[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Fear Street 1978.]Yet again, the Fear Street trilogy delivers an unforgettable kill scene at the tail end of a movie. In Fear Street 1994 it was Kate (Julia Rehwald) going through the bread slicer and now in Fear Street 1978, it’s Cindy’s (Emily Rudd) downright brutal demise.
After spending a good deal of Fear Street 1978 apart - Cindy navigating the tunnels below Camp Nightwing and Ziggy (Sadie Sink) trying to evade the Nightwing Killer above ground - the sisters finally reunite at the mess hall. After a hugely effective heart-to-heart, Alice (Ryan Simpkins) resurfaces with what could be the key to lifting the Shadyside curse - Sarah Fier’s hand. Based on Nurse Lane’s (Jordana Spiro) notes, if they reunite the hand with Sarah’s body, that should do the trick! Alice is killed before they can give the plan a go, so the fate of Shadyside is left to Cindy and Ziggy.
They manage to make it to the hanging tree, but the problem is, Sarah’s body isn’t buried there after all. That leaves Cindy and Ziggy exposed to a number of Shadyside killers closing in around them. Cindy opts to sacrifice herself for her sister and falls victim to the Nightwing Killer, but Ziggy doesn’t make it out either. As she’s running off, she’s targeted by The Milkman and then, with the Berman sisters laying side by side, extreme stabby-ness ensues.
It’s an especially disturbing sequence due to the powerful personal arcs Cindy and Ziggy experience and how their relationship evolves, but if we’re being frank about it, it’s also an especially brutal way to kill and nearly kill your two main characters. With Fear Street 1978 now available on Netflix, I got the chance to chat with Sink and had to put the focus on that one wild sequence. Sink began by highlighting director Leigh Janiak's approach to setting the mood for such a scene:
“She’s great, and just the energy that she created on set and the way that she can talk to you and get you worked up and ready to go, it’s great. And then also those killers were just so terrifying so there’s not a lot that you have to do because it’s genuinely just so scary. And then we had amazing stunt coordinators that told you exactly the specifics of how you should react, just in terms of your movement and everything.”
As for the violence of it all, it was a lot for Sink to process when she first saw the final cut - and too much for her mother:
“My mom stopped watching at that point. She couldn’t take it. Could not take it. And I couldn’t either! I was just like, ‘Oh my god, it’s very disturbing to watch this.’ But yeah, in the moment I really had no idea what was happening because obviously my eyes were closed and there was blood everywhere so seeing how it actually looked was pretty cool.”
Sink also noted, “I had never worked with mouth blood before so that was an exciting first for me,” which called for an update to one of our favorite Collider Would You Rather questions. Rather than ask Sink if she’d rather fake sneeze or fake vomit in a scene, we went with fake sneeze, fake vomit or cough up blood. Here’s what she chose:
“Honestly, the coughing up blood wasn’t as hard as I thought it was gonna be. It was actually kind of fun! So I guess I would have to do the coughing up blood because I think I’ve got that down at this point.”
If you’re looking for more from Sink, be sure to catch our full Fear Street 1978 chat in the video interview at the top of this article! Sink also discusses the Fear Street/Stranger Things crew crossover and offers a brief tease of what to expect from Stranger Things Season 4.