and tries to kill Deena.
• Implausible Deniability:
  • After the Sunnyvalers chase the Shadyside bus and crash because the Shadysiders throw a cooler at them, the kids on both sides all insist it was just an accident. Sheriff Goode clearly doesn't believe that two groups of teens from famously antagonistic towns just happened to be extremely close on the same stretch of road—which is in the opposite direction from the one the Sunnyvalers should be going—and just happened to crash, but since none of them will admit it he has nothing to go on.
  • The cover story the police intends to go with for the hospital massacre doesn't resist the slightest scrutiny as both Kate and Simon died in ways that are absolutely impossible to be self-inflicted or accidents, so any attempt to pin the hospital murders on them cannot account for who killed them.
    • Later films make this more justified in that once the Goode family's Satanic worship is revealed, Sherriff Goode is soon rightfully blamed for the killings.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Sam and Deena, about to get it on, are interrupted by a suspicious noise.
• Karma Houdini: Sam's mother doesn't get any comeuppance for abusing her daughter and bullying Deena. She neither gets killed by the killers nor does she have her custody rights towards Sam taken away from her.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Kate and Simon are willing to help Sam stay alive. But, when the undead killers show they cannot die and will keep coming after Sam until she is dead, Kate, Simon, and even Sam herself believe that letting them kill her to save everyone else is the best option. They quickly change their minds once they learn it's possible to save Sam.
• Lingerie Scene: Sam and Deena, along with Kate, strip down to their bras while checking for traces of blood on themselves. Given that, it's not played for fanservice as much.
• Mooning: As the Shadyside school bus is being tailed by Sam and Peter, Simon is quick to do this to them from the emergency exit window.
• Parental Abandonment: Deena and Josh's dad is always off somewhere else, while their mom's not mentioned.
• Police Are Useless: Downplayed. Sheriff Goode's genuinely trying his best, but he refuses to accept how serious things are until it's far too late (he mistakes Deena and Sam's pleas for just another one of the avalanche of fake tips he's been getting after Heather's death). As a result, he's unable to prevent anyone dying, and what help he does finally offer is rejected because the teens don't trust him. The best he can do is accept the survivors' clearly untrue cover story. Ultimately subverted. Nick Goode is the villain, and is deliberately letting the killings happen; and then letting any convenient explanation explain it away.
• Pulling Themselves Together: After being blasted apart, the killers simply reform from their splattered remains. It's at this point the teens realize how screwed they are.
• Rasputinian Death: Over the course of the evening Sam is in a serious car accident, force-fed pills with the intention of overdosing her, then finally drowned in a lobster tank.
• Red Herring: Peter outright threatens Deena after starting shit with the entire Shadyside band and cheer team, so naturally, when a creep in a skull mask pops up, Deena and her friends assume it's him. It's not, and he in fact ends up being the first person said creep kills.
• Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: Deena and Sam are recently broken up at the beginning of the movie, because Deena saw Sam's move to Sunnyvale and subsequent attempts to appear "normal" as a betrayal, but a night of running from undead killers puts things into perspective for both of them, and they've gotten back together by the end.
• Sarcastic Confession: When Sheriff Goode is handling Martin's arrest for tagging the mall, Martin insists someone planted the cans of spray paint to frame him. Sheriff Goode responds with "That's right, those are my cans." Come Part 3, yep, Sheriff Goode framed him.
• Teens Are Monsters: The Sunnyvale team starts insulting Shadyside at the vigil for a murdered teenager. Afterwards they follow the Shadyside bus and start throwing things at it, while wearing skull masks in deliberate imitation of the killer. The guy who was driving also threatens Deena, even though he started it.
• This Is Reality: When reburying Sarah Fier's bones fails to call off the ghostly killers, Deena exhaustedly says that of course it didn't, because they're not in a movie.
• "X" Marks the Spot: Invoked. They bait the witch by drawing Xs of blood onto their chests and clothes.
• Your Head A-Splode: Kate's skull gets rammed into a bread slicer and cut into several thin pieces.

Part Two: 1978

• The '70s: Most of the movie takes place in the summer of 1978, with the music, hairstyles, and sexual mores featuring prominently. Only the fashions are noticeably absent because the action takes place in a summer camp, and everyone is wearing very practical outfits.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Sheila is dark haired and is extremely mean and sociopathic.
• Alpha Bitch: Sheila is the leader of the local gang of mean girls.
• Ambiguously Bi: While Alice and Cindy do have boyfriends in both Artie and Tommy respectively, and are labelled as former friends, they also spend a lot of time growing closer while traversing through the witch's mark tunnels. Alice's main gripe, that Cindy focused on integrating with the Sunnyvale crowd while Alice became pessimistic and suicidal, is also significantly similar to how Sam and Deena, a canonical lesbian couple, grew apart and broke up. The fact that Cindy is shown to be more broken over Alice's death in comparison to Tommy's possession, screaming at and decapitating him with a shovel not long afterwards, just adds more fuel to the fire. As a matter of fact, both the director and Alice's actor have confirmed that she's gay in the film.
• Asshole Victim: Happens multiple times to Sheila during her rivalry with Ziggy:
  • After hanging Ziggy by her arms from a tree, Sheila gets too close to her and receives an elbow to the nose.
  • Sheila ends up locked in an outhouse covered in leeches and bugs in a revenge prank after vandalizing Ziggy's bunk.
  • She attacks Ziggy as the latter tries to warn her of the axe-wielding maniac wreaking havoc on the camp, earning her a punch to the face and loss of consciousness.
• Ax-Crazy: While Tommy is more of a Brainwashed and Crazy example, Sheila takes the Small Town Rivalry way too seriously. She makes her debut by stringing up Ziggy on a tree with her cohorts, then she personally tortures the girl by burning her arm. She suggested doing worse and it's left ambiguous as to whether she would have gone further had Nick Goode not shown up. She later strangles Ziggy for the bug prank, and Ziggy had to knock her out to make her stop.
• Back from the Dead: Cindy actually manages to kill Tommy as he's on the verge of ending Ziggy and has become fully consumed by the persona of the Camp Nightwing Slasher, putting him down for a few minutes, only for Ziggy to accidentally bleed on the severed right hand of Sarah Fier, invoking the witch's curse, which then revives all the Shadyside killers, including Tommy, who still has his old body at that point, rather than being formed from Ominous Obsidian Ooze like the others. Tommy is again put down by being decapitated via Shovel, but by that point has become a full-on Implacable Man like the rest of the killers, and returns shortly thereafter with the rest to finish off Cindy and Ziggy.
