Halloween time!

Time for my annual Halloween update for all my Shadysiders, and this year, we've got some exciting developments.

First of all, looks like the next Netflix Fear Street is in post-production! It's Fear Street Prom Queen, and I'm absolutely dead because I loved The Prom Queen sooooo much! I gave it 7 out of 7 crowns, and also recommended that it should have been a Super Chiller, so high praise indeed coming from me!

Looks like it will be out 2025. Cannot wait to watch and recap for you!

Other really exciting thing: AM Stine and I have teamed up again to dive even deeper into Shadyside Snark by creating the Shadyside Snark podcast. We are in pre-production at this time, but this blog has long been a labor of love for us, so we're going to be chatting together about all things Fear Street, 90's horror and my obsession with RL Stine. Stay tuned for more updates!

In the meantime: some of you know I have become an author of YA fantasy. I have two novels out this year with Brown Cat Press, and both ebooks are on sale at Amazon for the month. So if you're looking for a little bit of reading material with witches and vampires, then check them out:

The Well of Souls

Lola Monteux, a treasure-hunting vampire, is betrayed by her crew and sentenced to death. Desperate to evade her fate, she embarks on a daring escape to a haunted island cursed for her kind. Her solitary mission: to unearth the fabled Well of Souls treasure, rumoured to bestow invincibility upon demons like her and grant her the freedom she craves.

But as Lola succumbs to the enchantment of the island, a powerful magic weaves its spell around her. She is inexplicably drawn to Gael, a local boy, and his group of misfit friends. Undercover as a teenager, Lola discovers the joys and vulnerabilities of her long-lost humanity, and begins to lose sight of her original mission—to secure her survival at any cost.

Find it here: Amazon

The Sibyl and the Thief

Sabine Gillesella has betrayed her people by working as a spy for Duke Aurich, the most powerful man in Illyamor. But now she has been cursed with invisibility and her time is running out before she fades away completely. When she meets Anora, a blind orphan who swears she knows how to help her, Sabine must follow her through a haunted forest, or risk losing more than her life.

Bound by fate, Sabine and Anora uncover truths that challenge who they are, revealing a destiny greater than they ever believed. As the land crumbles around them, they must summon the courage to weave the fabric of the realm back together and restore balance to a world on the brink of collapse.

Find it here: Amazon

Then She Said Hush

And don't forget my Fear Street-inspired short story collection: Then She Said Hush (free on KU)

There is nothing so delightful, or primal, as gathering around a fire to tell tales. You huddle closer to the flames to feel the heat on your face while the darkness gathers at your back. With nothing but open emptiness behind you, the ancient dread of the unknown creeps down your spine. You force yourself not to glance over your shoulder into the inky black. Is there any moment quite so frightening as when somebody freezes and whispers: What was that?

Cordelia Kelly shares seven chilling stories of survival, darkness, and a hint of witchcraft in Then She Said Hush, including award-winning post-apocalyptic tale “Unfreeze.”

Enjoy. And bring a flashlight.

Until next time, we will be waiting to bring you all the goosebumps of Fear Street...Stay tuned for the Shadyside Snark podcast!

The Midnight Club, or "Come for the Horror, Stay for the Enlightenment"

I have never recapped a Pike book, though I used to read his books almost as religiously as Fear Streets in the ‘90s. Pike is a philosopher king compared to R. L. Stine. Fear Street is all slasher-gore horror but doesn’t come with tons of depth (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) Pike, however, seems to start off down on your typical horror road, then it spins out into something extravagantly weird, like “but we were actually ancient pagan gods and live in another dimension” kind of stuff. Pike’s books were pretty trippy.

But my attention was caught by the Netflix series based on his book The Midnight Club. It looks scary, and I thought it might be something fun to recap, seeing as I’ve been enjoying recapping R. L.’s shows. With that in mind, I’ve read The Midnight Club. It is … not at all what I expected. Although perhaps I should have, since it is classic Pike. And now I’m even more curious about The Midnight Club series. Does it follow the same path as the book? Does it take a creepy concept (dying kids make a pact to reach out to others after death) and take it in a whole different direction? Let me know if you’d like to see the recaps of the show here! Also if you're looking for more horror, check out my new blog post on The Scariest Monsters in Literature.

On to the recap: Ilonka is dying of cancer. She lives in Rotterdam Hospice, a very fancy mansion that has been repurposed for children receiving end-of-life care – no treatments, only pain management and whatever comfort they can find in a cool old place and each other. It used to be the home of an oil tycoon, set on the Pacific Coast in Washington State. 

Ilonka has a remarkably upbeat attitude to keep on living life right to the end. Her roommate, Anya, feels otherwise. She lives in excruciating pain from her bone cancer and likes drugs and not much else. Her leg has been amputated and she can barely move for the pain. She reads the Bible by day and tells scary stories at night. She also tells hard truths, like the fact that Ilonka is obviously in love with Kevin, another guest at the hospice, which is super awkward since he has a devoted girlfriend.

