PLOT: 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.
REVIEW: It’s been nearly four years since Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy released to the streaming service. And despite a decent amount of buzz, it took some time for us to get another entry. Now, Fear Street takes aim at the Prom, adapting the fourth novel in the series, The Prom Queen. And if there’s one setting that’s prime for a slasher movie, it’s the prom.
Fear Street: Prom Queen follows a group of students at Shadyside High, as they get ready for the 1988 prom. The “It Girls” are doing last-ditch efforts to get the vote for Prom Queen. There’s Tiffany Falconer and her group of mean girls, drug dealer Christy, and our final girl, Lori Granger. But someone is taking things a little too far and is killing off the potential winners. From a slasher standpoint, the characters just kind of accept their fate and die in silly ways. This is a far cry from the more meta, slasher-savvy leads we saw in the trilogy. And it makes the whole cast of characters difficult to root for.
A slasher movie is really predicated on two things: either wanting to see our hero escape the killer or to see the killer take out a bunch of deserving victims. You really need one or the other to find success within the subgenre, and I think it’s Fear Street: Prom Queen‘s biggest hurdle that it can never overcome. India Fowler‘s Lori is basic, with very little drive or likability. Trauma is not an adequate character trait; you have to actually do something interesting with it. And it doesn’t help that they gave her the same name as one of the greatest slasher heroines to ever live (even if it’s spelled differently). And then the villain is just a bad guy in a devil costume whose whole motivation is killing teen girls so that prom gets a certain result? Really hard for me to care.
The only bit of intrigue came from Ella Rubin‘s Melissa, who was trying to break out of her mean girl clique. Otherwise, everyone falls into such overused clichés, with no one subverting them. Even Megan, who is an apparent horror junkie, constantly makes the same mistakes of a standard horror victim. So what was even the point of having her be obsessed with horror movies outside of a couple of lines of dialogue? But there’s no one this does a disservice to more than Ariana Greenblatt. Who, despite being one of the only characters that is easily distinguishable from one another, is severely lacking in screen time.
I’m a big slasher fan, so I really wanted to like Fear Street: Prom Queen, but I found myself constantly being let down. Everything is so generic and feels like a relic of the mid-2000s. It was right around the time that two of the characters participated in a dance-off that I realized this really just wasn’t for me. And I’m not sure who it’s for. Despite taking place in 1988, this doesn’t really feel like its prospective date. These kids act like modern teens a bit too much and I was half-expecting them to pull out cellphones and start scrolling through TikTok.
I’ve always liked how the Fear Street series utilizes its setting, the town of Shadyside. This town is cursed to the point where bad things just repeatedly happen here. Yet, I never really get that vibe. There are a couple of mentions, but otherwise, this just feels like generic New England Town #3. It’s like an entire villainous character that they’re just neglecting! At least there are references to the Trilogy, making it clear that this exists in the same world.
The production value of Fear Street: Prom Queen feels surprisingly cheap. The prom itself is far from the living and breathing entity that we’re used to seeing on film. They just aren’t able to capture it, or even fill out the gymnasium to a satisfying degree. I’m actually kind of surprised that this was produced by Netflix. I suppose all the money had to be spent on getting Katherine Waterston.
In terms of the kills, it starts off pretty light, but it goes pretty extreme at points. It’s not very consistent and certainly loves a more simplistic, shock death over something drawn out. I appreciated how practical they got with things, even if there’s not much creativity in their execution. This is a slasher and it’s hard to have one without some kind of whodunnit angle these days. Unfortunately, the identity of the killer feels pretty obvious from the onset, and they don’t really try to make anyone else a red herring. Odd choice for a whodunnit but okay. The twist itself works because it’s not random and is clearly set up. But I wish it had just been more direct, since it’s the only time the narrative comes to life.
I’m always rooting on slashers so it disappoints me to say that Fear Street: Prom Queen is not good. This feels like a step back in terms of the meanness we saw from the Trilogy and an absolute disservice to anyone who simply likes slashers. Because this seems directed at those who do not and simply want to dip their toes.
FEAR STREET: PROM QUEEN IS STREAMING ON NETFLIX ON MAY 23RD, 2025.
