FEAR STREET
*CUT TO THE CHASE*NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy
Part One: 1994
In the town of Shadyside, bookstore employee Heather Watkins (Maya Hawke) is closing up shop at the mall. She gets a phone call from her friend Ryan Torres (David W. Thompson), who shows up to surprise her at the mall. Things go dark and quiet, and Heather finds herself stalked by a figure wearing a hoodie and a skull mask. She runs through the mall and attempts to fight him off, but he ultimately corners her in the middle of the mall and stabs her to death. He takes off the mask to reveal himself as Ryan, looking possessed and continuing to try and stab Heather until he is shot dead by Sheriff Nick Goode (Ashley Zukerman). Seven other people are reported dead.
The credits feature news reports and clippings of all the murders that have plagued Shadyside for decades, with many believing the town to harbor psychos, although the urban legend states that there is a witch by the name of Sarah Fier involved in everything.
Elsewhere in Shadyside is Deena Johnson (Kiana Madeira), who lives with her nerdy younger brother Josh (Benjamin Flores, Jr.) and their father. They go to school together, and Deena notices tributes at Heather’s locker. She goes to the bathroom and finds her friends Kate (Julia Rehwald) and Simon (Fred Hechinger), along with a spray-painted message relating to Sarah Fier’s curse. Kate offers Deena some drugs since she is selling pills in secret, but Deena declines.
That night, a candlelight vigil is held for the victims of the mall slaying, joined by students from rival town Sunnyvale. Deena is upset to see her ex-girlfriend Samantha Fraser (Olivia Scott Welch) with a guy, Peter (Jeremy Ford), who gropes her. The girls confront each other in private, with Deena being upset that Sam chose to live with her mother in Sunnyvale after her parents’ divorce, especially because her mom doesn’t like Deena due to their relationship. During the vigil, Peter makes snide comments about how there’s always a tragedy happening in Shadyside, leading to a brawl between students from both schools.
On the bus ride home, Peter, joined by Sam and one of his buddies, chases after the Shadyside bus to pelt them with junk. Deena opens the emergency exit to throw a cooler at the car until her nose starts bleeding. She drops the cooler on the car, causing Peter to crash nearby in the woods. Sam gets out, injured, and then sees flashes of some kind of satanic ritual. She is later taken to the hospital. All the students then claim that the car crash was just an accident to spare anyone from getting in trouble.
The next night, Deena tries to call for Sam’s hospital room, but her mom refuses to let Deena talk to her. She hears a ringing at the door and looks across the street to see the same Skull Mask figure standing outside, believing it to be Peter playing a prank. Meanwhile, Kate and Simon are babysitting two girls when they also seem to encounter Skull Mask. Kate leaves the girls with a neighbor for safety. Deena goes to Kate and claims that it’s Peter, so they go to the hospital themselves to confront Sam and tell her to call Peter off. Sam claims that Peter has been there all night, which leads to Deena and Sam having an argument before Peter is impaled by Skull Mask. He kills two other hospital employees before the teens flee from the hospital.
The group tries to report the attack to Sheriff Goode, but he thinks it’s just another prank since they have been getting calls about a copycat killer all weekend. Deena manages to grab Goode’s gun off him before leaving. Outside, Simon has an encounter with a young woman, Ruby Lane (Jordyn DiNatale), who is singing an old tune. Simon approaches her and is slashed with a razor. Ruby attempts to attack Simon until Deena shoots Ruby down, but it doesn’t kill her and she heals herself. They run back to the Johnson house, where Josh recognizes her as Ruby Lane because he has done his research on all the murders in Shadyside. Ruby killed her boyfriend, friends, and then herself decades earlier. He also has info on other killers from Shadyside, such as a killer at Camp Nightwing, a milkman that killed housewives, a deformed boy who murdered his brothers, and a grifter killing random people in town. All of it connects to Sarah Fier, who was hanged for witchcraft in 1666 but cut off her cursed hand and left it in the town to reach from beyond the grave and claim victims.
