Fear Street: Prom Queen, 2025.
Directed by Matt Palmer.
Starring India Fowler, Suzanna Son, Fina Strazza, Chris Klein, David Iacono, Ella Rubin, Ariana Greenblatt, Lili Taylor, Katherine Waterston, Dale Whibley, Damian Romeo, Rebecca Ablack, Joanne Boland, Eden Summer Gilmore, Ilan O’Driscoll, Dakota Taylor, Brennan Clost, Cecilia Lee, Sienna Star, Darrin Baker, Ryan Rosery, Anna Mirodin, and Jai Jai Jones.
SYNOPSIS:
When the “it” girls competing for prom queen at Shadyside High start to disappear, a gutsy outsider discovers she’s in for one hell of a prom night.
Given that there were still several stories left to tell across the characters and decades (technically centuries if one counts the opening of the third entry) of the original Fear Street trilogy, it’s only logical that Netflix would adapt more of these R.L. Stine books.. For once, there was a damn good reason to go back and create spinoffs telling smaller stories, here within the fictional towns of Shadyside and Sunnyvale. Bafflingly, Fear Street: Prom Queen is a standalone film set in Shadyside during the 1980s that doesn’t seem to connect to anything in the past three films.
The movie, taken at face value, isn’t good, resembling the hacky results of if Carrie turned into Scream halfway through. There is a wise creative decision here in that the film doesn’t begin with any opening credits, because that would tip us off to the first alarming sign that trilogy co-writer/director Leigh Janiak and screenwriter Phil Graziadei did not return for this project. Although it’s such a generic, clichéd, and weightless 85 minutes, anyone who has seen the other three films will likely put that together almost instantly. Fear Street: Prom Queen comes from co-writer/director Matt Palmer, with Donald McLeary also contributing to the screenplay, who seems to know why the original trilogy was successful but is simply out of their element here, telling a story without characters worth investing in.
Yes, every Fear Street film was molded after a particular decade and classic horror subgenre, but there was a complex story woven across those three decades with characters worth caring about and actual stakes and genuine mystery. If streaming had never existed, this would be the straight-to-DVD sequel for the series; something disappointingly not even in the same conversation as the original trilogy. That’s not to say those three films were bonafide instant classics, because they weren’t, but the bar has fallen that low here.
Fear Street: Prom Queen swaps out feuding neighboring towns (although there are one or two references to the feud) for a story centered on rival families. Shadyside High student Lori Granger (India Fowler) is the shy girl at school, often bullied by the popular mean girl crowd over her mother Rose (Joanne Boland) allegedly having murdered her boyfriend on prom night. She does have a loyal friend in rebellious stoner and gore prankster Megan (Suzanna Son, easily giving the best performance here, with the social media influencer turned phenomenal performer in Sean Baker’s Red Rocket playing a misfit here) that couldn’t muster up a damn to give about prom, but is willing to attend with Lori. There are complicated reasons behind Lori’s competitive involvement; she doesn’t necessarily care about prom either, but sees pulling off a victory against the It crowd as a means for giving her mother closure for what was not only taken from her, but turned both into outcasts.
Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza) runs that crowd of generic, cruel girls, also given heavy expectations by her parents, played by Chris Klein and Katherine Waterston. However, everyone, including her boyfriend Tyler (David Iacono), is growing tired of her mean-spirited nature, with him often showing kindness to Lori and inevitably getting close to her over prom night. Everyone somewhat wanders off for various reasons, with most finding out the hard way that a masked killer (or multiple killers) has infiltrated the high school and is killing them off one by one, seemingly either to weed out the competition for Lori or Tiffany.
The kills themselves are not creative, repeatedly offering up dismemberment and shoddy CGI blood splatter. Perhaps more annoying is that the filmmakers have taken the tradition of blasting licensed popular songs from the era, tripling (quadrupling even) down on that to the point where it serves no purpose and more resembles someone going through a checklist of their favorite 80s songs. The structure here seems to have been kill/song/repeat once prom starts, blandly going through the motions of a boring mystery that becomes astonishingly stupid following the fakeout climax.
Fear Street: Prom Queen is still highly watchable; it’s more forgettable than outright actively terrible. However, if this is the level of quality for future spinoffs, that’s more fearful than anything here.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