• Barbaric Bully: Stringing someone up from a tree and burning them with a lighter, as Sheila does with Ziggy, goes right past bullying and straight into actual torture.
• Brick Joke: Present day Nick Goode is told he has a message from someone who says they were in the "Judy Blume book club", referencing a gag in 1978; where he suggested starting a book club with Ziggy (he offered Stephen King, and she retracted to Judy Blume).
• Broken Bird: In 1994, C. Berman is a traumatized wreck and shut in, who needs many alarm clocks to function and may be an alcoholic. Being the Final Girl of a massacre isn't great for one's mental health.
• Burn the Witch!: Sheila believes Sarah Fier continues to plague Shadyside because the 1666 villagers failed to kill her this way (indeed, when it's shown in the third film, it's via period-accurate hanging). Thus, she feels justified in burning Ziggy with a lighter.
• The Cassandra:
  • Nurse Lane's warnings about Tommy's name being written on the stone and him dying one way or another that night unfortunately ring true, laying way for the Camp Nightwing Massacre.
  • No one believes Ziggy about the witch.
• Catchphrase: Alice's "I'll give you three guesses." Appropriately, this follows the Rule of Three.
• Chekhov's Gun: The red moss that Cindy can't seem to clean from the outhouse. It's an indication that the outhouse is located above the tunnels of the witch's mark.
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind:
  • Cindy saves Ziggy by managing to get out from the grate (off-screen) and stabbing Tommy multiple times in the back.
  • Inverted by the possessed Tommy, who kills Alice with the same tactic.
• Cool Mask: An inadvertent example. When Ziggy and Tommy are struggling with each other, he starts chocking her with his bare hands, only for her to grab a nearby potato sack, stuff it over his head and then return the favour, strangling him into submission for a few seconds before he throws her off. He leaves it on afterwards (possibly because he's too mindless to remove it), and it thereafter becomes part of his 'look' as a Shadyside killer, with him still wearing it when he's resurrected in 1994. It also makes him resemble the original 'Sackhead Jason' from Friday the 13th Part 2.
• Death by Irony: Joan talks about how mind-opening weed is in its defense. Not long after she gets her head hacked open.
• Decoy Protagonist: Cindy isn't C. Berman. Ziggy is the true protagonist.
• Defacement Insult: Sheila and her cronies paint insulting messages about Ziggy all over her cabin walls.
• Erudite Stoner:
  • Arnie eventually remembers that L484, the print on the mysterious unlabeled pills found amongst Nurse Lane's possessions, is nothing but Tylenol (he even knows its medical name), ruling drugs off the list of reasons the nurse attempted to murder Tommy. Unfortunately for Arnie, it's one of the last revelations he ever has...
  • Alice loves drugs as much as Arnie, and is able to locate the hand of Sarah Fier after piecing together its location from the map in Nurse Lane's journal.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: Ruby Lane's murder spree and death in 1965 have clearly taken a toll on her mother, Nurse Mary Lane, who almost murders the person slated to be the next Shadyside Killer out of a desire to end the cycle that robbed her of her beloved daughter.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • When Tommy is rendered a possessed, axe-wielding psychopath, it very taxing for Cindy to disassociate the current threat from her loving boyfriend.
  • When Sheila goes missing during the Camp Nightwing Massacre, Becky, Annie, and Will fear the worst and frantically question Ziggy of her whereabouts.
  • In fact, Sheila gets lured to the outhouse thinking that Will has planned a romantic surprise, and seems sincerely moved.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Becky, Annie, and Will are more than willing to hang Ziggy by her arms from a tree on Sheila's orders, but are a little more reluctant when she has them hold Ziggy still so she can burn her with a lighter. Not reluctant enough to not go through with it, however.
• Family Theme Naming: The sisters Cindy and Christine Berman.
• Fauxshadowing: In the opening montage of Camp Nightwing and its various activities, the camera noticeably lingers on some kids doing archery. Given that other things in the montage (such as the arts-and-crafts cabin and a snake tank) figure into the story later on, and since the audience knows that a massacre is imminent, it's a reasonable assumption that someone will eventually use bows and arrows to either attack others to defend themselves. Except, they don't. Archery never comes up again.
• Female Gaze: Joan enjoys a good view of Kurt's ass as he gets out of bed after having sex with her.
• Fiery Red Head:
  • Ziggy is hot tempered, aggressive, takes crap from precisely no one and has bright red hair.
  • Cindy's hair is more of an auburn, but she becomes this once she Takes a Level in Badass.
• Finger-Twitching Revival: Tommy's fingers twitch while he's unconscious after Cindy apparently kills him, signaling that he's Not Quite Dead.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling:
  • Ziggy is the troublemaking younger sister of Cindy, who is doing everything she possibly can make a better life for herself.
  • Kind and respectful Nick Goode not only looks after the campers, but also his unkind bully of a brother, Will.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • Well, we know that Tommy ends up being a killer and the sisters fail to stop the curse thanks to events depicted in 1994.
  • Also that Nick Goode doesn't die at the hands of a slasher when he sacrifices himself.
  • We already know that they won't find Sarah Fier's body under the Hanging Tree. Aside from how much time is left in this episode, plus Part III, Part I showed us the Hanging Tree inside what is now the Shadyside Mall, while Sarah's body is in the woods outside town.
  • C. Berman herself tells us that her sister was one of the casualties.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The wall that holds the name of the Shadyside killers may show the supernatural side of the curse, but the fact that Tommy's name was recently added and all the killers remain dead and buried at that point, including Sarah Fier, the one apparently directing the curse, shows that there's a living human presence using and controlling the curse to their own ends, hinting at the reveal in 1666.
  • Nurse Lane's comment that Ziggy will survive proves true.
  • After gathering as many campers as they can find in the mess hall, Nick asks Gary if he's seen any of the other counsellors, naming all of the others off except for Tommy, leaving it to Gary to add that he also hasn't seen him. This despite the fact that no one currently alive except the trapped Cindy and Alice should be aware of Tommy's identity as the killer, so Nick has no reason to not be worried for him as well, hinting that he already knows because he's the one responsible for the rampage.