The group goes to the site of the crash, where they discover that it is the grave of Sarah Fier. Sam touched the grave and saw visions, which is why they are facing the spirits of those previously possessed by Sarah. They attempt to bury Sarah’s bones, only to be pursued by the Camp Nightwing Killer. It turns out that since Sam earlier coughed blood on Simon’s shirt, they are drawn to them because of Sarah’s blood. The teens then go to the high school where they change clothes and plot to trap the spirits. Deena and Sam briefly hook up again before Ruby, Skull Mask, and Camp Nightwing Killer make their returns. The teens trap them in a room rigged to blow, and the room explodes, seemingly burning the killers to death. Unfortunately, they begin to regenerate, forcing the teens to run again.
The group realizes that the killers want Sam, and from Josh’s old clippings, he finds that there was a survivor of the Camp Nightwing murders called C. Berman, who was apparently dead for two minutes before being revived, and it allowed her to escape the murders. The teens try calling her but only get her answering machine. They then head to a supermarket where they plan to have Sam die via an overdose of Kate’s drugs before reviving her. The three killers make their appearance soon enough, with Deena trying to help Sam while the other three run. Sam vomits the pills before it can work. Skull Mask attacks Kate and stabs her in the gut before putting her head through a bread slicer, while Camp Nightwing Killer drives an axe into Simon’s skull. Just before the killers can get the rest of them, Deena drowns Sam in a tank, causing the killers to disappear. Deena and Josh jam EpiPens into Sam’s body until she finally wakes up.
The survivors give their account to Goode, who thinks Kate and Simon were behind the murders, but Deena, Josh, and Sam defend them as their friends. When Sam’s mom goes to pick her up, Sam defiantly kisses Deena in front of her mom and plans to continue their relationship.
Deena and Sam hang out at home that night. Deena goes to answer the phone and hears the voice of C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs). She is surprised to know that Deena is alive because according to Berman, there is no stopping the witch. Deena turns around to find a now-possessed Sam having stabbed her. After a struggle, Deena subdues Sam and ties her up just as Josh runs back upstairs. Deena then looks at Sam and vows to bring her back, all while Sam roars at her.
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Part Two: 1978
C. Berman watches the news reports of the recent slayings in Shadyside, with the news still suspecting Kate and Simon as the prime culprits. She hears a noise from the kitchen and finds Deena climbing in through the window. Berman nearly attacks Deena until she explains that she is the girl that Berman called earlier. Deena brings Berman outside with Josh to show them that they have Sam tied up in the trunk of their car since she is still possessed. Although Berman initially refuses to help, Deena pleads with her until she relents. Berman brings them back into the house to tell them the story about how she survived her own encounter with Sarah Fier.
1978 – Young Ziggy Berman (Sadie Sink) is running through the woods of Camp Nightwing when she is attacked by a Sunnyvale camper named Sheila (Chiara Aurelia) and her cohorts because Ziggy stole some money from their cabin, and they taunt her by saying she is possessed by Sarah Fier. Counselors Will Goode (Brandon Spink) and Kurt (Michael Provost) come to break things up as Sheila starts to burn Ziggy’s arm with a lighter. Knowing that Ziggy already has a history with causing problems, Will orders her to go call her mom to pick her up, but first she goes to the nurse to tend to her wound. Meanwhile, Ziggy’s older sister Cindy (Emily Rudd) is working as a counselor there with her boyfriend Tommy Slater (McCabe Slye), having to deal with her former friend Alice (Ryan Simpkins) and her boyfriend Arnie (Sam Brooks) doing drugs and having sex. Cindy and Alice were friends until Cindy ratted out Alice for a crime they committed when they were younger.
Ziggy goes to the office of Nurse Mary Lane (Jordana Spiro), mother of previous Shadyside killer Ruby. She is haunted by the fact that her daughter killed her friends and then herself. Mary insinuates that some of the murders were justified as she wraps the bandage around Ziggy’s arm too tightly. Afterwards, Ziggy meets up with Cindy, and they argue as Cindy talks about wanting to leave Shadyside, but Ziggy says nobody gets out of there. More bickering ensues, and Cindy calls Ziggy a monster.
