The Stinal Countdown: Fear Street: Trapped

It's time to trap ourselves once again in Shadyside for yet another trip down Fear Street. It's also the last trip down Fear Street properly. No, that doesn't mean this is it for Fear Street we still have a bunch left to go, but given the book I was going to cover next, Haunted, was missing pages at Openlibrary, I opted for another choice, and the time sure feels right to see how Stine's mind was at the end of this era of Fear Street. Where was Stine's mind at for this franchise in 1997? Does Stine stick the landing? Let's take an early look with Trapped.

This is definitely a final cover for Fear Street huh? I mean in terms of horror it works with our character literally trapped in the red mist, but it just looks like a giant bubble gum balloon to me. Even if they escape, that's getting in their hair badly. But I'm also so mixed on it. We started Fear Street with some amazing artwork that, while never scary, worked for setting a dark and atmospheric tone to the book. Here it just feels we're now focused on the fright but not the substance. Still works, but for the final mainline Fear Street, I expected better.

Elaine Butler has had it rough lately. She forgot her homework three times and because of that she has to go to Shadyside High on a Saturday for detention. This is in part of the new principal, Mr. Savage, who changed the detention method in the school. Now instead of a couple hours after school, it's spending a Saturday in detention. Elaine talks with Mr. Savage who mentions that even he had to learn some harsh lessons in his day, but then just trails off before sending her to room one-eleven where she sees her fellow detentionees. A boy named Jerry Fox, a heavyset guy in flannel named Max, a punk-looking girl named Darlene and Bo Kendall, who Elaine knows to be a notorious piece of shit around Shadyside. Setting off firecrackers and supposedly stealing a car once. So him being in detention isn't a surprise. Jerry is, since he's more straight-laced. So straight-laced he abstains from dissecting a frog, which got him into this detention mess.

Jerry and Bo argue, which leads to Bo snapping and setting some paper on fire because he's a psychopath, you see. Mr. Savage stops things before they escalate, while also revealing that Darlene was in detention for skipping classes, and Max spraypainted the school bus, and he's a tagalong to Bo, which means that he makes such great friends. Mr. Savage says that they're to follow his rules, adding that if one of them screws up, all of them will, meaning that Elaine REALLY shouldn't have forgotten that trig homework because now her glowing record is likely going to be destroyed at the hands of someone else. Made no better with Bo throwing a knife at Mr. Savage as he leaves the room. So yeah, Elaine might be fucked here.

After Savage leaves, Bo and Darlene decide for the rest of them that they should just leave anyway and tells Elaine and Jerry that them playing straight arrow won't help given that they'll still get in shit for what the others do, so Elaine and Jerry join them. They head for the cafeteria and raid the place for snacks when suddenly Bo disappears. They then find him with his throat slit! No, wait, it's just ketchup. I mean this dude threw a knife and burned paper so this is very much in his wheelhouse. Bo laughs at Elaine for thinking that someone would just go around killing people, to which Elaine responds that this is Shadyside to which I almost gasped at some actual realization of how fucked up this town is. 

After the prank, the group try to avoid Mr. Savage and find themselves in the auditorium. No clue if there's a phantom there, but they screw around some more with Max painting on the sets and Bo screwing around with a violin. Elaine spots a dark tunnel and walks into it, only to end up falling into a dark tunnel. She recovers and doesn't know how far she fell, only that she can't reach anyone, her ankle is injured and that there are rats down there. Eventually the others find her and head down into the tunnels. Bo flicks his lighter to create some torches, to which they see the words "LET'S PARTY" written on the walls in blood-red paint. Bo mentions that this must be the Labyrinth. Sadly, no David Bowie or Muppets abound but in the fifties it was built under the school as a bomb shelter. However, there were no bombings (which given it's Shadyside is a surprise) so it just became a place kids would get wasted and throw parties in because I guess dark rat-infested bomb shelters make the best party hangouts. 

So the Labyrith was essentially being used as sort of a "last day on earth" party central for years, but it soon became abandoned. Exits were sealed off and nobody could even find where the entrance was. The main reason is some unexplained incident and that a bunch of kids died down in the tunnels. But now that Elaine's found it, they should definitely check it out. Jerry and Darlene are against it, while Max and Bo are for it, with Elaine choosing to explore because she's gone full "I want to break the rules" mode. They trek into the tunnels and find a school paper from 1971. They trudge further and find a room with water pouring from the ceiling. So they turn back, only to realize that they're now lost because these are five teenagers wandering a dark tunnel. So it's across the water-filled room it is. There's got to be more exits if it's under Shadyside. I mean it's not like we were already told the exits were sealed, right? Right?

They find a narrow path across the pool of water, but Elaine falls in. After being saved by Bo, who gives her his jacket to warm up in, the others follow them out of the room and further down the tunnel. The group then find a brick wall, which easily explodes in front of them. Dude, the Kool-Aid Man's gonna be pissed that you messed with his wall. But as they get their bearings, they notice a strange red mist in the air which then forms a tornado that lifts Max up and then proceeds to crush his body, his bones break apart, his eyes roll back into his skull and him just become a gray husk of what was one a human being. So, yeah. DEFINITELY shouldn't have forgot that trig homework. Bo chases after the red tornado while Jerry and Darlene would prefer just leaving both Elaine and Bo behind. They steal Elaine's torch and run off.

