Throughout the action of Fear Street 1978, Tommy Slater kills only Shadyside campers and no Sunnydale residents during his gruesome massacre, but why does the movie make a point of this detail? Fear Street 1978 is the second installment of Netflix’s dark new horror trilogy. Despite being based on the novel series of the same name by Goosebumps scribe RL Stine, the Fear Street movies are gory, scary, and not at all suitable for kids.
The first outing of the trilogy, Fear Street 1994, was a brutal slasher that saw most of its young cast killed off one by one after they accidentally unearthed the remains of a witch who local legend claims cursed their small town. The second installment, Fear Street 1978, flashed back even further to the eponymous year to depict a bloody summer camp massacre. Fear Street 1978 was an unusually tragic slasher as its killer, Tommy Slater, was a seemingly likable character who only became homicidal when he was possessed by the spirit of this witch, Sarah Fier.
Despite Tommy being a reasonably kind character during the opening scenes of the second movie, though, once he picks up an ax and starts picking off campers, the sequel gets very bloody very quickly. However, the Stephen King-referencing Fear Street 1978 doesn’t kill off characters without any rhyme or reason—rather, Tommy makes a point while possessed of only killing kids from Shadyside. At numerous points, this means the character seemingly side-steps and avoids Sunnyvale campers to access and exterminate Shadyside kids, unlike his Fear Street 1994 counterparts. Skull Mask, for example, killed the Sunnyvale jock Peter in Fear Street 1994, so why doesn’t Tommy kill any Sunnyvale locals? The clearest answer seems to be that Fear Street 1994's victims were killed for getting in the way of Sam when Sarah Fier wanted her blood, whereas Fear Street 1978's were killed just for being cursed Shadysiders.
One of the many unanswered questions of Fear Street 1994 is how Sarah Fier chooses who she will possess, and why Skull Mask opted to kill Kate and Tommy Slater killed Simon when both could have focused on hunting down Sam and ignored their victims. The theory that Sarah Fier simply wants as many Shadyside citizens as possible dead, however, would explain why Fear Street 1978’s killer only offs Shadysiders and why the first movie’s villains don’t avoid Kate and Simon the way Tommy seemingly avoids Sunnyvale campers. To this end, Fear Street 1978 features a more in-depth conversation about the nature of the curse, who does and doesn’t believe in it, and how much it has come to impact the economic, social, and cultural divide between the two towns.
The first film made it clear that the town of Sunnyvale is less hardscrabble and more glamorous than Shadyside, but only Fear Street 1994’s Josh attributed this to an inter-generational curse on the community. In Fear Street 1978, in contrast, heroine Ziggy repeatedly outlines this idea that the town is cursed by Sarah Fier and the community’s hardships came about as a direct result of this, and the point is reinforced by Tommy Slater actively avoiding Sunnyvale casualties as he cuts a bloody swathe through Shadysiders. As proven by how young many of Fear Street 1978’s victims are, Sarah Fier holding the town’s residents responsible for their ancestor’s murder of her has led to a long and bloody history of vengeance.