Cindy is scrubbing moss off the floors in an outhouse with Tommy when they are found by Mary. She tries to attack Tommy, but he is able to push her off of him and knock her out. Tommy is also injured in the back of the head. Mary is taken to the hospital, with people assuming she is just as crazy as her daughter was. At the scene is young Nick Goode (here played by Ted Sutherland), whose father was sheriff before his death, and everyone in town knows Nick is “heir apparent” to succeed him.
The campers and counselors are preparing for a color war that night. Ziggy is preparing for a revenge prank against Sheila after finding that she and her friends wrote nasty things about her in her room. Cindy joins Tommy, Alice, and Arnie as they go into Mary’s office to get what they think are hard drugs, but is really just Tylenol. All the while, Tommy starts to feel unwell. Alice finds Mary’s diary which contains a map of the area, as well as the legend of the witch, which states that if Sarah’s hand is reunited with her body, the curse will come to an end. The map leads them to Sarah’s old home, going underground to the caverns where the names of previous killers under Sarah’s influence are carved into stone. Cindy and Alice then find Tommy’s name on there. Arnie approaches Tommy, thinking he is just really high, but Tommy grabs an axe off the wall and splits Arnie’s face open in front of the girls. The two run and make it far enough to cause rocks to collapse and seemingly trap Tommy, but he manages to make his escape while Cindy and Alice are still trapped down there.
Nick helps Ziggy prank Sheila by filling a bucket full of creepy bugs, luring her to the outhouse under the impression that Will is asking her to join her. They pull the bucket and dump the bugs on her before trapping her in the outhouse. Not far away, a Shadyside camper named Jeremy (Dylan Gage) is brutally murdered by Tommy. Ziggy and Nick start to kiss until they hear screams from campers who discover Jeremy’s remains. The counselors gather all the remaining campers in the outhouse. Tommy also goes after Kurt’s girlfriend Joan (Jacqi Vene) hacking her to death after she has sex with Kurt, and then he proceeds to go after more innocent campers left alone.
Cindy and Alice continue to try and make their way out of the caverns. They come across what looks like a gigantic rotting beating organ. Alice touches it and sees visions of all of Sarah’s previous killers, even seeing a vision of a dead Cindy and other victims of the murders. Alice gets injured when she falls over and a bone pops out of her leg. Cindy tends to her wounds, and the girls admit things to each other. Cindy admits to having snitched on Alice to save her skin, while Alice tells Cindy that she had slashed her wrists to cope with her dismal home life.
Ziggy remembers Sheila is in the outhouse and goes to find her along with another counselor named Gary (Drew Scheid). Sheila attacks Ziggy but then has her lights knocked out by Ziggy. Cindy and Alice manage to find out that there is an exit above them when Cindy finds the same moss from the outhouse. They call out for help, and Ziggy finds them. As she and Gary try pulling Alice out first, Tommy comes and decapitates Gary, causing them to drop Alice while Ziggy makes a run for it. She is found by Nick, who tries to get her to safety, until Tommy comes and attacks. He slashes at Nick’s leg while Ziggy runs and sees that she has missed the bus taking the other campers and counselors to safety.
Cindy and Alice manage to find a way around that leads them to the mess hall. Ziggy is there while Tommy goes after her, attacking her before she wraps the burlap sack around his head that he later wears as a ghost. Cindy manages to break free from the cellar and stabs Tommy repeatedly until he is dead, saving her sister. The girls reconcile and reaffirm their love for one another. Alice emerges with Sarah’s skeletal hand, and they plan to bring the hand back to her body, until Ziggy gets a nosebleed and drips on the hand. This causes her to see a vision of Sarah, as well as reanimate Tommy’s corpse back to life. Just before the girls head out, Tommy slashes Alice’s throat, killing her. Cindy beheads him with a shovel as the two sisters run.
