Headscratchers / Fear Street

Books

If everyone in town is so afraid of Fear Street, why does it seem to be where all the rich people live?

Well, Simon Fear's Mansion can be explained since it was the origin of the fear, but a well-to-do business man lives there in The Wrong Number, and the wealthy protagonist lives there in Haunted (as far as I've read). Don't wealthy people usually build in areas where people want to be?

• “Afraid” is a strong word. Everyone’s heard stories about Fear Street, but most people assume they’re folk tales and urban legends. But some like going there specifically BECAUSE it’s spooky. As for the second part, that’s just false. The houses on Fear Street are large but rundown, and nearly everyone who lives there is middle class at best and usually on hard times (only living there temporarily, on the run from something, recently lost a job, etc); given the amount of murders and such that happen on that street, all the houses probably go for super cheap. The rich people live in the North Hills area of Shadyside.

Movies

Why didn't Sarah Fier just point out Solomon's evil lair and his Satanic bible to prove her innocence and avoid basically everything that happens to all the characters??

She gets her moment to speak freely and confess, but instead of just telling everyone that Solomon is the cause of the bad stuff that is happening, she pretends she's the evil witch. Naturally they wouldn't believe her so easily, but with at least a little bit of effort she could totally get Solomon hanged.

• Having her just metaphorically take the bullet for the person she loved was more impactful. Also, there was a chance that saying things other people would have thought were lies before giving up would mean they wouldn't believe her when she tries to save her girlfriend by lying and saying she's a witch who tempted her.
• Would it have really made any difference? The entire town already thought she was a witch, and Solomon was seen as a hero for killing the possessed Pastor. The fact that she was a gay woman and he was a man just increase the likely of them rejecting everything she says. They'd just dismiss her accusations as "the Devil is trying to divide us" or something. The ones who buried her might have believed her, but it wouldn't have been enough to sway the town. And once Solomon knew they knew, he'd kill them too.
• Sarah was a woman in a patriarchal society, and one that's already thought of as odd and dangerous because of how unconventional she is. People are already prejudiced against her. If she tried to show them the lair, possibly there would be townspeople claiming it was really hers and she was just trying to frame Solomon. Sarah knew she was dead anyway, and tried to use her last moments to save Hannah. Also more cynically, perhaps she wasn't too keen on saving the townspeople who were ready to blame her so easily, and part of her wanted them to suffer (she doesn't know that her friends believe she's innocent). So she saves the one person she loves, and tries to curse Solomon so that future generations might be helped instead.
• Not to mention, in a very short period of time: her brother was killed by the town pastor, her town started suffering the effects of a curse, she had reasons to believe that she was the cause of said curse, she and her girlfriend were outted publicly and quite literally demonized for being gay in 1666, her girlfriend was caught and condemned to death, she was betrayed by a man she trusted, she had her hand cut off by a man she trusted who insisted he loved her while she was doing it, and she was caught and sentenced to hang alongside her girlfriend. By the end, she was long past the Despair Event Horizon and definitely not thinking very clearly. She was already willing to pull a Then Let Me Be Evil, so that plan was still fresh in her mind; she just changed her target from "the town/world in general" to "the person who's directly responsible for all of this."
• Her main priority at this point is making Hannah safe. Solomon is clearly calling the shots in this moment (he's the one who says "let [Hannah] go" after Sarah confesses, and if she'd tried anything other than announcing what Solomon wanted her to say, he could have had both of them strung up in seconds.

Why didn't Nick get the hell out of dodge after he chose one of the camp councilors to go on a rampage?

• Was it his dad who did it that time and was unaware that his firstborn son, key to maintaining the curse, easily could have also been killed?
  • His dad was dead.
• He wanted to keep Ziggy safe.
  • Then why did he go out of his way to prevent her from getting kicked out of camp?
• As Nick was the one who made the deal and was a Sunnyvaler— rather than a Shadysider— wasn’t he safe?
  • Actually, now that I think about it, I can't recall if any Sunnyvalers died Tommy's rampage.
    • None did.
• The (living/possessed) killers only killed Shadysiders. The resurrected killers killed anyone with their targets blood on them or anyone who got in the way of them killing their target (which is why Peter was killed at the hospital, despite being a Sunnyvaler—-he literally stood in between Sam and the resurrected Skull Mask).
  • With that in mind, isn't it still something any logical person, even someone who benefits from the killings wouldn't want to be anywhere near?
  • Since Nick would not be in any danger of being killed, he perhaps had an ulterior motive for staying behind. He's poised to be framed as a big hero for surviving the massacre and getting the others to safety - as well as reviving Ziggy with CPR when she was thought dead. That would certainly help his career.
  • Also, given that he's made a deal with the devil that involves murdering people, he arguably isn't very rational.