  • After Alice touches the pulsating mass in the tunnels, she sees visions of dead people (specifically, victims of the Shadyside killers). One of them is Cindy, foreshadowing her death later on in the movie.
• Forged Message: Ziggy and Nick use this method to lure Sheila into the outhouse as a prank.
• Gag Echo: Ziggy echoes many other characters who comment on Cindy's profanity after she kills Tommy with a Precision F-Strike.
  Ziggy: You cursed.
  Cindy: It's becoming a habit
• Girl Posse: The trio of Sunnyvale campers who are constantly at odds with Ziggy, consisting of Sheila, Becky, and Annie.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: During the Color War, red is assigned to Sunnyvale and blue is assigned to Shadyside. Red and Sunnyvale are explicitly referred to as the "Good" side, leaving blue Shadyside as the "Evil." This color dynamic is also shown in the Berman sisters: Ziggy, who believes in the witch and accepts that her town is cursed, wears a blue-and-white striped tank top; Cindy, who dismisses supernatural explanations and strives to be good enough to leave Shadyside, wears a red-and-white striped polo shirt. However, the Shadysiders as a whole tend to be nicer and friendlier, while the Sunnyvalers are rude and dismissive.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Cindy in her first scene refers to the red moss as "gosh darn", and characters are surprised whenever she curses for real later.
• Gotta Kill Them All: When Tommy becomes possessed, it is his goal to murder as many Shadyside campers and counselors as possible.
• Granola Girl: Joan is constantly going on about the joys of pot.
• Hate Sink: Becky, Annie, Will, and especially Sheila are mean bullies who antagonise Ziggy at every turn. The former three even attack Ziggy when the murders start happening, convinced she's the reason Sheila isn't here. Ironically they're actually right this time.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Cindy attempts this at least, first by offering up Sarah's hand to the killers in exchange for Ziggy's life, and then by pushing her sister away from the rampaging Tommy and attacking him with a shovel to protect her. In both cases, she fails.
• Hollywood Healing: Quite a few examples:
  • Alice breaks her ankle during a traumatizing encounter with the victims of the Shadyside Killers in the cavern, but is able to walk around perfectly fine later on, barely even limping. This is all the more egregious when you consider that her bone was jutting out of her skin and had to be shoved back into place. Realistically speaking, Alice should not have been able to walk on that leg AT ALL, and probably would not be able to even hop on the other leg, for the sheer pain of it.
  • Tommy attempts to hack Ziggy to death in the Science and Nature cabin, but is blocked by Nick, whose leg is severely wounded by the axe. The next time we see this character, he is able to walk around as if nothing even happened. In retrospect, this foreshadows The Reveal of 1666: As the beneficiary of the Deal with the Devil, Nick couldn't be allowed to die.
• Implacable Man: Double Subverted. Unlike the rest of the killers from 1994, Tommy is subjected to Demonic Possession, but is still in a living mortal body, and can be killed and put down like any other human, much like Skull Mask was in the beginning of 1994. Then Ziggy accidentally bleeds on Sarah Fier's hand, which results in the curse resurrecting all it's immortal killers to end her, Tommy now included amongst their number.
• Insult of Endearment: Alice calls Cindy "snitch" because of the event that fractured their childhood friendship. When they later reconcile, she keeps calling her that, but in a fond way.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: C. Berman refers to the possesed Sam as "it" and Deena retorts that "her name is Sam."
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Ziggy is introduced as an aggressive ball-buster, whose abrasive personality makes her a prime target for bullies. She however is the first character to sympathize with Nurse Lane, and refuse to believe she's just 'crazy'. She also risks her life to save Sheila, who's locked in the outhouse with a killer on the loose.
  • Alice is presented as a mean stoner who demeans Cindy at every opportunity. But she shows her Hidden Depths very quickly, and becomes Fire-Forged Friends with Cindy and Ziggy.
  • Despite being a major Jerkass throughout the film, Kurt proves to have a heart when he drives the surviving campers to safety during the Camp Nightwing Massacre.
• Karma Houdini: The merciless Sunnyvale teens Kurt, Sheila, Becky, Annie, and Will all survive the Camp Nightwing Massacre. Sheila, however, is covered in bugs and knocked unconscious for her troubles. This is actually Justified as the actual curse is supposed to provide prosperity to all Sunnyvale residents, therefore, no matter how terrifying their ordeal, none of them were actually in any danger throughout the massacre, as the killer wasn't allowed to hurt them.
• Kick the Dog:
  • After facing a verbal beat down from Becky, Jeremy receives a face full of egg from a group of Sunnyvale campers and a face full of axe from Tommy.
  • Everything Shelia does to Ziggy.
• Kids Are Cruel: The first scene featuring Sheila, Becky, Annie, and Will consists of them accusing Ziggy of being possessed by Sarah Fier and physically torturing her.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When Ziggy bleeds on Sarah Fier's freshly recovered hand, she inadvertently revives Tommy and multiple mass murderers who plagued Shadyside in the past, resulting in the deaths of Alice, Cindy, and nearly Ziggy herself. Later films later imply that the blood was Sarah trying to reveal the curse's true nature to anyone she could reach out to, and the killers targeting whoever's blood touches her body was the true source of the curse trying to stop her.
• Off with His Head!:
  • Helping Ziggy rescue Cindy and Alice up from a cavern beneath the outhouses, Gary finds his neck on the receiving end of Tommy's axe.
  • Later on, Cindy (temporarily) kills a reanimated Tommy by removing his head with a shovel.
• Oh, Crap!: This film has multiple of these moments:
  • Alice and Cindy find Tommy's name inscribed on the wall in front of "The Witch's Mark."
  • Every time a corrupted Tommy appears in front of an unsuspecting Shadyside camper or counselor with an axe, their time is up.
  • "WHERE THE FUCK IS SHEILA?!"
  • After killing Tommy for a second time, Cindy and Ziggy barely have any time to relax before they hear sinister singing coming from an open crawl space. Welcome to Camp Nightwing, Ruby Lane...
• Parental Substitute: With her father gone and her mother an alcoholic, Cindy is forced to become this to Ziggy.