Ziggy and Cindy make it to the Hanging Tree where Sarah died, but they are soon faced by Tommy, Ruby Lane, the Milkman Harry Rooker (Kevin Waterman), and masked child killer Billy Barker (Emily Brobst). Just as the girls try to put the hand in the ground, the killers get closer. Cindy orders Ziggy to make a run for it while she fights off Tommy. Unfortunately, Tommy gets the upper hand and begins hacking Cindy to death, while the Milkman stabs Ziggy in the gut repeatedly. The killers vanish, and the sisters die side-by-side. Nick shows up and manages to revive Ziggy with CPR, but Cindy is gone.
In the present, Berman reveals that she was Ziggy, as her real name is Christine. Although she told Nick that the curse was real, he couldn’t back up her claims due to fears that it would compromise his future as sheriff, so he just tells authorities that Tommy went crazy. Christine still insists that there is no way to defeat Sarah, but Deena and Josh ask her if Sarah’s hand is still under the Hanging Tree. It is, as the Shadyside Mall is now where Camp Nightwing used to be. While the two are doing this, Christine attempts to contact Nick. Deena then takes the hand to Sarah’s grave in the woods, but as she does so, she finds herself back in 1666, where she is now Sarah.
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PART #3: 1666
Deena finds herself living through the eyes of Sarah Fier (Elizabeth Scopel as the real one, Kiana Madeira as who we follow). She joins her brother Henry (Benjamin Flores, Jr) as their pet pig gives birth. Just as it looks like one of the piglets is stuck, Sarah gets a knife and sticks it in the pig to allow it to give birth properly.
Sarah and Henry live with their father George (Randy Havens) in the town of Union. Sarah is friends with Isaac (Fred Hechinger), Lizzie (Julia Rehwald), and Abigail (Emily Rudd), who has a sister named Constance (Sadie Sink). Sarah is in love with Hannah Miller (Olivia Scott Welch), daughter of Pastor Cyrus Miller (Michael Chandler), and Hannah returns her feelings. Mad Thomas (McCabe Slye) approaches Sarah and insinuates there is something sinister happening in town.
Later that night, Sarah and Hannah go with Lizzie to the home of Widow Mary (Jordana Spiro) for some berries that provide a drug-like high. Sarah comes across a book with the names of demons and incantations before the Widow finds her and threatens her to leave, but the girls take the berries. They take it to a gathering with other youths in the area. A lecherous man named Caleb (Jeremy Ford) attempts to make a move on Hannah since he is aroused, but Sarah pushes him off and humiliates him in front of the others. Sarah and Hannah retreat into the woods where they give into their feelings for one another and begin to kiss. They are spotted by an unseen figure, revealed to be Mad Thomas.
The next day, Thomas starts telling the whole town that he saw Sarah and Hannah together, causing George and Hannah’s mother to chastise their daughters. At the same time, the town begins to experience a strange plague. All the food has begun to spoil rapidly, the pig from earlier has gone mad and eaten her piglets (forcing Sarah to kill her), and the Fiers’ family dog Merryboy is found at the bottom of a well. The settlers believe this to be the work of the devil and that someone among them has invited a dark presence to the town. Sarah goes to Solomon Goode (Ashley Zukerman) and fears that she is responsible for what is happening.
The two hear a scream and go to the chapel, where Pastor Miller has locked himself and twelve children, including Henry and Constance, inside. Solomon breaks in and finds Miller with his eyes gouged out speaking to himself, as well as the bodies of the abducted children all dead with their eyes gouged out. Sarah breaks down upon finding Henry and is nearly attacked by Miller until Solomon impales him with a pitchfork.
The town holds a meeting that night to determine the root of the evil that is plaguing the town. Thomas convinces the others that Sarah and Hannah are witches who have laid with the devil, which is what started the curse. The two are found and try to run, but Hannah is captured while Sarah gets away. She later finds Hannah in the chapel, where she says she will be hanged in the morning. Sarah proclaims her love for Hannah and vows to get her out. Since the town already thinks her to be a witch, she decides to go back to the Widow and find her book to make a deal with the devil and save Hannah.