Ilonka is aware of all this. She hates Kevin’s girlfriend, thinks she’s insipid. She loooooves Kevin and believes her connection to him has to do with the ancient past. Whoof, it didn’t take long to get to the esoteric stuff Pike loves so much!

She takes like 6 T3s to forget about the girlfriend and push the pain away. These kids take a lot of drugs. 

Ilonka is awoken by Sandra to make the next meeting of the Midnight Club. It’s a group of five kids who meet in the library at midnight to tell each other stories. Ilonka is happy she didn’t sleep through it because she has a tale to tell.

Spence is the fifth member of the club, and is a bit of an energetic trickster. He tells a bloody, gory story, which is typical of him. Then Anya tells a disturbing story about doppelgangers and deals with the devil.

Ilonka starts her story, about a past life – 20,000 years ago in Egypt. Delius is the follower of a divine Master and had a good friend, Shradna. It’s a sad story, because Shradna’s daughter dies, then Delius and Shradna fight and fall out. Also, Ilonka believes that she is Delius, and Kevin is Shradna, though she leaves that last part out.

Kevin goes next. He tells a story of an angel who falls in love with a human and becomes mortal to be with her. Ooh, what could this mean?

The next day, Kevin’s girlfriend Kathy comes to see him. Ilonka takes her aside and tells her Kevin is going to die, that’s why he’s in a hospice and she’s only hurting him by talking about their after because they’re not going to get an after. Kathy leaves in tears and Ilonka feels terrible. It’s the worst thing she’s ever done because she only did it because she wants Kevin so bad.

Ilonka has been eating only fruits and vegetables and taking lots of vitamins, so she doesn’t listen to her own advice that she’s in a hospice and there’s only one way out of a place like that. She thinks she’s getting better and demands to be taken to get an MRI to prove it. 

Before the next Midnight Club, Anya shares a story for only Ilonka. It’s a real story. She was in love with her boyfriend and thought it was too good to be true. She fucked it up because her love freaked her out so much, and gets caught cheating with another man. She had made a sculpture of two lovers together for her boyfriend, who threw it to the ground when he finds them. The woman’s leg breaks off, right where Anya’s is amputated. She wonders if it means anything, as she got sick not long after that.

At the club, Spence is all kinds of mischievous and has wine for all of them. Ilonka takes only two small sips, thinking the wine tastes funny. Anya is in a remarkably good mood, maybe because of the wine and morphine mix. They talk about trying to reach out to each other when they’re gone, to show them there is an afterlife. Only this is not scary at all, but peaceful and sweet, a way to comfort each other. 

Spence has another bloody gory story that is short and entertaining. Ilonka goes next, and it’s another of her past lives, this time in India. She went against her caste to marry and has a child who will/did become a divine prophet called the Master, so that guy’s always mixed up with her lives. Pike always does spiritual stuff like that.

At this point, I am so curious what the show is actually like because we are ¾ of the way through the book and the only plot so far basically is: dying teens tell rambling stories.

Ilonka falls asleep hard that night and has more and more past-life dreams. In these, it appears she’s being led by Jesus, who speaks of God’s love, but she refers to him as Master. She begs him to bring back her dead husband, and she basically tells her she’s not very enlightened.

When she wakes Anya is dead. She wonders whether something happened to her (besides, you know, the bone cancer that was actively killing her). The doctors assure her of course her body had reached its end naturally and there would be no autopsy. 

Then a powerful rumour spreads through Rotterdam: one of the guests there has been misdiagnosed. One of them is not condemned.

Ilonka is sure it’s her because she had her MRI the other day. She’s happy and goes for a  walk with Kevin. He knows he was in her past lives, and he tells her the story about the angel was about them, too.

But then Ilonka sees Sandra packing her stuff.  Nobody packs their stuff here, that’s done for them after they’re gone. So Ilonka realizes it’s not her that gets to leave through the front doors. Her new diagnosis is much worse – she has maybe a couple of weeks.

Kevin finishes his story of the angel for her and it’s about love and acceptance and death. She tells him she loves him, he feels the same way, and they sleep together (though neither has the energy for actual sex, they’re together emotionally). She dreams of other past lives – one where she is a king, tempted by a woman who knows the secret of powerful addictive sex act called The Rapture.

Then in the next life she’s a poor, sick, bald milkmaid in Scandinavia, unloved and unlucky. She learns a different addictive sex act, called The Seedling, which forces others to be with her and she becomes promiscuous. A wizard gives her the power and now he wants her to use it to seduce and kill a count. She prays to be released from this and she is found by the young man she loved her whole life. He loves her too. They run away together but the wizard finds her and stabs her in the guts. Before she dies, the boy says he’ll find her again. She says she has many sins to pay for, but he says he’ll take them on as well so he might be with her.

Ilonka wakes up, her stomach burning with the same pain as from the other life and realizes this is the price she paid for wicked deeds before. But she wakes up in Kevin’s arms, so that’s okay. They kiss and tell each other they love each other, and he dies in her arms.

