'Fear Street Part 3: 1666' Trailer: Netflix's Horror Trilogy Comes To An End, In The Past

It's all been leading to this. This week, the Fear Street trilogy comes to a close with Fear Street Part 3: 1666. And whatever you've thought of the trilogy so far, you have to admit it's been an exciting event. So often now, streaming titles come and go. Whatever hype there is seems to fade after the initial release. But Fear Street's unique strategy of releasing a new film every week has kept the conversation going, and helped make Fear Street one of the buzziest bits of entertainment this summer. Fear Street Part 3: 1666 brings together all the threads (and surviving characters) from the previous two films while also going back in time to show us how all of this really began.

Just what the heck is going on in the cursed town of Shadyside? Why is neighboring Sunnyvale so prosperous? What does the alleged witch Sarah Fier want? Who will survive and what will be left of them? These questions may or may not be answered in Fear Street Part 3: 1666, the third and final entry in Netflix's wildly entertaining Fear Street trilogy. Inspired by the work of R.L. Stine, the series has served as a fun tribute to the horror genre as a whole, with the first film honoring the '90s slasher boom trigged by Scream and the second film paying homage to earlier slashers like Friday the 13th.

Now, here comes Fear Street Part 3: 1666, and as you can tell from the title, it's going back even further in time. In the ongoing '90s plotline, the curse of Sarah Fier is still a big problem for high schooler Deena (Kiana Madeira), especially since her girlfriend Sam (Olivia Scott Welch) is now possessed by the malevolent power that turns Shadysiders into crazed killers. Can Deena save Sam, and the town? Maybe – but first we're getting some backstory set in the early days of Shadyside. As you can see from this trailer, many of the previous cast members return here, playing different characters in the 1600s. And as you can probably guess by now, there's more to the Sarah Fier story than what meets the eye.

For this third entry, director Leigh Janiak drew on an unexpected source – a Terrence Malick movie. "As a filmmaker making Fear Street, but also just as a movie lover, I was so excited to pay homage to some of the great eras of horror movies," Janiak said. "For 1994, Scream stood above all rest – it's peak '90s horror and, I think, one of the most brilliant movies ever made, period. Then for 1978, I got to look at the heyday of slasher films — Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street. For 1666...I found the best inspiration for me lay in the beautiful world made rotten of Terence Malick's The New World."

Fear Street Part 3 features a cast that includes Kiana Madeira, Ashley Zukerman, Gillian Jacobs, Olivia Scott Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Darrell Britt-Gibson, Sadie Sink, Emily Rudd, Mccabe Slye, Julia Rehwald, Fred Hechinger, Jordana Spiro, Jordyn Dinatale, Elizabeth Scopel, and Randy Havens. Look for it on Netflix on July 16.