• Put on a Bus: Kurt quite literally escapes the Camp Nightwing Massacre on a bus, rescuing Becky, Annie, Will, and numerous campers and counselors.
• Ransacked Room: Sheila, Becky, and Annie do this in Ziggy's bunk while the latter is in the nurse's office. Her pillows and sheets are ripped apart and some interesting graffiti is left on the wall, such a "Ziggy is a witch bitch," and "Ziggy sucks cock in Hell."
• A Rare Sentence: This exchange:
  Ziggy: My sister's in the toilet!
  Gary: What?
• Redemption Rejection: Retroactively after The Reveal in 1666. Nick is offered a chance to tell the truth, but lies to the police and continues the curse his family have perpetuated for centuries.
• The Reveal: C. Berman isn't Cindy, as one is led to believe. Rather, she's revealed to be Christine Berman, nicknamed Ziggy.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • When C Berman starts telling her story of the events, the first scene from 1978 follows Ziggy, who's actually telling the story, rather than Cindy.
  • C. Berman's dog is named Major Tom, a David Bowie reference. Another clue to her actually being Ziggy.
  • Nurse Lane's little rant about how sometimes killing might have a good reason takes on a new light once the viewer knows that she's already found Tommy's name on the wall and is planning to kill him to prevent him from becoming the next Shadyside killer.
  • Nick seems a little concerned with Ziggy's playful ribbing of him not being as normal as everyone thinks. After talking about his father's ambitions for him, he mentions the things he'd like to do instead and says "too bad we'll never know". For the former, he's possibly worried about Ziggy seeing through his ruse. For the latter, he knows he can't turn his back on his family legacy, as he's already marked Tommy to become the next killer.
  • Nick reassures a scared Ziggy by saying "I know I've let a lot of people die tonight..."
  • Kurt finding Nick outside the arts and crafts cabin with blood on his hands momentarily asks "did you do this?"
  • Alice gets a vision of Cindy covered in blood and screams about her being next, which Cindy reassures her is just a false vision. Since it's Cindy that dies and not Ziggy, Alice's vision was quite apt.
  • Ziggy miraculously gets revived with CPR after suffering several horrific stab wounds. Nick is later revealed to have made the Deal with the Devil, meaning he had the power to bring Ziggy back to life. Even before he performs CPR, he says "don't die on me"; on the first watch, seems like simple Please, Don't Leave Me, but on the second...
• Rousing Speech: Alice gives one to Cindy and Ziggy at the climax, about finally ending the curse. She gets killed by undead Tommy a minute later.
• Running Gag: People being surprised by Cindy swearing.
• Saved by Canon: Given that C. Berman, Nick Goode, and Will Goode are in the first film, which takes place sixteen years after this one, it is guaranteed that they survive, at least for the time being. The viewer is led to believe Cindy will survive, since she only goes by 'C Berman' in 1994, but it turns out to be Ziggy (whose real name is Christine).
• Shoot the Dog: Nurse Lane makes a failed attempt at this after discovering that Tommy is set to become the next person possessed by the curse. She tries to kill him before he can go crazy and kill others, reasoning that he'll be dead by the end of the night one way or another.
• Smoking Hot Sex: After hooking up with Kurt, Joan is quick to light up a joint.
• The Stoner: Alice, Arnie, and Joan all partake in their fair share of pills and marijuana.
• The Stool Pigeon: Of the "Lacerated Lacey" variety, Cindy served as this to Alice after a theft incident in middle school, badly straining their friendship.
• Summer Campy: It's set at a summer camp, where the rivalry between Shadyside and Sunnyvale is as bad as ever (two teens prank another by dumping a bucket full of bugs on her while she's in the bathroom). Also, there's an axe murderer on the loose.
• Symbolically Broken Object: Cindy's red-and-white striped polo shirt is repeatedly refrenced as symbolic of her desire to better herself and leave Shadyside. Early on, it's stained by moss which is growing from Sarah Fier's hand, symbolizing how Sarah's curse lingers in Shadyside and will prevent Cindy from truly escaping the town's evil. After the Camp Nightwing Killer has been awakened, she tears a hole in the sleeve and bemoans that the shirt is ruined. After making up with Alice and accepting her place in the cursed town, she tears the shirt up herself to make bandages for Alice's broken ankle.
• Talking in Bed: After having sex, Kurt and Joan take a breather. While he threatens to kill her if she ever tells anyone about their experience, she only asks him to admit that Shadyside girls are better in bed.
• Third-Person Flashback: Most of the film is this, partly as a way to disguise the identity of C. Berman.
• Tonight, Someone Dies: C. Berman begins her story by saying "a week later, my sister was dead" - confirming that one of the Berman sisters will not survive the movie. Due to the initial, the viewer believes it's Cindy telling the story. But it's revealed that Ziggy's given name is Christine, and she's the survivor.
• Town Girls: The third act revolves around such a trio. Alice is the butch - with her Boyish Short Hair, hardcore drug habit and tomboyish personality. Cindy is the femme - a preppy Girly Girl who fusses about her ruined clothes, and is particularly devoted to her boyfriend. Ziggy is the neither - as while she's less feminine than Cindy, emphasis is more on her being 'weird' than outright tomboyish.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Granted, Sheila didn't know there was a killer on the loose. But when Ziggy risks her own safety to free her from the outhouse, Sheila just attacks her over the prank and has to be knocked out.
• Unholy Ground: The area beneath the hanging tree where Sarah Fier's bones were buried. They actually weren't.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: We are briefly introduced to Shadyside campers Sean, Jessie, Rod, and Stacy as they are held captive during the Color War. After their captor leaves, they barely have time to relax before they are brutally dismembered by Tommy.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Nurse Lane had been researching the curse after her daughter went on an unprovoked rampage. She'd discovered the origin site of the curse and the names of the killers carved into stone, and had figured out that someone's name will appear on the stone before they become possessed and go on a rampage all before the film even starts. As such, she knows who the film's main killer is going to be and tries to murder him before he can kill anyone innocent, as she hadn't fully figured out the curse's true nature and how to free a possession victim. Nobody does until 1994, in fact.
• What Happened to the Mouse??: After Sheila is knocked unconscious by Ziggy in an outhouse stall, her character never shows back up in the film.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Except for the first and last five minutes, which take place in 1994, the entire film is an extended flashback as C. Berman recounts the events of the 1978 Camp Nightwing massacre.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Ziggy is pretty headstrong, but says she dislikes snakes. She has to hold in her fear while a snake is on her, when she is trying to hide from the killer.