Sarah returns to the Widow’s home but finds that the book is gone, and the Widow is dead with her throat slashed. She runs to Solomon’s house for help and comes across the underground caverns seen at Camp Nightwing. She even finds the large beating mass of flesh before coming across the book, and Solomon finds her before the truth is revealed – it was Solomon who started the curse, as he killed the Widow and took her book to personally target Miller and have him possessed by the devil to clean up what he considers to be the town’s filth and so he can profit from the deal. Although he tries to get Sarah to join him, she refuses and tries to fight him off, leading to a struggle where Sarah stabs Solomon, but he ends up cutting off her right hand. Sarah makes it outside to find Hannah, but Solomon grabs her and claims to the townspeople that she is a witch.
The townspeople prepare to hang both women, but Sarah decides to take the full blame in order to spare Hannah. She tells the townspeople that she is a witch and that she cursed Miller and his daughter. Before being hanged, Sarah vows to Solomon that she will haunt his family until their hold over the town is broken. She is hanged, and Hannah breaks down. Later, Hannah, Lizzie, Isaac, and Abigail give Sarah a proper burial, with Hannah leaving a moss crown on Sarah, which explains why moss now grows around that area.
Jump back to 1994 where Deena realizes the whole truth. Nick comes by and finds Josh, but Deena orders him to run and hide. Nick goes after them, and they manage to steal his car. Deena tells Josh that the Goode family is the reason that Shadyside is cursed, with them having used Sarah as a scapegoat while they established Sunnyvale and profit from the blood of Shadyside victims since every descendant after Solomon has picked random Shadyside citizens to use as murder puppets, with Nick being the latest to do so, allowing him to become sheriff and his brother Will to become mayor of Sunnyvale. Deena and Josh go pick up Ziggy and the still-possessed Sam before Josh recruits Martin (Darrell Britt-Gibson), whom they previously met at the police station (in the first movie) and knows that he has a bone to pick with Nick. The four then plan to kill Nick and break the curse for good. At the same time, the ghosts of previous Shadyside killers begin to rise from the flesh mass.
The four go to the mall where they wait for Nick and set things up with some of Ziggy’s blood. Moments later, two officers arrive but are killed by the Milkman and the Camp Nightwing Killer. Josh, Ziggy, and Martin manage to draw the killers away with the blood and get them to hack each other to bits while Deena goes underground and waits for Nick. The killers are later joined by Ruby Lane and Billy Barker while Sam breaks free from her bindings and chases Deena. Josh fights Ruby to give Deena some time, and she breaks his arm before Ziggy shoots Ruby in the head. Meanwhile, Sam attacks Deena but is held off long enough after Deena reaches into Sam’s subconscious. Nick finds both of them and tries to kill Deena before attempting to pin the blame on her for killing the others. Deena gets Nick close to the flesh mass and forces him to see every single victim of all the possessed killers. While the other killers close in on Josh, Ziggy, and Martin, Nick runs away and is haunted by Sarah’s ghost, giving Deena the opportunity to stab him through the eye and kill him. With that, the killers all vanish and Sam is broken from her possession, FINALLY ending the curse for good. The flesh mass disappears as Deena and Sam exit the cave and find themselves exiting a home in Sunnyvale. As they do so, they witness a random man from Sunnyvale get killed by a truck as he is leaving for work.
News about Nick being the real killer goes wide, with the Goode family trying pathetically to distance themselves from Nick. Sunnyvale is also likely to suffer now that they can no longer profit from the suffering of Shadyside. At school, Josh meets a girl that he has been talking to online and may potentially develop a friendship or something more with her. The school also continues to honor Kate, Simon, and Heather’s memories.
Deena later joins Sam for a picnic at Sarah’s grave, where Deena carves Sarah’s name and “the first Shadysider” onto the rock. The girls then continue their relationship.
During the credits, we go back to the mall and the underground cavern which is now a crime scene. Sitting on the rock where the mass used to be is the cursed book that Solomon stole from the Widow…and then a pair of hands grabs the book.
Part One: 1994:
The town of Shadyside has long been plagued by killers, all possessed by the spirit of a witch named Sarah Fier. Although hanged during her time, she cut off her hand, which allowed her to maintain her hold on the town and possess anybody that comes across her grave.
