I have to agree with the picture you paint. I watched the first season, but I've become too easily turned off now by horror. Maybe it's the rural trauma coming back as my nerves age. Rural places enable a certain level of unwatched meanness hidden behind myths of friendliness and hospitality. That meanness is allowed, ignored or dismissed depending on families, money and remoteness. It's difficult to pinpoint the change points, or the chicken v egg of rural depopulation (60s, 70s, 80s) that led to emergent meanness that led to isolationism which allows even more paranoia and meanness.

Ditto on avoiding cops. Rural kids are always making trouble, whether the cops bring more or not.