• Would Hurt a Child: During the Camp Nightwing Massacre, a possessed Tommy targets and brutally hacks apart multiple Shadyside campers.

Part Three: 1666

• Act of True Love: To save Hannah's life, Sarah falsely confesses to being a witch: laying with the devil, sacrificing her hand and clouding Hannah's mind, effectively destroying her own good name for generations to come.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the books, the Fier family is generally evil, while in 1666, the only Fier family member we focus on, Sarah, is actually a good person who was set up.
• Ambiguously Evil: Mary, the supposed witch. She has the witch's book, but seems to warn Sarah away from touching it and is never seen performing any curses. The killings don't start until after Solomon kills her and makes a Deal with the Devil.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • It's repeatedly noted by Sarah's peers that there's something special about her. It starts off with her father noting that nobody in town is better than her at helping make sure animals safely give birth, but she attributes it to luck and having a good knife. He later notes that her mother also seemed to have some kind of special connection to the land as she helped pick where they settled. Mary, the mysterious medicine woman who lives in the woods and the original owner of the occult book Solomon used to cast the curse scares her off by saying that there are powers reaching out to her. Solomon even says he's noticed this power and the way the land calls to her when he offers her the chance to share in the curse's benefits. The nature of this is deliberately kept ambiguous, but it, combined with her grudge, gives a soft explanation as to how she was able to grow in strength over the centuries and eventually call out to anyone who goes near her corpse, illustrated by the spread of her red moss. It's implied but never outright stated that she's slowly been gathering strength from the land and that the sudden nosebleeds the main characters get when near her body parts are her trying to reveal the true source of the curse to them.
  • The extent to which the rest of the Goode family is aware of the family's Deal with the Devil is ambiguous. After Nick is outed as a serial killer his brother claims they didn't know anything about his nefarious activities, prompting Josh to call bullshit. However, the fact that the deal and curse were broken instantly upon Nick's death despite the fact that the rest of the family is still alive would lend credence to the idea that the deal was passed exclusively to the eldest son and the rest of the family need not be aware of it.
  • It's never explained what exactly the in-universe reason is for reusing actors from the previous movies in the 1666 setting, if there even is one. The simplest explanation is that it's just Deena's mind filling in roles with people she knows, but that doesn't explain people like young Ziggy (Constance), Cindy (Abigail), or Tommy (Mad Thomas), who Deena never actually met and were just in a story she was told. Alternatively, they could be the identical ancestors of those people, a theory that's helped by the fact that some of them (Solomon and Elijah Goode, Constance and Abigail Berman) are explicitly in the roles of their previous characters' ancestors, but hurt by the fact that Sarah is explicitly not the ancestor of Deena since we know what the real Sarah Fier looked like and she definitely didn't have any children. A third possibility is that there is some sort of reincarnation involved, particularly since many of them have similar names, roles, and/or dynamics as their 1994 and 1978 characters.
• Arc Words: Solomon's statement to Sarah that she has to "make a choice" to decide who she is and what she's going to do. Then Sarah says it to Hannah, then she remembers these words when realizing that Solomon is behind the curse.
• An Arm and a Leg: As foretold by the legends surrounding Sarah Fier in the previous movies, her hand gets cut off. However, unlike what the legends say, it was not cut off by Sarah herself in order to cast the curse, but rather by Solomon Goode during their struggle after she discovered that he was the one behind the curse.
• Attempted Rape: Caleb tries to force himself on Hannah at the bonfire, but Sarah stops him, leading to him later accusing the two of them of witchcraft.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Solomon seems to be the Token Good Teammate who is not taken in by the insanity of the witch hunt. That's because he knew he was the source of the curse and was planning to curse Shadyside.
• Bloody Handprint: When Sarah goes to the Widow's house in search of her book, she finds that the box in which it's kept is smeared with bloody handprints, indicating that whoever killed the Widow made off with the book.
• Call-Back:
  • Ziggy has the idea to "Carrie" Nick Goode by dumping a bucket of water mixed with Deena's blood onto him, so that he'll be targeted by the undead killers instead, because she and Nick did something similar to Sheila back when they first started getting to know each other in 1978.
  • The movie ends with Deena and Sam finally being able to fulfill not only their own but also Sarah Fier and Hannah Miller's If We Survive This promises: having a date with cheeseburgers and kissing in broad daylight, all while Pixies music plays.
• Deal with the Devil: The curse on Shadyside is the result of one, bringing prosperity to Sunnyvale through the sacrifice of Shadysiders via possessed killing sprees. However, it was not a deal made by Sarah Fier, as everyone was led to believe, but by Solomon Goode, and is maintained down the generations by the heirs of the Goode family, right down to Sheriff Nick Goode in 1994.
• Defiant to the End: Even as she is about to be hanged, Sarah tells Solomon that she will haunt him forever with the truth of what he's done.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Sarah and Hannah are accused of witchcraft by Caleb because Sarah stopped him from forcing himself on Hannah and humiliated him in the process.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Parodied with Josh, who gets a dramatic super soaker pump.
• Due to the Dead:
  • After Sarah is hanged, Hannah, Lizzie, Isaac, and Abigail move her body to the woods so that they can give her a proper burial.
  • After breaking the curse, Deena carves "Sarah Fier, the first Shadysider" into the rock next to where she was buried, to commemorate her sacrifice, since she really was just as much a victim of the curse that she was unjustly blamed for as the other Shadysiders who suffered because of it. She after this makes a point of kissing and dancing with her own girlfriend out in the open without shame, this being the impossible dream the two of them had.
• Dying Curse: Sarah's curse from the first two movies is shown here, except her curse is directed at Solomon Goode specifically, and it is his family's actions which are the actual curse upon Shadyside. She promised to haunt his family forever, never letting them forget the truth of their actions or those they hurt.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Sweet Jesus, does Deena earn hers. She relives Sarah Fier's final days, learning the truth about the curse, and sets about stopping Nick Goode. After delivering the killing blow, she's rewarded by having her girlfriend back, her friends' names are cleared and her father's prospects are looking up.