What happened to Pastor Miller and the others?

In the 1994 segment we only see about five or six of the possessed killers. But since they’re unkillable, shouldn’t all the other ones from history show up too?

• This one can likely be chalked up to budget.
• Perhaps it was tailored to the amount of people involved. Deena, Josh, Sam, Kate and Simon make five - so one killer for each of them? If there's a sixth killer, possibly it might be for Peter, since he was there when Sam touched the bones. If there's only one killer summoned, the group could easily incapacitate or overpower them, but maybe more were summoned precisely to split the group up. If they got more allies then maybe more would have been summoned? By the time they had Ziggy and Martin, they'd also lost Simon and Kate (and Sam was of course unable to help) so no need to summon more for backup.
• Perhaps the devil just likes to preserve his energy. Two of the killers don't show up before the first three have been trapped after all.
• The undead killers are always sent after one specific person. Send dozens of them simultaneously and they would start getting in each other's way. 3 or 4 killers at a time is actually the most you can send before you start hitting diminishing returns.

What caused the original blight in 1666, before the killings started?

We see food rotting, Sarah's dog being drowned in the well (poisoning the water), and her pig eating its own young. The villagers conclude that they're being cursed, and they're almost certainly right. Did Mary do it because they took her berries? Was the Devil getting pissy and demanding sacrifices?

• The curse caused it. The deal had already been struck and Pastor Miller was already being possessed at that point.

What was the deal with the alarm clocks?

In the opening scene of 1978, C. Berman has many, many clocks with different alarms set to remind her of various things. They're prominently featured but never commented on, so what was their purpose?

• C. Berman is so traumatized by the events of 1978 that by 1994 she is incapable of functioning without rigid scheduling. She needs alarms to remind her when to do everything (eating, feeding the dog, checking the locks, etc.), and the technological limitations of the time means she needs an independent alarm clock for each and every task.

Isn't the deal too easy on the Goodes?

It seems like Solomon managed to negotiate too good a deal with the Devil. Normally Deal with the Devil comes with a price that is detrimental to the mortal party in some way or the other. Quoting from the trope page- "This price can be anything — the Faust's soul, their conscience, their firstborn, their loved ones, their voice, their eternal servitude, or even something that seems completely innocent — but whatever the price, it's something that will render the Faust a lot worse off when it is paid, if not bring them to complete ruin". However there doesn't seem to be anything like that in the deal struck by Solomon. They don't have to sacrifice any of their loved ones, and as far as we know their souls are not subjected to eternal torment either. The Goodes don't even have to go out and kill the sacrifices with their own hands. Why was the Devil so lenient?

• Two points: a) the Devil gets a multigenerational arrangement that allows him to feed on the killing of numerous victims every few years for centuries; and b) the deal only appears too good for Goodes if you only take into account the temporal aspect of it. Presumably the Devil also gets to claim the soul of the Goode heir casting the curse in each instance once they die. But because the trilogy only deals with the effects of the curse on the mortal realm, the price that may be paid in the afterlife is not shown.
• Also if the devil wants people to make deals with him, he has to make it worth their while - so a bigger sacrifice that hurts the person making the deal would be a bit of a turn off. It's also worth noting that Solomon didn't seem to realise just what Pastor Miller would do - kidnapping twelve children and gouging their eyes out. Innocent people still have to be hurt for the curse to work, and so the Goode descendants just loophole'd it so that the prosperous part of town was separated from the disadvantaged and it was only people from there that sustained the curse.
• And maybe part of the deal is that the curse has to be maintained by the future generations to prevent even worse things from happening. As soon as Deena and Sam break the curse, a Sunnyvaler gets killed in a car accident. So if a Goode descendant didn't want to do it, maybe they'd have to deal with the consequences.
• On that note, the curse is rather hard on the Goodes. If there is no chosen successor, the deal immediately ends and all benefits stop. Or alternatively, the Goode responsible is killed by one of his victims (as opposed to dying any other way) it immediately ends.