After that, it’s just her and Spence left. He admits to drugging Ilonka the night with the wine and then smothering Anya at her request. She asked him to do it because he believes he already killed someone, so his karma could take it. Spence is dying of AIDS, and he never told his partner he had it, though he hadn’t known he was infected when they first got together.

Ilonka tells him he’s forgiven, but if he would like, she’ll stay with him for the next life and share in whatever payment that comes with his sins, as Kevin did for her. 

She goes into the stars after that.

Wow. I mean, it’s a sweet story. There is nothing scary here. Even the kids who are dying are given the comfort of future lives to look forward to. It’s not Fear Street, that’s for sure. Essentially, it’s a story of divine love. I'm not sure how to rate this, but I'll go for 7 raptures out of 11.

Fear Street 1666, or "To Carrie is a Verb, Right?"

Time for the third installment of the Fear Street trilogy, and I am so excited to see how this creepy story wraps up! So far, things seem dire. Just when Deena and Josh think they can end the Shadyside curse, Deena is pulled into Sarah Fier's life more than three centuries ago!

Deena is Sarah, but when you see reflections of the character, it's a different, although similar woman, so Deena is experiencing what happened to Sarah. Amazing, I love this concept! She's living on a homestead, in the small settlement of Union, birthing pigs and being sassy. This is not a hounded witch, but a member of the community. She tells her father she won't marry Solomon Goode (!), despite the fact that his wife is dead and he is possibly interested. Another potentially evil Goode?

Oh my goodness, Kate and Simon are here! While they have different names and speak in English-y accents, they clearly remain Deena's naughty friends. All the characters in Union are played by characters from the first two movies, and I love this continuity. Constance and Abigail are Cindy and Ziggy from Camp Nightwing. And then Hannah Miller shows up and ... it's Sam! Sarah Fier and Hannah Miller are clearly as in love with each other in this time as they are in the '90s. I'm swooning, this is all very romantic.

Hannah is the pastor's daughter. Thomas (who played Tommy/Burlap Head in other films) is a creepy religious guy portending doom. Sarah is bringing a piglet to Solomon Goode, who is played by Sheriff Goode. They're friends, and Solomon seems kind.

Lizzie (Kate) is bringing Hannah and Sarah into the woods to visit the widow who lives outside the settlement, and apparently practices witchcraft (even though Soloman warned Sarah not to be out that night). The widow essentially knows Indigenous medicines and handles abortions for women, so obvs she's "evil." When the full moon rises before the sun sets, she's open for business, which does seem to be a bit of a sketchy time, although I think I want to put that on my business card.

When they arrive at her hovel, the widow isn't there but Sarah finds her grimoire. She reads a spell about Satan before the widow arrives and knocks the book away (hi, Nurse Lane!) Sarah shouldn't be messing with things she doesn't know about. Lizzie manages to find the "berries" she had come for (which is a cute nod to the fruit codes she put on her drug business in the first movie). The girls go to a clearing where the young people gather and eat crazy berries and it's a pilgrim party.

A grabby guy tries to feel up Hannah (her vanilla boyfriend!), and Sarah defends her. They run into the woods and have a hot and sweet makeout session. But somebody sees them! Hannah says they'll be hung for what they did, but Sarah says let them because she was never alive before now. Swoon!

Next day, everything is wrong. The pastor is behaving weird, and Sarah's father denounces her as an abomination. All of the food spoils suddenly and the happy Mama pig eats all of her babies. Sarah kills her with an axe. Something is stuck in the well, and it turns out to be the corpse of Sarah's dog.

Thomas has told everyone about Sarah and Hannah and says the devil has come. Wow, the whole town atmosphere changed from contented to messed up overnight. Solomon comes to find Sarah, and she confesses she's not sure it isn't her - because she loves Hannah! Solomon is sweet and comforting, telling her she can't be evil without inviting it in.

Screaming. Pastor Miller has locked all the children in the church and mothers are desperate to get to them. Sullivan breaks down the door. All the children are motionless in the pews. Oh god, and there's ... entrails on the floor? Oh no, it's eyesballs. All of their eyeballs.

The town goes into riot mode. Isaac (Simon) tries to tell them all they just drank apple jack and danced like fun-loving teens, but Hannah's ogre would-be boyfriend accuses Hannah and Sarah of laying with the devil. The town runs after the two girls who had been listening at the window. Only Hannah is caught by a mob, while the womenfolk look on terrified and baffled as the men go effing nuts.

Sarah comes to rescue Hannah, but Hannah tells her to run, there's no saving her. They've already decided she's guilty. Sarah decides she'd actually rather make a deal with the devil. I love this! If they want a witch, I'll give them a witch. But when she gets to the widow, she finds her murdered and someone has stolen the grimoire. Sarah thinks someone else has already made a deal with the devil, and Solomon believes her.