• The Ending Changes Everything: Once learning that Sarah Fier was an innocent victim that Solomon Goode used as a scapegoat for his own crimes absolutely everything that we've seen in the previous two films is flipped on its head: most of Nick Goode's dialogue, the discrepancy in the socio-economic status between Sunnyvale and Shadyside, the reason behind all the Shadyside serial killers — even the true nature of the red moss, which is initially depicted as something strange and sinister, and is instead a symbol of the love between Sarah and Hannah.
• The End... Or Is It?: Midway through the credits, after it appears everything is fine and the curse has finally ended, someone offscreen grabs the book that Solomon used to curse the land, setting up the potential for a sequel.
  • The director has confirmed that they intend on doing more horror films in a sort of shared universe setting. She's also spoken about wanting to make a television series, though whether this will come to fruition remains to be seen.
• Enemy Civil War: To distract the undead killers from Deena, Josh gets the idea to spray them with her blood, causing them to start attacking each other.
• Evil Is Petty: Turns out, back in Part 1, Sheriff Goode grafittied the Shadyside Mall and framed Martin for it. Possibly to discredit Martin as a witness, but since Martin didn't suspect anything about the supernatural cause or Goode's involvement therein, it comes across more as this.
• Eye Scream:
  • A possessed Pastor Miller murders a dozen children by ripping their eyes out. He also cut his own eyes out, but that didn't kill him.
  • Sheriff Goode goes out by getting stabbed in the eye.
• Face Death with Dignity: Facing execution, Sarah doesn't cry or beg, but says what she has to say in order to get Hannah off the hook, and then gives Solomon a "The Reason You Suck" Speech as he prepares the execution apparatus. In doing so, she obviously gets under his skin.
• Final Speech: Just before being hanged, Sarah gives one to Solomon, promising to haunt him forever with the truth of what he's done, and ensure that eventually that truth will be known.
  Sarah: The truth will come out. Maybe not today... and maybe not tomorrow, but it will. The truth shall be your curse. It will follow you for eternity. I will shadow you forever. And everything you take, and everyone you harm, you will feel the grip of my hand. I will show them what you've done. I will never let you go.
• Foil: Both Sarah Fier and Solomon Goode consider making deals with the devil. Sarah considers doing so after the town scapegoats her for everything, while Solomon enjoys a popularity in town and has no reason to make it. Sarah ultimately can't bring herself to hurt innocent lives, and expresses horror that Solomon did.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Sarah tells Solomon about how she fears that her being in love with Hannah was what cursed the town, he tells her that it's impossible to accidentally make a deal with the Devil, that you have to intentionally reach out to him to let him in. He'd know, since he was the one who already did that and cursed the town.
  • The chant the village children say about Pastor Miller at the start goes "Pastor Miller, blind as a bat, tried to read the Bible and his eyes went splat" - foreshadowing that he'll gouge the eyes of the children out before doing the same to himself. It's even Constance Berman who's chanting, while wearing a blindfold, and she's among the victims.
• Friend to All Children: Pastor Miller seems to be one, which makes what he does all the more tragic.
• Generation Xerox:
  • Caleb is as much of a homophobic asshole as Peter.
  • Hannah and Sarah's relationship shares many similarities with Sam and Deena's.
  • Lizzie deals drugs, in this case hallucinogenic berries, but is a genuinely kind girl, just like Kate. She's even close friends with Isaac (Simon).
  • The dynamic between Constance and Abigail is strikingly similar to the one between Ziggy and Cindy.
  • Abigail is mentioned to have slept with Thomas, and Cindy was dating Tommy (though they hadn't slept together).
• Ghost Memory: Deena relives Sarah Fier's memories of the events leading up to her hanging in 1666, which are given to her after she reunites Sarah's hand with her body. This is revealed to have been what Sarah was actually trying to do when Ziggy and Sam had previously bled on her bones, but she wasn't able to give them more than a confusing glimpse while her missing hand was still elsewhere.
• Good All Along: Sarah Fier. She was an innocent victim of the real witchcraft practitioner, Solomon Goode, and the visions people have when they touch her body are Sarah trying to communicate the truth to them, while the killers were sent by the real culprit to kill whoever knew the truth.
• Good Shepherd: Pre-possession, Pastor Miller is depicted as a warm and kind man, who even affectionately teases a few of the village children (who were in turn affectionately teasing him). The rest of the village even recognize this through their religious zealotry and paranoia, and rightly say he must have been possessed when he murdered the children.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Turns out that the Biggest Bad of this entire story wasn't the serial killers, nor Sarah Fier, or even the Goode family but the devil himself, who never appears in-person but who is the ultimate source of all the murder and carnage that took place over the last three centuries.
• Gruesome Goat: Satanist Nick Goode has a disturbing number of goat trophies and statues in his mansion. Sarah also sees the bloody head of a goat by the witch's mark under Solomon's house.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Both Hannah and Sarah perform these for each other. First, when the two of them are running from the mob after being accused of being witches, Hannah trips and falls, but tells Sarah to keep running and save herself, leading to Hannah being chained up in the church and set to be hanged while Sarah manages to escape. Then later, when they are both about to be hanged, Sarah takes the full blame and insists that she had bewitched Hannah, thus preventing Hannah's death but ensuring her own.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Attempted twice.
  • The first idea is to dilute Deena's blood in water and then dump it on Nick Goode so the killers will turn on their own master. It fails because he manages to grab Ziggy and gets Deena's blood on her, forcing Deena to draw the killers off so Ziggy isn't killed.
  • After that, Josh gets the idea to spray the killers themselves with Deena's blood to turn them against each other. It works, but they're immortal, so it only serves as a stalling tactic.
• Hourglass Plot:
  • Minor example. In 1978, Cindy died while her sister Ziggy survived. In 1666, their past counterparts are the other way around; Cindy's counterpart Abigail lives, while Ziggy's Constance dies.
  • At the point in the story where we flash back to 1666, Deena and Josh are the only protagonists of 1994 still alive or unpossessed. In the 1666 portions, Sarah and Henry (played by their actors) die, while their friends survive. Further more, Sam in the 1994 portions is possessed and her life in danger. But her 1666 counterpart Hannah isn't possessed, and Sarah lies that she is to save her.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: After finding out that Sheriff Goode is the source of the evil that's been hunting them, Deena and Josh, with help from Ziggy and Martin, put together a plan to hunt him in turn in order to end the curse. This reversal is nodded to during the scene where Deena chases Goode through the tunnels of the witch's mark, with her seeing flashes of Sarah's memories of being chased through those same tunnels by Solomon Goode.