If the curse only affects Shadyside residents...

Then why was Peter one of Skull Mask's victims in Part One?

• There are two types of killings. First is the type that feeds the curse where one person gets possessed and murders Shadysiders indiscriminately. The second type is when the curse sends reanimated killers to hunt down anyone whose blood touched Sarah Fier’s bones, to prevent the secret from leaking out. In this phase the killers are driven solely to destroy their chosen target and don’t care about avoiding collateral damage to Sunnyvale residents. Peter happened to fall in the second bucket since he was between the reanimated killer and Sam.
  • Also, Peter probably got Sam's blood on him when he went with her to the hospital.
  • We see in 1978 with Alice that the killers will hack someone who's literally standing in the way.

If it’s been 300+ years, why are there so few slasher zombies in Goode’s army

• Shouldn’t there be more? Did the intermediate Goodes have more of a conscience? If so, then how did Sunnyvale prosper and grow so much?
  • It's been discussed above that more undead killers didn't go after the protagonists possibly because they weren't needed.

Why did Josh react to the reveal that Ziggy was C. Berman?

• Surely C. Berman was telling the story from her point of view, and thus would have revealed exactly who she was at the start. Yet somehow Josh apparently thought she was supposed to be Cindy the entire time. Obviously it was supposed to trick the viewing audience, but how could Josh possibly have been mixed up?
  • Let's say for the sake of argument that what we saw was not literally what she was telling - whichever sister she's supposed to be, there's information she couldn't know (Cindy wouldn't know the conversation with Nurse Lane, the prank on Sheila or that Nick and Ziggy were in love, and Ziggy wouldn't know anything about what Alice and Cindy talked about underground, how Arnie died or what Nurse Lane wrote in the book). So we can assume C. Berman told the story saying 'me/myself' for events Ziggy saw, and 'my sister' for Cindy's perspective, without mentioning her name (for example, "me and Nick pranked Sheila while my sister and Alice were underground"). Josh is a bit more knowledgeable about the mythology, so he may have already known there were two sisters called Ziggy and Cindy and not known which one died - and assumed that the C initial meant it was Cindy they were speaking to. It's just that we the audience know who's who because we can see the events happening, but Deena and Josh are getting the information second-hand.
  • Also, since we don't know what C Berman said specifically after she showed the photo of the two sisters, for all we know she could have pointed to each and said "Cindy and Ziggy" without specifying which one she was. Or she didn't say anything at all; the photo appears to be a Polaroid possibly taken by the girls' mother, so maybe it was written on the back 'Cindy and Ziggy at camp' and again they assumed the C initial meant this was Cindy they were talking to.
  • Another important thing to note is that Ziggy is a minor at the time of the massacre, so her identity couldn't be given to the press legally. 'C Berman' was the newspaper's way of getting around that to report a juicy story. Her full name wouldn't be in the article, and it's Kate who finds her number in the phone book (and obviously she's not alive by the time they go to C Berman's house).
  • And if Josh knew that C Berman's full name was Christine, maybe he assumed Cindy was a nickname for that?

Did they just leave Sarah's body there?

• At the end, Deena is shown scratching an epitaph into a stone in the middle of the woods. Apparently it didn't occur to anyone that maybe her bones should be moved to an actual cemetery and given an actual headstone.
  • Sarah's body was buried there by her friends and moved from the location where she was hung. Perhaps Deena felt that it honored her memory better to leave her there. And maybe since she had that connection with Sarah, she could sense that she preferred being left where she was.
  • In addition to the above, who would move the body and rebury it in a graveyard? None of the protagonists have the money to do that themselves, and what are they supposed to tell the others in town? That the witch most people don't even think was real was actually good, and was framed by a centuries long conspiracy in league with the devil?

Why was Tommy chosen to be cursed?