The men search Solomon's house while Sarah is there, so she hides in his cellar. Only it leads to the caves with the witch's mark! And the grimoire! It's all Goode! I knew he was evil! (Seriously, I was so excited at this point). Solomon was the one who saw Sarah with Hannah in the forest all along.

The disgusting pulsing thing emerges. Solomon has already sacrificed Pastor Miller, giving his name to be possessed by the devil. One person every few years for the price of power - that's how the Shadyside curse works. Solomon wants Sarah and tries to bring her to the dark side, but she stabs him. Reasonable.

She flees through the twisting caves, where she comes to the ... outhouse exit? I don't know how else to describe it. She tries to climb out but Goode gets to her. He tells her he loves her while attacking her, then cuts off her hand. She manages to crawl away and finds her way to the meeting house. Solomon is right behind her, claiming he found the witch.

There is a very disturbing torch-wielding mob. I feel like you're probably never on the right side of history if you are wielding a torch in your hand. Like, just don't. The girls are shackled, while their friends look on, horrified. 

After a lingering look, Sarah confesses to witchcraft to save Hannah, saying she used witchery on her as well. As Solomon wraps her in chains, she says the truth will come out, and she will shadow him forever.

She is hung. Her friends dig up her body and move it to the forest, giving her a proper burial. Sarah Fier was good and she was loved. The truth is her curse to Goode - she would follow him forever until everyone knows. This was a devastating scene, and my god this movie is tragically romantic. Also, feminist, thank god. I have such issues with the "evil witch" trope, which was my one hold-back from loving the first two movies, that all the horror comes from an evil woman. Now that I know it comes from a long line of evil men, well. That makes more sense.

Part Two (haha, this is in like, every Fear Street book)

Back to 1994, Deena comes back to herself with all these memories. And, oh shit, Sheriff Goode just pulled up. He pulls a gun on them. Can I just say I called it FROM THE START. Sheriff Motherfucking Evil. The teens do what anyone would do in this situation, and steal his car.

So to recap within my recap, the Goodes of Sunnyvale trade Shadysiders to the devil. That person is possessed by the devil who kills and feeds off of that murder - and the Goodes get whatever they want. And this also means that - Nick Goode was the one who named Tommy Slater. The Sheriff was the cause of the Nightwing Massacre. When they tell Ziggy, she's horrified. Nick Goode might actually love her, but he is hella fucked up.

Now, all of the killers are going to be after the small group of people trying to stop them: Deena, Josh, Ziggy, and a zombie-esque Sam who is still growling in chains. They need to kill Nick Goode. And they're going to need help.

Then the best line of the entire trilogy comes up when they pull up in the yard of Martin, the guy they helped escape from jail in the first movie.

Josh: Want to help us kill Sheriff Goode?

Martin: Let me get my coat.

Ha.

I'm going to reiterate that it's messed up they kept the hanging tree as the centrepiece of the Shadyside Mall, but what else are you going to get in Fear Street? Deena gives an inspiring speech that they're doing this for all their loved ones, and prepare the Mall to some wicked Offspring beats. The plan: they will use Deena's blood as a lure to get each of the killers into a different mall store, then release the gate and lock them in.

Only they are stopped by the mall cops! This isn't going to go well, as the demonic killers begin to arrive. The psycho mailman stabber gets there first. I'm surprised Ziggy doesn't have a PTSD breakdown from seeing the thing that knifed her to death before, I think she's awfully resilient. The killers walk right by Josh and Ziggy and Martin, following Deena's blood tracks. Ooh, Ruby Lane hasn't shown up yet, she's the creepiest. She needs her own show.

The plan is working, some of the killers are locked away, but then they go still. Ziggy says it's him.

She faces Sheriff Goode down at the hanging tree and Carrie's him, dousing him in Deena's blood. Then they release all the killers, sending them after the man who raised them. But Nick grabs Ziggy as a shield, so maybe he doesn't love her all that much, god, so Deena slices her hand to distract them. She runs to a back part of the mall and finds a grate that leads to the cave system. Goode has been stabbed but follows her down.

Upstairs, the remaining team covers the killers in Deena's blood and they go after each other. Only Sam gets free and goes downstairs too. The malformed child and Ruby just showed up, and they are out for blood. Only Josh is ready to fight them.

Deena finds the pulsating evil, only to be tackled by Sam. Before she hurts Deena, though, Sam stops, as though remembering her, and Deena knocks her out. Nick is there and stabs Deena, but before he can kill her, she forces his hand on the pulsating evil.

Sarah Fier comes back, making him see all his victims from the start to the end. Then she possesses Deena's body and stabs him in the eye.

The killers explode and the pulsing evil is finally gone! Sam is back and they kiss. More happy news: Deena wasn't stabbed! She had made a stab-proof vest out of Fear Street novels and duct tape. My god, I love this movie!

The carved names on the wall disappear, as does the witch's mark. Sam and Deena leave the cave together, to a weird house mounted with goat heads everywhere. Yup, that would be the Goode house.