• Identical Grandson:
  • Solomon Goode is played by the same actor as his descendant Nick Goode. This is likely also the case for the rest of the 1666 characters played by the same actors as characters from 1994 and 1978 (aside from Sarah/Deena, and thus also Henry/Josh), particularly since Constance and Abigail Berman share the same last name as Ziggy and Cindy.
  • Taken up to eleven during the montage of several generations of Goodes sacrificing Shadysiders to the devil, as they are all played by the same two actors who played Nick Goode, with different hairstyles and facial hair.
• Identical Stranger: Averted with Sarah Fier and Deena. While Deena experienced the events that led to Sarah's death, it's shown that while they do look vaguely similar, they were clearly two different people.
• If I Can't Have You…:
  • Caleb, still resentful that he was rejected by Hannah, decides to accuse her and Sarah of witchcraft to destroy their happiness, even though it was clear he was obsessed with her.
  • In a platonic version of it, this trope is also partly Solomon’s motivation for bringing Sarah to the townsfolk to be hanged. She had turned on him after discovering that he had made a Deal with the Devil and cursed the town, not moved in the least by his pleas that he “loves” her.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: A still-possessed Sam gets free and attacks Deena while she's hunting Sheriff Goode in the tunnels of the witch's mark, but unlike with Heather and Ryan in the opening of 1994, Deena's pleas for Sam to recognize her do actually get through to Sam long enough for Deena to safely knock her out.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Sarah starts to go down on Hannah in the woods before the two are interrupted by a noise, in a direct parallel to how Deena and Sam's intimate moment was cut short in Part One.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Not only does Caleb get away with framing Sarah and Hannah as the witches but is also hailed as a hero by the Union.
  • Technically all the subsequent generations of the Goode family after Solomon, who enjoy substantial success and wealth until the 1994 gang finally kill Nick and break the curse.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After the curse is broken, a random Sunnyvaler is killed by a garbage truck hitting his car. It implies that Sunnyvale is going to see a reckoning for all the good fortune they've received from the blood of Shadysiders.
• Karmic Death: The kids plan to enact this on Sheriff Goode, dousing him with Deena's blood so that the Shadyside killers his family have created over the years will turn on him and attack him instead. It fails because he manages to get some of the blood on Ziggy, forcing Deena to expose herself to distract the killers away from her as well. Then Deena succeeds in pushing Goode to touch the black mass in the caves beneath Shadyside, causing him to witness visions of all the victims his family have created over the generations, with the last one he sees being Sarah Fier swearing her Dying Curse to never let Solomon's family go before Deena stabs him through the eye.
• Keystone Army: When Deena Kills Sheriff Goode, the immortal killers his family have created over the generations instantly explode into dust or flies, along with the black mass dissolving into nothingness, the Satanic circle carved into the earth erasing itself and the names of the killers carved into the rock vanishing.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Solomon desperately declares his love for Sarah in the middle of trying to stab her. Later he turns her in as a witch and is the one to tie the noose around her neck.
• Laser-Guided Karma: It takes 328 years, but the Goode family's reputation is finally in tatters, and Sheriff Goode is rightfully blamed for the killings, presumably after they found the satanic altar attached to his house. It's also made clear that bad things will start happening in Sunnyvale while good fortunes befall the people of Shadyside to make up for the years of the former leaching off of the latter.
• Mark of the Beast: The townsfolk claim that whoever made a deal with the Devil will have his mark upon them, and begin searching peoples' bodies for it.
• Missing Mom: Sarah Fier's mother is revealed to have died some years before 1666.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Solomon Goode has a look of pure horror as he sees what Pastor Miller did to the town's children because of his curse. His guilt doesn't last, though, as he becomes a Misanthrope Supreme upon seeing the town whipping itself into a frenzy to lynch two innocent young women, one of whom he is in love with.
  • Downplayed, but the townsfolk collectively quiet down from their mob frenzy at the sight of Sarah's body hanging from the tree and there are a few perturbed faces as they silently leave.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Sheriff Goode would have been able to get away and maintain the curse with none the wiser had he not gone the extra mile of cursing Sam. This is ultimately what pushes the survivors of the previous movies' events to put Sarah to rest, giving her ghost the chance to reveal the true nature of the curse. His decision to frame an innocent man for vandalizing the mall also gets the gang a key extra ally against him.
• Non-Indicative Name: Only the first half of the film is set in 1666, with the second half returning the action to 1994. Shortly afterwards, title cards reading "FEAR STREET 1994" and "PART 2" pop up onscreen.
• No Ontological Inertia: When the curse is broken by Nick's death, all the undead killers immediately explode into dust (or possibly flies), and the physical effects of the curse on the cave are undone.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • After The Reveal, Nick Goode shows up to question Josh on the side of the road.
  • Sarah and Solomon both have this reaction when they come face-to-face after Solomon enters the cavern, realizing that Sarah knows he's the one that summoned Satan.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: The Irish accents that the citizens of Union speak with are inconsistent, and some of the actors do a much better job maintaining their accents than others.
• The Pastor's Queer Kid: Hannah Miller, Pastor Miller's daughter, is a lesbian and in love with Sarah Fier. The revelation of their relationship turns almost the whole town against her.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Sarah and Solomon care for and look after each other in a way that makes some of the townsfolk, Sarah's father included, think they should get married. Sarah is definitively uninterested in the prospect, because she's gay and in love with Hannah. Solomon doesn't seem inclined either, having lost his wife and child some time before. Sadly, their friendship ultimately ends in tragedy after Sarah discovers that Solomon made a Deal with the Devil that has already caused her brother's death and likely soon her lover's as well. Solomon then ensures Sarah's death to prevent her from revealing what he did.
• Politically Correct History:
  • Zigzagged. The 1666 Puritans have a very low (period appropriate) opinion of same-gender relationships, but don't seem to have any racial bias, as Black people are living among them without any notable signs of discrimination. However, since the entire 1666 segment of the story is framed as a vision by Deena imagining herself in the role of Sarah Fier, and the real Sarah shown later in the film is played by a white actress, it is implied that the cast are just playing parts assigned to them by Deena's vision.