Thankfully they don't get far because they're all lost in the labyrinth. As they trek further, they run into a body. They think it's Bo because Darlene thinks she saw Bo's shirt on the corpse. But upon closer inspection, they realize that it's someone else's corpse from a long time ago. Bo then shows up covered in blood. Not his, but Max's. The red mist creature seemed have fun just smashing Max's corpse all over the walls, letting all that blood go squirting everywhere. Bo managed to escape being caught, but he knows that the mist is coming for them. With one torch remaining and no more lighter fluid, they trek further, seeing more "LET'S PARTY" signs painted on the walls. Eventually the foursome find the ladder back to the auditorium. Too bad for them that the ladder is old and rusty and collapsing. Made no better with the mist showing up and capturing Jerry, crumpling his body up like a piece of paper and dragging the corpse away. 

The ladder then collapses with Bo and Elaine falling back to the ground. Darlene is stuck, but ultimately drops down since she can't climb up. Now realizing their previous hopes for escape are dashed, Elaine suggests they head back to the area where the mist creature was found. There could be hope beyond there. The trio head back and find a hole. Upon entering they find a cave-in, but above is a ceiling that might lead to an exit. So after a bunch of digging upwards, the trio eventually get up to the ceiling where they don't find their exit, but rather six skeletons, brown and decayed after seemingly decades. Not from the red mist creature, but starvation from years of being trapped. But scrawled under another "Let's Party" painting is the names of the six trapped teenagers. Mike Zimmerman, Rick Surmacz, Kathy Kleidermacher, Maggie McMahon, Peter Renzi and Maggie Sovinski. The final six teenagers who ventured the labyrinth and literally partied like it was the end of the world because it was for them. But another name is written on the wall, saying that one person knows about the tunnel and that was Scott Savage. 

But as the trio begin to realize that Mr. Savage knew about what happened in the labyrinth, the red mist returns. Bo confronts it and tells the girls to run. However, another issue presents itself as the mist now possesses the skeletons which chase after Darlene and Elaine. Elaine manages to fight off the skeleton and run off, but hears Darlene's scream of death in the tunnels. As she runs, Elaine soon runs into Mr. Savage holding a lantern. Bo arrives with the mist trying to grab him, but Elaine and Mr. Savage save him in time. Bo angrily presses Mr. Savage about what he knows, but Savage claims to not know much before finally admitting some of what's gone on down in the tunnels under Shadyside High.

Back in the fifties, the bomb shelter was put in place due to the lingering fears of the cold war. And, like we established, the shelter became a place for teens to party in. Savage was invited with a bunch of other kids to join down in the labyrinth. But while they were getting drunk, the cave-in happened, causing the six kids to be trapped. Thinking the six were dead, Savage escaped. However, Bo informs him that they weren't dead, at least not yet. Of course Savage made it no better by returning the next day and putting up the brick wall as an attempt to hide the cave-in since, again, he thought they were already dead. Suddenly, another cave-in occurs and out pops the mist, only now in the form of the six trapped kids. It turns out that the mist was the rage of the trapped kids. Mr. Savage tells Elaine and Bo to find the entrance to the boiler room to escape while he confronts the spirits of his former friends. The mist kills Mr. Savage almost immediately, then finally dissipates, the six dead kids having gotten their revenge. 

Elaine and Bo escape the labyrinth and both agree to not tell anyone about what happened. I... I mean maybe the families of the six dead kids, or the families of Jerry, Darlene and Max, they'd probably want closure. And they end the book as a couple clearly. So maybe forgetting the trig homework was worth it? 

Okay, for the final mainline Fear Street, this one is pretty good. Mainly on account of it not fully feeling like a Fear Street story in the normal sense. No prolonged build with similar threats, no one-note mystery that boils down to jilted love. Hell, in terms of a mystery, it's one of Stine's better outings. Though given the book builds on Mr. Savage early on, it's not hard to figure out that he's involved in some way. The biggest issue one might have is the red mist even being able to exist. That it feels like a monster added because this book needs a monster to give us the kill count. But this is Shadyside and we've had hauntings before. So it's not out of the realm of possibility that the final actions of a group of dying kids was to take their rage and manifest it into a killing machine that is so filled with revenge on Mr. Savage that it kills indiscriminately. And it gives us some super creepy deaths for Max and Jerry. Darlene kind of just dies offscreen though. 

Elaine's a decent protagonist. I like that she isn't fully straight-laced as she initially comes off as, and seems more willing to take risks, given she is clearly smitten by Bo from the beginning. Speaking of Bo, he works fine as the badass who ultimately isn't as awful as he comes off as. Being more of an annoying prankster tryhard than someone who is a serious concern. Though he did throw that knife. Jerry, Darlene and Max all fill the quota mainly to be bodies for the red mist. Max is our Superfluous Clay of the book for being mostly silent and not doing much except paint on the mural one time and also being the first victim. Jerry and Darlene sort of feel there as the book progresses, especially Jerry. And Mr. Savage works as the adult who clearly knows more than he lets on, but also his sheer ignorance and cowardice in the cave-in situation makes it sort of deserved when he finally meets his end. 

As the last mainline Fear Street book, does it stick the landing? If you were looking for something more in tone to the general style of the series, maybe not. It also feels very underwhelming to have the final book not deal with any of the real major Shadyside history, namely with the Fear family, but rather some whole other story with a red revenge mist. But as a story itself? I think it sticks the landing quite well, giving us one of Stine's better paced and better written thrillers. It wasn't intended to be the last mainline Fear Street book with The Stepbrother being next in the pipeline before it was moved over to the New Fear Street line. So Trapped ends up being the finale for the series at least for this point in time. So I'll say that yeah, some issues aside, it was Stine sticking the landing and kind of proving that he indeed can write a thriller without all of his worse trappings. I still have a bit of Fear Street to go to see how the series fares as a whole, but this was definitely a solid way to go. Trapped gets an A-.