Fear Street- The movie trilogy dear to my heart

     I remember the summer of 2021. It was not a good year for me, like for many people during that time. After losing someone very dear to me during the winter, I wanted the world around me to be as dark as how I felt. Interestingly enough by the time summer came along, it was one of the most rainiest summers we have ever gotten in a long time. People were complaining, but it was soothing to me. Then out of the blue on July 02, 2021, Netflix released the first installment to this new trilogy called, Fear Street, with part one titled, 1994. 

    Growing up I wasn’t a fan of horror movies, at least not the popular ones which were all the slasher films you could think of. The Saw film were a big deal when I was a kid and I hate anything too gory because I feel that most movies like that are oddly obsessed with torturing its characters. At the time I thought all horror movies was stories with no real plot and no hope for the characters. It all seemed too depressing for me. The only films I did watch was anything family friendly like Tim Burton’s films or stuff like Halloween Town. Although there was a time that I was somehow obsessed with Chucky the killer doll. Sometimes my mind makes no sense. 

    Yet by the time I got to my late teens I finally realized there was more to horror films then meets the eye. It is actually a very diverse genre that can include other sub genres. Not all of them are senseless murder sprees. Horror films, even the slasher ones, reflect society’s fear at the time. It is fear of the other, stranger danger, our insecurities, taboo subjects we don’t dare say out loud, etc. These films are one of many ways to help us express such fears and learn our to process them and cope. 

    When Fear Street came out, it helped me cope with my grief and relationship with the world around me as someone in the United States. Some people criticized it for not being scary enough, but I don’t think their intention was to scare us off silly. Let’s be honest, at this point in history and with all the other horror films that have come before it, we are desensitized to a lot of things that come up nowadays. What Fear Street was doing is paying homage to beloved classics, like Scream and Halloween. They were also showing us a story that has a lot to do with the way outcasts have been treated in the US since colonial times that still affect us to this day. 

    This is one of the few films that I have seen in horror with a diverse cast and a story with surviving lgbtq characters. I won’t give any spoilers for this post, so I urge anyone to give it a watch either for your Summerween activities or for Halloween. It’s a great treat for both occasions. I’ll go into more spoiler territory in the next post. Til next time my ghouls!