Bad things start to happen to Sunnyvalers. The Sheriff is named the Shadyside Killer, and Shadyside starts to feel hope again. Ziggy goes to find Nurse Lane, and they reconcile. Josh meets a cute nerdy girl. And Deena and Sam go to Sarah's resting place, where the carve: Sarah Fier, the first Shadysider. And they kiss! It all ends happily ever after. I love this so much. Nothing will destroy my happiness that ... oops, somebody left that pesky grimoire lying about. And in the credits, somebody reaches out and snatches it!

Guys, how much did you love the Fear Street trilogy! I got over my fear of horror movies to see this through, and I was not disappointed. 18 out of 18 tragic love stories that finally get their sort of happy ending!

Fear Street: 1978 or "Outhouses Are Not Good Places for Sexy Times"

The second movie of the Netflix Fear Street trilogy basically picks up where the first one left off. You need to watch these in order - it's all connected!

The camera pans through a super dated home as the radio plays the news of Shadyside's latest terror - the Mall Massacre, so we know we're in 1994. We meet a new character, who has some real issues re: locks and clocks. This woman lives in anxiety. She nearly vomits in fear when she's woken by desperate banging.

It's Deena and Josh, trying to break into her house. Mystery woman nearly knifes her, before Deena pleads for her to listen ... they called her! She was the survivor from the Camp Nightwing Massacre of 1978. They beg her to help them - they have a possessed Sam tied up in their truck, and mystery woman nearly faints, but eventually gives in to tell them her story. So they sit as she reminisces back to the old days ... at Camp Nightwing.

As one would expect from a camp set between Sunnyvale and Shadyside, things are fucked up. A girl flees through the woods, before being caught by a group of vicious teens. They string her up to the hanging tree, where Sarah Fier once dangled, and burn her arm.

Some councillors run in to intervene. Strung-up girl is Ziggy, a Shadysider camper with a chip on her shoulder and a laundry list of strikes against her. She is nearly expelled from camp, but one of the councillors speaks up for her - it's Nick Goode, potentially evil future sheriff of Shadyside. He expects gratitude from her, she tells him to go fuck himself. I like Ziggy.

Her older sister Cindy is an uptight councillor with control issues, desperately trying to get the outhouses clean. She has a Shadysider boyfriend Tommy who tries to get sexy with her. No. Outhouses are not good places for sexy times.

She goes to find the other Shadyside councillors, and walks in on them graphically banging while smoking joints. Cindy nearly has an aneurism as Alice, the girl, taunts her. Clearly they have history.

Ziggy goes to the camp nurse to get treatment for her burn. The infirmary is empty and Ziggy finds a journal with all kinds of information about Sarah Fier and the Shadyside curse, including stuff about the most recent Shadyside serial killer, Ruby Land. And Nurse Lane comes in, and we realize she was Ruby's mother. And has researched the curse non-stop since it took her daughter. And is pretty intense about it.

Ziggy and Cindy have a massive fight - these sisters could not be more opposite, and Ziggy is so bitter it's epic. She accuses Cindy of trying to get out of Shadyside by being perfect, but joke's on her because no one gets out of Shadyside.

An aside, but I love these clothes so much. '70s camp clothes = style goals. Also, where do I get the playlist?

Cindy and Tommy are still cleaning when Nurse Lane comes into the mess hall with a big ass knife. She apologizes to Tommy, saying she can't save him, but she might be able to save others, since his name is on the wall. One way or another, he's going to die that night. He fights her off, but everyone is freaking out.

Cindy obsesses over the reason Nurse Lane snapped, so that evening while the campers are playing colour wars (Sunnyvale vs. Shadyside, of course), Cindy and Tommy break into the infirmary to go through Nurse Lane's stuff for answers. Alice and her boyfriend Arnie also break in, to steal drugs. They read Nurse Lane's creepy journal about Sarah Fier. She emerged from the meeting room missing one hand. Though she was hung and buried, without her hand her grip on the land will remain forever. When she is near, blood will fall, and the curse will last until body and hand are reunited. Lane also has a map of the camp, which is right over the old Shadyside settlement from 1666. It shows where Sarah Fier's house was, so they decide to explore. In the dark they stumble over graves. They realize Nurse Lane has been digging holes, trying to uncover Sarah Fier's hand!

Nick Goode tries to befriend Ziggy, helping her come up with a plan to bring down one of her tormentors. She starts to soften towards him. Not evil sheriff?

Councillors go into the ruins of Sarah Fier's home, and the witch's lair is amazingly terrifying. Tommy looks unwell. They see a light from beyond her fireplace; when they crawl through, they find a flame lit within carved markings on the ground - the witch's mark! Someone's been there recently. Names are carved into the wall, centuries' worth of Shadyside serial killers. Underneath Ruby Lane, a new one has been added: Thomas Slater. Tommy!