Teens Deena, her brother Josh, ex-girlfriend Sam, and friends Kate and Simon all have a run-in with killers possessed by Sarah, including the most recent killer, Skull Mask, a murderer from 1978 called the Camp Nightwing Killer, and a young woman from decades earlier named Ruby Lane. After failing to stop the spirits from attacking, the group realizes that the killers want Sam because she touched Sarah's grave. They learn about one survivor from Camp Nightwing, C. Berman, who died and was revived to prevent the spirits from killing her. They do the same with Sam, but Kate and Simon are murdered before Sam dies and is revived, sending the spirits away.
Although the killings seem to stop, C. Berman contacts Deena and tells her that even if they stopped the killers, they didn't stop Sarah. Sure enough, Sarah's ghost possesses Sam, and Deena must subdue her before telling Josh that she will find a way to save Sam.
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Part Two: 1978
C. Berman tells Deena and Josh the story of how she survived her ordeal with the Camp Nightwing killer. In 1978, sisters Ziggy and Cindy Berman attend the camp, the former as a camper, the latter a counselor. After a run-in with Nurse Mary Lane, mother of previous killer Ruby, Cindy's boyfriend Tommy becomes possessed by the ghost of Sarah Fier, turning him into the Camp Nightwing killer. Tommy murders several counselors and campers over the course of the night.
Cindy is trapped in the caverns of Sarah's old home with her friend Alice, while Ziggy and a young Nick Goode try to escape the terror. When the girls are free, Alice finds Sarah's skeletal hand, which, if reunited with her body, can break the curse. Although Cindy kills Tommy, his ghost comes back to life when Ziggy gets a nosebleed and drips on Sarah's hand. Alice is killed before the sisters rush to find Sarah's remains under the Hanging Tree where she died. The ghosts of Sarah's other victims, including Tommy, Ruby Lane, the Milkman, and Billy Barker, all go after the girls. Tommy kills Cindy while the Milkman stabs Ziggy. Nick manages to revive Ziggy with CPR, but he doesn't believe her claim about the curse being real so as to not compromise his future position as the town's sheriff.
Deena and Josh find Sarah's hand in the Shadyside Mall and go to reunite it with her body, but Deena then finds herself thrust into 1666 when the curse began, and she is now in the position of Sarah Fier.
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Part Three: 1666
Deena finds herself living through the final days of Sarah Fier and learns the truth about the curse - Sarah was a regular woman who was merely in love with Hannah Miller, daughter of Pastor Cyrus Miller. Hannah loved Sarah too, but after they were spotted, they were blamed for a plague that was haunting their town of Union, with the townspeople believing them to be witches after Miller is possessed and murders 12 children, including Sarah's brother Henry. When Hannah is set to be hanged, Sarah tries going to Widow Mary for a book on dark arts so she can make a deal with the devil to save Hannah, only to find the Widow murdered and her book stolen. The culprit was Solomon Goode (ancestor of Sheriff Nick and Mayor Will), who made a deal with the devil for profit and wealth by picking random citizens to get possessed and carry out atrocities. Sarah attempts to expose Solomon, but he catches her and gives her to the townspeople. In order to spare Hannah from the same fate, Sarah says she really was a witch that cursed Hannah and her father. She is hanged, but not before vowing to curse the Goode family until Solomon's secret is exposed.
Back in 1994, Deena now knows that Nick is the one currently responsible for the murders, with his ancestors having been profiting from the suffering of Shadyside so that Sunnyvale will thrive. They get Ziggy, Sam, and another friend named Martin to lure Nick to the mall where they will kill him and end the curse for good. After dealing with the previous killers, Deena lures Nick to the underground cavern where he and his family made the deals with the devil. Although Nick tries to kill Deena, she causes him to see visions of every single Shadyside victim, allowing Deena to stab Nick in the eye and kill him, breaking the curse and freeing Sam from her possession.
The Goode family is exposed for their evil, and Shadyside is free to live on in peace. Deena and Sam resume their relationship. However, the cursed book is taken by a mysterious figure.