Tear Jerker / Fear Street

Books

• The scene in Silent Night where Reva is called out by Hank, where she breaks down. She admits that her mother's death effected her, and made her want to be emotionally closed off. She realizes this is why she is so awful to people. But even after opening up about this, she still can't allow herself to cry.
• The second half of the first book in the 99 Fear Street: The House of Evil trilogy. It's the scene where Cally Fraiser is reading a picture book to her nine year old brother, James. Basically, James suffers a great deal of emotional stress due to the house. His dog, Cubby, goes missing a few days after receiving him, and the house taunts him by letting the dog's barking be heard CONSTANTLY throughout the halls, always making it seem like it's in the next room, only for them to arrive in said room and the barking shifts to another area of the house. He's also had to watch his parents suffer an equal amount of stress caused by the house. Cally notes that her brother has regressed to the emotional state of a baby, fearful of everything, when he asks her to read him a picture book he stopped reading years ago. Cally does indeed read the book to him, and wishes him goodnight, on the verge of tears from seeing her little brother in this state. And then the house takes James in the same way it did his dog. His family can hear James crying for his parents to help him, but they can't find him. It isn't until the next book that James and Cubby, or rather, their corpses, are discovered by the new residents of the house. At least the house hadn't turned him into a vengeful ghost as it did his sister, Cally, who also died in the first book.
• The ending of The Stepsister: A ton of bad stuff keeps happening to Emily, who keeps blaming her new stepsister Jesse (not completely unreasonably, as it didn't start until she shows up) Jesse always claims she's innocent, and thinks Emily is the crazy one. at the end we find out it was Nancy (Emily's sister) who was doing this all a long, and Jesse really was innocent. Emily is wracked with guilt over mis-blaming her stepsister all this time, and at the end the two of them have a tearful reunion and promise to be like real sisters.
  • And in the sequel there is Emily finally forgiving Nancy, which is actually what gets her to stop.
• Most of the Fear Street Saga Trilogy stories and follow-up Fear Street Sagas are quite downbeat, particularly the scenes showing Susannah Goode and her mother being burned at the stake (starting the Fear-Goode feud), Mary Fear's Sanity Slippage, Ezra Fear losing one of his innocent children and accidentally destroying another's happiness, Simon’s daughters turning on each other due to jealousy and the toxic household they live in, Sarah Fear struggling to save her niece and nephew from a vengeful ghost, and the way that seemingly anyone who brings out many of the Fears’ best qualities or happier moments (Hannah Fear's pet dog, Daniel Fear's fiancée Nora Goode, Nicholas Goode's star-crossed lover, coworkers, Benevolent Boss, and Betty and Veronica local admirers, etc.) keeps getting killed, traumatized, or corrupted.
• In Fear Street Cheerleaders: Second Evil, the protagonists visit the parents of a friend who has recently died and ask to talk to her brother (who blames them for what happened), only to learn that he has disappeared to and his already-grieving parents are worried about him (for good reason, as he later turns up dead).
• Phoebe and the other cheerleaders' Due to the Dead moment for Jade at the end of Fight Team Fight adds some solemnity to what could otherwise be seen as a run-of-the-mill Asshole Victim meeting her fate.
• The way Marla Newman is tormented by her witch coven in Wicked for refusing to commit murder as an initiation ceremony.
• The end of Spring Break has Jennifer, Josie, and Dana all learn of the senseless death of Deirdre (Dana's twin sister, who was True Companions with the other two) and crying over what happened, as Josie and Jennifer also realize how they just saw Deidre's mournful-looking ghost, who was there to help them out one last time, but thought it was Dana.
• Someone stabbing Phoebe soon before graduation is a particularly downbeat part of Graduation Day.

Movies

1994:

• When Heather pulls the mask off of her attacker and discovers that it is her friend Ryan, she stops struggling, frozen in shock, and can only tearfully plead “Ryan, it’s me, it’s me,” to no avail as he stabs her to death. The fact that this directly parallels the more successful "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight in 1666 between Deena and Sam makes it even more heartbreaking.
• The fight between Sam and Deena becomes this on the second watch when you know just how in love they really were - but the homophobia of 1994 led to Sam going back in the closet just to appease her mother.
  • And in that argument, Deena calls Sam out on how she was "always too afraid to tell anyone about us". Kiana Madeira sounds so hurt as she throws that out there.
  • Sam likewise responds to Deena's complaints that she moved away with "my parents got divorced", and you realise that this girl lost her father, had to move to a new area and then got dumped by her girlfriend in quick succession.
  • Deena bringing the mix-tape she made for Sam at the meet-up between schools in Sunnyvale. Instead of the "fuck you" message she was trying to come up with at the beginning of the movies, she ended up writing a promise to love Sam forever. She got discouraged after seing Sam with Peter, which is why she ends up putting the tape in her pocket instead of dumping it with the rest of Sam's stuff.
    • In fact, Deena just seems moody and apathetic for the first part of the film. We're led to believe this mysterious ex Sam is a Jerkass she's lucky to be rid of. Then we discover that Sam is a girl, the two were lesbians in The '90s and just how the break-up has really hurt Deena. It's the only time we see her cry in the trilogy as she sits under the bleachers.
  • And when Deena arrives at school for the first time, there are several shots where she sees couples walking together and holding hands. At first, you think she's just irritated by the PDA because of her break-up. Then you learn how Sam was always secretive about their relationship, and you realise Deena is seeing reminders that other heterosexual couples could happily do things that Sam was too afraid to do with her - something as simple as holding hands in public.
• Sam’s mom berating Deena for calling to ask if Sam was okay after a car crash and accusing her of trying to ruin Sam’s life.
• It's also rather sad that Kate and Simon come to the realistic conclusion that Sam has to die to stop the killers coming after them. They've exhausted their other options, and even Sam herself agrees. Given what a Trauma Conga Line Sam has already been through, perhaps death seemed preferable to what her life was descending into. It thankfully crosses into Heartwarming when Kate and Simon repay Sam's attempted sacrifice by protecting her in the supermarket.
• While Kate's death is both shocking and heartbreaking, Simon's is just gutting. Fore more context, he initally warns Josh to run as they're being chased by the Nightwing killer. They run through opposite sides of an aisle before stopping to find Kate's dead body on the bread slicer. They then share an expression of pure shock and remorse before Simon is axed in the head. A comment under this clip of Kate and Simon's death hammers home what they both must’ve been feeling:
  Isabelle Dobbins: I feel like nobody really cares about Simon’s death. Kate’s death was sad but imagine finding your best friend dead and being so shocked, you forget for a moment your risking your life.
• Sam gripping Deena's hand for comfort as she's being drowned.
  • For that matter, Deena having to drown the girl she loves. Sam instinctively struggles to come up for air and Deena has to keep her down, crying as she does so.
• Kate mentions that her Aunt had been one of the kids killed in the 78 Camp Nightwing Massacre, and by the end of this movie Kate herself is gruesomely murdered. Kate’s mother lost both her younger sister and her own daughter to the curse, and to top it all off, Kate was initially framed as responsible for murders she did not commit.
  • She even says that her aunt's murder "screwed my family up" for a while. Goodness only knows how her mother will cope with this.
• Overall, this movie subverts the hell out of 90s nostalgia by showing the sad reality of what the time period could be like (Leigh Janiak herself was a teenager in the mid-90s and knew from first hand experience). The majority of teens laughing at a stunt making fun of Heather's murder shows just how cynical and apathetic the times were. Indeed, it's a recreation of a similar moment in Scream (1996).

1978:

• The bullying Ziggy has to endure from Sheila - who is a particularly monstrous breed of Alpha Bitch. She literally has her tied to a tree and tries to burn her before Nick intervenes. And she goes ahead and graffitis Ziggy's bed just to Kick the Dog even further.
• Nurse Lane. Where exactly do we start?:
  • Her daughter was one of the Shadyside killers, Ruby Lane, and the infamy around her murders has turned her mother into a shell of a person seeking answers.
  • She finally seems to find them when she comes across the witch's hut in the forest near Camp Nightwing and digs desperately trying to search for Sarah's hand to put an end to the curse. Instead, however, she finds the wall of names of the Shadyside killers and finds Tommy is the next victim.
  • When she tries to kill him before he can become possessed, she's sent away in an ambulance and doesn't get closure on what happened to her daughter until 1994, when Ziggy gives her back her journal and presumably explains everything.
  • Even without the main events of the film, she's shown to be a fraught and simply broken. Her checkup on Ziggy at the beginning of the film quickly devolves into her recouting the murders committed by her daughter, clearly displaying a great deal of trauma.
  • Her character effectively represents just how heartbreaking it is for the loved ones of the killers to watch as someone they knew dearly suddenly snaps and kills people with little to no evidence.
• Poor Tommy as well. From what we see of him, he was a straight up Nice Guy who seemed liked by all the young campers as a Cool Teacher. Then he gets possessed and forced to become a serial killer, with his good name forever destroyed by history.
  • The last thing we see him do before the possession really starts to take hold is prep and encourage the Shadyside kids for the upcoming color war. It's what makes them such easy prey later on — even when he's advancing with an axe, they can't fathom that he could ever hurt them.
  • One of Tommy's victims is Jeremy, the nerdy boy who clearly looked up to him. The same can be said for nearly every Shadysider Tommy comes across. Rather than fearful, they all appear concerned and worried about his physical state.
• Alice getting killed by Tommy just after she appeared to rekindle her friendship with Cindy and vowed to help her and Ziggy stop the curse.
• On the first watch, the heart-to-heart between Nick and Ziggy is a heartwarming moment. On the second, it takes on a much harsher note once you know that Nick already marked Tommy as the one to be possessed and cause all the deaths. Fridge Horror - Nick knows that Tommy has probably started his rampage at this point.
• There's a sadness lingering over the film with the knowledge that one of the sisters is going to die, and the narrative leads one to believe it'll be Ziggy - who's already been through a Trauma Conga Line. But retroactively, the fact that it's Cindy gives her attempts to improve her life and escape her miserable existence a real sense of tragedy.
• When Cindy dies by Ziggy’s side when they are both hacked/gutted by Sarah’s killers, and this is after the sisters reconciled. If that doesn't get you, the part when Ziggy weakly asks for her sister while on a stretcher and barely clinging onto life will. Hell even Nick, who's later revealed to be the Big Bad, seems to be slightly remorseful as Ziggy realizes her sister is dead.
  • In 1994, Ziggy admits that most days she wishes she'd stayed dead.
• A humanising moment for Nick once The Reveal of the next film comes in. Upon finding the bodies of the four campers Tommy murdered - to clarify, the remains - he's so horrified he goes outside and throws up. It makes one wonder did he regret what he's started?
  • It's in fact after this that he tells Kurt to get all the remaining campers out on the bus immediately. Possibly realising just what Tommy is going to be capable of doing if they wait much longer to round up survivors.

1666:

• The bodies of Henry and Constance discovered among the children abducted by Cyrus Miller, with Sarah and Abigail respectively reacting in horror to finding their siblings dead.
  • In contrast to his rotten wife, Pastor Miller seemed to be a Good Shepherd, who can be seen playing along with the children in an early scene. It makes it all the sadder that he's the one to be possessed and forced to kill the innocents. The fact that he happily joined them in a rhyme about his eyes and then gouges out all the children's eyes makes it look like someone was deliberately twisting the knife. And the fact that it's all a Foregone Conclusion just makes it worse.
• The reveal that Sarah Fier was innocent and that Solomon Goode framed her for his Deal with the Devil. Even after her death, she was blamed for every terrible thing that happened in Shadyside, dismissed as a folks' tales by those who don't believe in her curse, and outright used as an excuse by Sunnyvalers to mistreat Shadysiders, all because of a simple and bare bones rumor of her being a witch. That is sexism at it's most tragic, especially since the freedom of speech and having free will practically didn't exist back then. Sarah could only wait for somebody to come to her body so she could show them the truth. But for three centuries, nobody succeeded. If someone bled on her bones, the resurrected killers murdered them before they could see the truth. Even the sole survivor (Ziggy) only made it out because of Nick's affection and she remained traumatized, believing Sarah was the one who had tried to kill her. She deserved to rest with the curse gone and the Goode family getting their karma.
  • The alarming fact that Solomon cursed Pastor Miller of all people. Not the dickish Caleb. Not the horrid Grace Miller. Not even the village idiot Mad Thomas. But the relatively friendly and cheerful Friend to All Children Pastor. This also possibly serves as a Fridge Horror because if Solomon had chosen someone like Mad Thomas to curse then the villagers might not have been so quick to fire up the whole witch hunting frenzy and Sarah wouldn’t have met such an untimely demise! There might have even been less victims with Mad Thomas being, well Mad Thomas the children likely wouldn’t have been willing to hang out with him…
• After Sarah Fier is hanged, we watch as her secret lover, Hannah Miller, just collapses and kneels at her hanging body. The scene where she helps plan a secret funeral for Sarah and places the red moss crown on her head as she’s being buried will make you cry. Prior to this, we watch as Sarah claims she tempted Hannah, sparing her from the gallows.
• Ziggy falling to her knees in shock after Deena and Josh tell her that Nick is evil, realizing the nice boy from Sunnyvale she befriended is not only a monster, but also responsible for her sister’s death.
• Ziggy is sardonic and aloof in the present day, but when she's attacked in the mall by the Milkman, she starts screaming in a startling way. Then you realise...the Milkman was the one who killed her back in 1978.