Maybe I shouldn’t have started.  This was, however, a recommendation from a friend, so I watched Fear Street 1994.  I say maybe I shouldn’t have watched it because I then learned that it’s a trilogy and I’m not sure that I want to watch the other two parts.  Not because the movie was poor, but because of time.  That, and I’m not a slasher fan.  At the same time, this movie does address the issue of class disparity.  The story begins in 1666 (the satanic number is intentional, of course) when a minister became a mass murderer.  This was because he was possessed by a witch and that witch comes back every few years in a new possessed person who kills several people.  In 1994 she possesses a mall worker who kills his friend and several others before being shot dead by the local police.  Class enters into it because the bad stuff takes place in Shadyside, a town right next to Sunnyvale, which is affluent and crime free.  Shadyside is where the poor live, work, and go to school.

A set of five friends band together to try to figure out what’s happening after the dead murderer starts pursuing them.  It turns out that two of the past murders, also undead, have converged on Shadyside to kill a girl who disturbed the witch’s grave, accidentally.  It’s also a love story but it leaves the situation unresolved because, well, part 2.  The problem with this kind of movie is that you don’t know if the unanswered questions you have will be addressed in the other two parts or not without watching them.  Since I’m not really fond of slashers and I’ve got other things to see and do, I’m not sure that I’ll get the answers.  And I don’t want to cheat by reading up on it.

Was Fear Street worth watching?  I’d say yes.  Despite the gaps, perhaps holes, it was nevertheless not a bad film.  It is very full of action and twists.  Some of the tropes are well-trod territory—adults never listen to teens, the killer can’t be stopped, an ancient crime keeps recurring—but there is enough new here to keep a viewer interested, at least through the first installment.  It is a little distressing to see the nineties being referred to as “retro,” but then again, 1994 was over thirty years ago.  And something about watching young people so alive (until they end up dead) does have a way of providing a bit of a thrill to even a guy my age.  But I’m not sure I should’ve started something I may not finish.