Oh my god, he has an axe. I just remembered about the man with the giant axe in the last movie. Oh god, he just axed Arnie in the head, that's not pretty. Alice and Cindy flee deeper into the caverns, Tommy right behind them. But a cave-in stops him from getting them. Now the girls are stuck in the cave, and he's free to murder campers. Tommy goes straight for the sweet nerd camper. No, don't kill him! This is very upsetting.

Meanwhile, Ziggy and Nick are having shenanigans. They lure Ziggy's tormentor into the outhouse on the promise of sexy times (again, outhouses aren't sexy. Am I wrong about this?), then cover her in spiders and cockroaches and lock her in. They flee to the camp's - I want to say vivarium? Reptile house? - giggling, and proceed to have a very cute kiss.

Down in the caverns, Cindy and Alice are not getting along. Cindy still refuses to believe in the witch's curse, while both me and Alice think she's delusional. Cindy storms away but marches around in a circle - they are super stuck down there. Until Cindy realizes the caverns are shaped like the witch's mark and they can follow it like a map.

At the centre they find - oh god, I don't know, a pulsating, fly-covered organ? Dear god, don't touch it! But Alice does, and hallucinates victims of the Shadyside killers, and she's surrounded by pilgrims missing their eyes. She freaks out and horrifically breaks her ankle, gross.

Murdered camper has been found. All councillors still alive are trying to track down the campers still playing colour wars, while Nick is being all manly and protective with Ziggy. Then she remembers she'd locked a girl in the outhouses and runs to get her.

Cindy finally gets tough and splints Alice's horrific break with a comb, confessing she had narc'ed on Alice back in middle school because she wanted to get out of town. The friends reunite, ready to take on the gd witch.

Then there is just so much graphic axe murdering. I found this upsetting: stop killing kids, goddammit! I'm not a horror film aficionado, but there's a reason why this is so disturbing. Fear Street 1978 broke a very basic rule of horror movies: thou shall not harm innocents. Jason, who Tommy is fashioned after, never hurt a child. But Tommy does! It's stomach-turning. Also, I didn't realize this until later, but only Shadysiders are murdered ...

Ziggy lets her tormentor out, then hears her sister underneath her. Alice and Cindy are under the outhouses. They try to climb up, and I know this isn't important to the story, but this is really gross. And then Tommy comes in and decapitated one of the councillors and the body falls into the cavern.

Nick and Ziggy hide from Tommy in the reptile house. Nick is stabbed saving Ziggy.

Alice and Cindy find a clue that Sarah's hand laid to rest on the stone right in front of them, and then emerged from the meeting hall - which is now the mess hall. Cindy follows the map to find the mess hall.

Tommy follows Ziggy into the mess hall, and that's where they all meet. Ziggy tries to trap Tommy in the pantry and stabs him, but he's too strong. As he strangles her, she wraps a burlap sack around his head - and now he's Burlap Head! Cindy jumps in, stabbing her boyfriend repeatedly until he is dead.

Alice emerges from hole, bearing the hand of Sarah Fier! All they have to do is put the hand with the body, and this nightmare will be over. Sarah was buried under the hanging tree, so they have all the pieces right there!

But then Ziggy gets a nosebleed all over the bones of the hand, triggering the curse. Shit, Burlap Head is going to come back, isn't he?

Now, wtf is the pulsing grossness? Oh, that's where the former serial killers are regenerated, and I think I'm going to puke.

Alice is so ready to end all of this, until Tommy revives and murders her. Sad, Alice was awesome.

Ziggy and Cindy run to the hanging tree and start digging like mad, as the serial killers surround them. I don't know who's the most disturbing. Ruby Lane is terrifying, the deformed child in a mask with a bat is also. The grinning deranged milkman is not my favourite. They find Sarah's grave, but her body isn't there. They look at each other, realizing it's over.

Tommy gets to Cindy and starts hacking into her, as the deranged milkman stabs Ziggy. I found this scene so disturbing. The sisters are looking at each other as these men violate and destroy their bodies, and it is so visceral. They die under the hanging tree, and the killers disappear.

But then Nick somehow survives and resuscitates Ziggy. She's taken away in a stretcher, and nobody believes her, maybe not even Nick. Although he clearly stayed close to protect her? And now here she is, 16 years later, crazy lady living behind a wall of locks and alarms.

Deena and Josh realize they have all the items they need, if they can get Sarah Fier's hand. It was left buried under the hanging tree, which is now ... the centre of Shadyside Mall's food course. Of course it is, all roads lead back here. They unearth the skeletal hand.

Deena gets to the woods where Sarah's body is, and reunites hand with body. Her nose starts bleeding, something that happens when the witch is near.

Then ... Deena is pulled into the past, and she's in Sarah Fier's body!

I am SO excited to watch the next movie, which will presumably give us all the details on how Sarah Fier went evil! Stay tuned ...