• There are other Shadysiders besides Tommy that would believably be more likely to snap such as Nurse Lane or Alice, or at least according to a Sunnyvaler. Why didn’t Nick choose someone more obvious?
  • Since he never says why, it could be for any reason at all. Ruby Lane was cursed, and her mother insists she was a kind, sweet girl beforehand - so they don't seem to care about people being suspicious. In the 70s, most people would chalk a seemingly Nice Guy going on a sudden murder spree up to "he just snapped". One theory mentioned on the Fridge page says that Tommy would be the one most likely to keep the camp together, thereby preventing Nick from emerging as The Hero of the situation (if that's how he wanted to be seen as anyway). Another theory is that Nick is slightly more benevolent than his predecessors and trying to ensure there are less casualties while still fulfilling the deal - so maybe cursing a counsellor means he's more likely to get stopped by one of the others before too many deaths.
• The way Solomon describes the curse, the person he names is the sacrifice and their victims are just collateral damage. The sacrifice has to be a truly good, innocent person to be a worthy offering to the devil. Pastor Miller, Ruby Lane, Tommy, and Ryan were all good people before the curse took hold, and that's exactly why they're chosen. Put it this way: if you had to give the devil a gift in exchange for everything you wanted, would you give him a ratty, beat up thing you found in the back of your closet that nobody's going to miss, or would you find him the best damned thing you can get your hands on? Which one do you think the devil is actually going to accept as payment?

Why was Sam cursed?

• A better question is why was Sam cursed? It should have been clear to Nick that the survivors were willing to let it go as they knew no one would believe them. Cursing Sam just gave them a reason to dig further and eventually ruin everything for the Goode family. So you have to ask why did he do it?
  • Sam was cursed on the off chance that she and Deena had enough information to break the true Goode version of the curse. Nick didn't know if they would keep looking without telling the sheriff they obviously didn't trust about what really happened. Yes, Sam's curse contributed to them looking for more information about Sarah, but considering the fact that they actually solved the entire problem in less than 2 days, he was right to try and kill them. The Goode family knows that Sarah is still reaching out to people to get the truth out. That's the Goode's family curse, that Sarah will always be there waiting for them to fuck up and since he didn't know what Sarah conveyed exactly cursing Sam probably would have killed off Deena and likely Josh. Curse Sam, the problem is almost definitely solved. He didn't bank on Deena and Sam's relationship or Deena's determination.
  • And possibly by then, he'd found out from Ziggy what someone sees when they bleed on the bones. And in their testimony to him at the end of 1994, all three of the teens are deliberately evasive and he can tell they're lying. He just doesn't know what they're lying about. Sam's also cursed because she's the least likely to be killed if one of the others is - as she lives in Sunnyvale - and she's the one who definitely needs to die since she bled on the bones. Cursing Sam also serves to silence her before she can tell anyone else what she knows (if Deena is cursed and then kills Josh or vice versa, Sam could guess what's happening and tell more people). If Deena or Josh tells anyone, they're less likely to be believed - as the working class black residents of Shadyside (with Deena being an out lesbian also counting against her), whereas Sam is the white, privileged Sunnyvale resident who's still in the closet until moments before she's cursed. If Nick were rational, then he wouldn't have made a Deal with the Devil in the first place.

Why was the curse lifted as soon as Sheriff Goode died?

• The power of the curse gets passed down in the Goode family, but Sheriff Goode has a brother that theoretically would now be the one in charge of sacrificing Shadysiders in the future. Instead the curse seems to be ended as soon as Sheriff Goode dies.
  • My guess is that they have to be chosen by the previous one in charge for the deal to continue. It's possible that Mayor Goode truly didn't know anything for Plausible Deniability and so that the secret was less likely to get out.

Was Sarah Fier real or something else?

Sarah supposedly put a curse on the Goodes, but what if was something else? Perhaps it was her spirit trying to tell the truth to the descendants of Union. And while she claimed the truth was to be their curse, the difficult nature of how said curse could be activated, lends credence that it's not the same as the Goode's Deal with the Devil.

• A fan theory is that Sarah was actually a natural witch, since she's said to have a way with the land and the widow senses that there's something different about her. She may have made a deal with the devil after all, since Solomon does say she can't just summon him by chance and has to "extend a hand". She did read from the book, saying the same names that Solomon is shown to in the flashback, and she went to the house specifically planning to make a deal. That might have been enough for the devil to listen, and Sarah sacrificing herself to save Hannah could have been the final piece to enact the curse. After all, the devil loves chaos, so it could have amused him.