  • Solomon is shown treating Sarah as an equal and a friend. And although he lacks the vocabulary for it, he shows a 21st century view of homosexuality. This is a Bait-and-Switch to the viewer (who probably until then assumed they would be like him if they lived back then) for when he is revealed to be the Big Bad.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Goode calls Deena a slur for lesbians and mocks her for how she'll be cast as a Psycho Lesbian by the press after she's killed. This is especially ironic since his homophobia seems to be the one thing he doesn't have in common with his ancestor Solomon.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The great prosperity of Sunnyvale is fueled by a stream of human sacrifices which are masterminded by the Goode family's firstborn sons, including Nick.
• Properly Paranoid: The people of Union may have been motivated by grief-fueled religious zealotry, but they were absolutely correct to think the cause of the town's misfortune was the result of a witch's Deal with the Devil. They just had the wrong one.
• Rape as Drama: Implied. When Hannah is caught trying to escape the mob, Caleb rips her dress while another man pulls her legs apart (all under the claim of checking for "devil marks") before the camera cuts away.
• The Reveal: Solomon Goode is responsible for cursing Union, not Sarah Fier. He sacrificed Cyrus Miller in order to make himself prosperous, not caring that 12 children died in the process. Furthermore, after he had his firstborn son take over maintaining the curse, his descendants did the same thing for over three centuries. Oh, and the current maintainer is Sheriff Nick Goode, who begins to ask Josh questions as a distraction...
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: The townsfolk are right in believing that Pastor Miller could never hurt children of his own volition — he must have been possessed. However, they come to the conclusion that it happened because Sarah Fier has been in congress with the devil, when in fact it was Solomon Goode, who was simply after prosperity.
• Rousing Speech: Deena gives one to Josh, Martin, and Ziggy just before the final showdown with Sheriff Goode and the undead killers, motivating them to finish it and finally break the curse for the people they've lost, for themselves, and for Shadyside as a whole.
• Sealed with a Kiss: The final shot is a bird's-eye pan out of Deena and Sam kissing.
• Sequel Hook: The film ends with an unseen person stealing the book Solomon Goode used to cast the curse. The director has confirmed that the intent of this scene was to create a sort of slasher movie equivalent to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• Sinister Minister: Pastor Miller gathers all of the town’s children into the church building, locks the doors, and doesn’t respond to anyone’s increasingly desperate questioning. Solomon eventually manages to break open the door, and he and the rest the town see that the pastor has murdered all of their children by gouging their eyes out, before doing the same to himself.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Sarah Fier and Hannah Miller were lesbian lovers in 1666, and a tryst witnessed by a spurned Caleb leads to the town blaming the curse on their romance. Both are accused of being witches, and Sarah has to pretend she was actually a witch and Hannah was under a spell to save the latter's life. She was hanged for witchcraft, leaving Hannah broken-hearted.
• Stupid Evil: Justified. The Shadyside killers are little more than mindless puppets of the curse, with no thought or agency of their own. Accordingly, they can be easily distracted or led around by the blood of their current target, as the kids used against them in 1994, and again here, where they trick them into getting trapped inside the mall shops, attacking each other when doused with the blood, and almost killing Sheriff Goode once they dump a bucket of the stuff on top of him, even though his death would destroy the killers as well.
• Summon Bigger Fish: When Deena is cornered by Nick Goode at the Ritual Site, Nick has a Near-Villain Victory as he is easily able to overpower her but Deena is able to summon Sarah's ghost to help her. Sarah makes him experence all the horror and pain his family has caused over the years which stuns him enough to Deena to stab him in the eye.
• Taking You with Me: After Ziggy pours Deena's blood on him (which is what attracts the killers), Nick grabs her and holds her hostage, effectively ruining the plan.
• Tap on the Head: Sam gets knocked out via blunt force to the head twice, but seems no worse for wear afterward.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: After she and Hannah are falsely accused of witchcraft and Hannah is set to be hanged, Sarah decides to actually make a deal with the Devil in order to save them both. However, once she realizes the cost of such a deal, she's horrified, and likely would not have gone through with it in the end even if she wasn't prevented by Solomon having already made a deal of his own.
  Sarah: If they want a witch... I will give them a witch.
• The Undead: Like in the previous entries, the killers are resurrected. However, this time it's because Deena found out that Nick Goode is the true culprit behind the curse of Shadyside.
• Unseen No More: The girl Josh was seen chatting online with at the beginning and end of 1994 finally appears in person at the end of 1666, signing her online handle on Josh's cast.
• We Can Rule Together: Solomon Goode offered Sarah the chance to join him in reaping the benefits of the curse before she was killed.
• Wham Episode: 1666 completely reframes and recontextualizes everything that has previously been presented about Sarah Fier and the curse on Shadyside... all just in time for the trilogy's finale in 1994 Part 2.
• Wham Shot: Once Deena realizes Nick's the Big Bad, two title cards reading "FEAR STREET 1994" and "PART 2" are shown.
• What Is One Man's Life In Comparison?: Solomon says that Pastor Miller's possession will bring prosperity to the town (or at least Solomon himself), which is certainly worth one life. Sarah counters that it wasn't just one life, as Miller murdered a dozen children.
• Widow Witch: Mary is a reclusive widow who the local kids believe is a witch. They were most likely right, since she was the original owner of the book that Solomon Goode used to summon the Devil.
• Witch Hunt: The townsfolk of Union begin one of these, complete with Torches and Pitchforks, after Pastor Miller's possession and murder of twelve children, followed by other hardships and omens, leads them to believe that someone has made a Deal with the Devil and cursed the town. Sarah and Hannah become their targets after Caleb accuses them of witchcraft, because Hannah had rejected him earlier and Sarah had defended her.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • As foretold in the previous films, Pastor Miller kills a dozen children by tearing their eyes out.
  • It's shown that Nick sacrificed Tommy to the Devil, deliberately causing Tommy to go on a rampage at Camp Nightwing and kill most of the kids. Also, other Goode ancestors sacrificed Ruby (a teenage girl) and Billy (a little boy), knowing both would die and become undead slaves.
• Yandere: Solomon has shades of being this towards Sarah for example cursing the father of her love interest and lopping her hand off and framing her as a witch when she rejects him etc.

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