Fear Street Part One: 1994 or "No One Was Ready for the Meat Grinder"

Okay so, unlike L.K., I didn't take any notes. I have a newborn and didn’t think I could completely devote myself to a Fear Street movie series like I could have before.  But I wrote this down the next day before I forgot.  Just like old times - writing a recap completely based on my terrible memory! It's actually pretty long, but mostly just ramblings.

First thing to know: I don’t like horror movies. I’m okay with slasher flicks (love a classic 90s Scream movie) but I haaaate paranormal/ghost movies. So after the first scene, which is very Scream-y, I said out loud “Oh good, it’s a slasher movie!”  Readers, I could not have been more wrong. What followed was the most bat-shit crazy movie full of horrifying paranormal stuff, with a huge amount of gore thrown in. It was truly an on-point homage to Fear Street: Insane and grotesque. I both loved and hated it. Let’s get to my vague memories!

• Starts with a massacre in a 90s mall (did they use the same mall as Stranger Things? Google says no, but The Watchmen and Zombieland 2 were recently filmed there!). The killer wears a skull mask and stalks the few people left in the mall after closing. Brutal, gory killings which ends with the teen murderee, ripping off the killer's mask to reveal her friend, who is immediately shot in the head by a security guard or maybe a cop, I forgot. Could have used him earlier, either way.

• Cut to: intros of our main characters, Deena, and Josh, siblings with absentee parents. Deena is mega upset about a recent breakup with Sam, and Josh is a computer geek. Got it

• So the girl that was murdered at the mall last night (Heather) went to Deena’s school. Deena arrives at school and is greeted by the most CALLOUS high school students of all time. While there is a little locker shrine, these kids are TERRIBLE. There are a lot of jokes about murder and the curse of Sarah Fier, a witch from the 17th century. Which actually tracks really well from the Fear Street books. Those kids were always so strange about the murders happening in their town. 

• We meet the other main characters, Kate and Simon, who are delightfully weird and sell drugs to other kids in the hopes of leaving town after graduation (if you have read enough Fear Street, I think you know that’s a big ol’ red flag)

• They go to a football game in another town and Deena confronts Sam - who is a GIRL!? I do not believe an LGBQT character appeared in any of the original Fear Street books so this was a pleasant departure from canon! In any case, they get into an argument. On the bus ride back to their town, Sam and her ultra-jock boyfriend follow the Shadyside bus and throw stuff at it - sure.  Deena and her friend open the emergency exit and are holding a giant cooler of ice out the door… then Deena gets a nosebleed. This distracts her, and she throws the cooler on the windshield of the car, which then crashes. She’s horrified but like… what was her plan? Weren’t they going to throw it anyways?

• Anyways, Sam gets out of the car all woozy with a *nosebleed*. She wipes her blood on the ground and gets these crazy flashes of red, and scenes of a witch. Very spooky! Deena comes to check on her and the police come, yada yada yada.

• We decided that the police chief looks like an older BJ Novak, and is very useless, just like in the books! Love the continuity. 

• The next day, Deena and Josh are home alone (sidenote: there are almost no parents in this movie, which was also very on-point for Fear Street. Let these teens run wild!). They see the skull guy from the massacre outside, but assume it’s Sam’s new boyfriend trying to scare them because he’s a dick.They decide to go to the hospital to confront Sam about her shitty boyfriend (his name doesn’t matter).

• Sam is pissed to see Deena there and tells her that her shitty boyfriend has been there all night. Shitty BF arrives just then, and is almost immediately stabbed from behind! He dies, and the girls take off with the skull killer chasing after them. They see he’s murdered a bunch of people, and in a fight, Deena rips off his mask to see… it’s the same mass murdered from the night before! But now he’s dead with a bullethole in his forehead. So that’s weird.

• My recollection gets fuzzy here. Deena and Sam go to the police station and Kate, Simon and Josh steal an ambulance at some point. Incompetent sheriff/police chief doesn’t believe the girls (and somehow they haven’t heard about the second massacre at the hospital?! There were so many people who should have/could have called it in. He killed like two nurses. What about literally any other doctors/nurses/patients? None of them called 911??).  Anyways, the girls leave, and Deena steals one of the cops’ guns.

• Which was good because Simon wandered off from the ambulance (WHY?) and is attacked by a creepy teen girl singing a real creepy old-timey song. Deena shoots her in the back/head, but she just regenerates, and they realize they are in deep shit. 

• Josh is obsessed with all the mass murders of Shadyside (who wouldn’t be?), and realizes that was the zombie of a mass murder from ‘63. He tells them all about the other mass murders in a truly horrifying cut scene (“Deformed child bashes heads in” I think was one of the newspaper headlines). Josh puts it together: Sarah Fier possesses people every so often to commit mass murder. Sam bled on Sarah Fier’s grave the night before with her nosebleed of doom, and this disturbed her. They decide to go back to her grave to… I'm not sure what.  

• Anyways, when they get there, they discover her bones essentially lying underneath a small layer of fluff and attempt to rebury her and whisper “sorry”, haha. This shockingly doesn’t work and a NEW mass murderer, the Killer from Camp Nightwing (hello movie part 2!) charges out of the forest to kill them. Except he runs past Josh, and goes straight for Sam. 

• Side note: I enjoyed how each of the killers had their own creepy stalk. Skull Killer has the quick walk of 90s slasher killers, 60s girl does that broken-down doll walk, and Camp Killer just fucking all out runs (which is the scariest, obviously).

• They put it together that the killers are just hunting for Sam and her blood. They decide to set a trap which was admittedly pretty cool! For unknown reasons, they go to the school, where they smear Sam’s blood on the floor in trails to the bathroom. 

• Before the killers find them, all of them need to clean Sam’s blood off themselves so they won’t be tracked too. This leads to a steamy sex scene between Sam and Deena, a weird kiss between Kate and Josh, and Simon pleasuring himself in a bathroom. Gotta respect Simon’s stamina. 

• Once all three killers conveniently wait until the teens are done getting off and arrive, they follow the blood into a bathroom. Once in, the other kids light the bathroom on fire. It works! The three killers explode into goo. Which is weird? Doesn’t seem like how fire normally works. 

• But it doesn’t actually work, and the three regenerate from goo. Kate and Simon decide that they’ve tried enough stuff and want to throw Sam out to the killers. Deena is obviously upset but Sam agrees. But then! They discover that there was a survivor from the Camp Nightwing. The only way for Sam to survive is for her to die...and be brought back. Since she’s already given up on surviving, she’s into it. 

• They go to Simon’s workplace, a supermarket, and Simon and Kate put their drug dealing knowledge to good use! They give her a bunch of pills and the order to take them in, and set off to distract the killers while Deena helps Sam die then hopefully revives her with some epi-pens.  It’s...a plan.

• Josh, Kate and Simon are chased around the store by the different killers. Kate is caught first by the Skull Killer who stabs her and then SHOVES HER HEAD THROUGH A MEAT GRINDER. Holy shit was I not prepared for that. I know that Fear Street murders are pretty gruesome (hand in garburator, face being ripped off, etc.) but we just read those! Very different to WATCH the horrificness. Ugh. Also, we all knew poor Kate was going to die. She was too callous about death, and also had “big plans”. Never dream big in a horror film, guys. 

• Then Simon suddenly is axed in the head by Camp Killer. It was also gruesome and horrifying! I did expect him to die too, but not quite so back-to-back with Kate. 

• Deena and Sam are disturbed by one of the killers and Sam doesn’t take all her death pills. (note: she’s attempting to swallow like 30 pills at a time DRY. Couldn’t stop thinking about that. There must be bottled water everywhere there).  Deena has a better plan, and shoves her lover’s head into a lobster tank until she drowns. Jesus.

• It happened at a good time though, because Josh was about to be taken out by the Skull Killer and Camp Killer was running down the girls as well. The killers just disappear.

• Josh and Deena thankfully revive Sam, and the incompetent police come. They blame Kate and Simon’s murders on their drug dealing ways, saying that tweakers killed them. Harsh.

• Also, I forget when this happened, but incompetent police chief goes to someone’s broken down house and slips a note in their door: “It’s Happening Again”. So he’s this incompetent WITH background knowledge? Dude. 

• Sam and Deena are all loved up the next day when Deena gets a call from the woman that survived the Camp Nightwing massacre. She basically says it will never end and Sam will always be hunted by Sarah Fier. Deena looks up to see that Sam is in front of her… and has brutally stabbed her with a broken drumstick! The girls fight and Deena wrassles her up in the telephone cord. Deena gets Josh to come help and they both look down on an obviously possessed Sam writhing to get free and kill them. Deena promises her that she’ll “get her back” and the movie ends. 

• What! 

• Since the other two movies go back in time, I’m assuming we get no more resolution than that. 

• But, again, pretty on-point for Fear Street. R.L. LOVED a good ending jump-scare with zero resolution and a million questions to be answered. 

I don’t think I have too many questions but there were some things I loved. 

• Loved Simon - excellent random boy character and I would watch a full movie just about him, although he had way too much chest hair for a teen boy (he’s 21 in real life, so I guess just a hairy guy).

• Loved that the teens didn’t look too old - they looked pretty high-schooly.

• Loved Deena’s nose - so perfect! 

• Loved that the opening scene was in a bookstore, and they had all the Fear Street books on display, written by a “Robert Lawrence”. So 90s! 

• So these movies were actually supposed to be released in theatres, one at a time, with a month between them. That would have been super cool, although I’m glad I didn’t have to go to a theatre and watch this - a bit embarrassing to be a grown woman peeking through my fingers in public. 

• Legit don’t know if I will be able to watch the other two. I definitely stayed up an extra hour or so, just reading happy things, and waiting for my husband to be ready for bed so I didn’t have to go to sleep alone. Will L.K. be on her own for the rest? Probably not. But we’ll have to see if I have any nightmares!

Final Score: 21 dry pills swallowed out of 30