“Fear Street: Prom Queen”: Another Prom Night Massacre, With Some Glamour | Review

A few words are enough to make me wait in anticipation for a movie. “Fear Street: Prom Queen” included more than one such word. In the plot description and the film’s advertising campaigns, words like “masked killer” appear, which automatically means that we are talking about a “whodunit” slasher here, with a particular mystery about the identity of the killer (or killers). Movies about prom can be equally silly and fun; in any case, we can expect at least a few good-looking actors and actresses. Most importantly: “Fear Street” takes us back to the delightful trilogy we saw on Netflix in 2011, which is based on the books of children’s horror author R.L. Stine, perhaps one of the creators who introduced me to the world of horror in the first place and exposed me to scary characters, like Slappy the Dummy and even murderous garden gnomes. Then came the very cool posters with a retro atmosphere that is always welcome in slashers.

That’s why I counted the days until the movie came out on Netflix. I lowered my expectations after the very lukewarm reviews the film received. However, I still approach slasher movies expecting something that might be silly and of problematic quality, but enjoyable and entertaining. The bottom line is that “Fear Street: Prom Queen” met my expectations for a movie that you can’t expect too much from, contained a lot of failures (for example, in the script), but was still fun in its way.

One Street, Countless Books: The Mythology Of Fear Street

Even as someone who grew up on R. L. Stine’s “Goosebumps” books, I missed most of the “Fear Street” books. The main reason is that it is an extensive series, so my bookshelf was too small for them, and my youth years were too short to finish them.

The “Fear Street” series launched in 1989 with “The New Girl,” which was followed by another 50 (!) books in the original series. There were also spin-off series, which show Fright Street in different periods, focusing on other stories (like a series about the neighborhood’s adults, ghosts, and even freaking cheerleaders). By my estimate, there are more than 150 books related to the “Fear Street” enormous series because God knows it would take me a month to count them all.

It took some time for the books to arrive on the screen, but in 2011, it finally happened. The “Fear Street” trilogy of films arrived on Netflix a week apart, exposing the world to the town of Shadyside and the curse that hangs over it. “Fear Street – Part 1: 1994” introduces the main story, about the city haunted by a curse cast by a witch named Sarah Fier before she was executed in the 17th century, which causes the residents to be haunted by the ghosts of the Shadyside serial killers throughout history. The second film, “Fear Street – Part 2: 1978,” began where the first ended but quickly became a kind of prequel that shows what exactly happened in the original massacre and who survived it, and the answer may be different than we thought. The third film, “Fear Street – Part 3: 1666,” takes us to the year the infamous event occurred and shows that what happened with Sarah Fier may be different than we thought.

Confused? No problem! First, if you missed the original trilogy, you should finish them because they are well-made films. Besides, it’s not certain that this prior knowledge is significant for understanding “Fear Street: Prom Queen.” It does take place in 1988 – that is, between the plot of the second part and the first part – in the same infamous Shadyside. The film begins with a flashback to some of the previous murders we’ve seen, taking us immediately to the same universe. We learn the characters are aware of the town’s cursed reputation, refer in a few sentences to an earlier massacre, and there are minor references to the witch, such as writing on the bathroom wall or a specific form of bloodstain at the end of the film.

Despite this, the film stands independently, and you can understand it well, even without prior knowledge. The creators are said to have taken significant artistic liberties compared to the 15th book in the original Fear Street series, “The Prom Queen,” with the basic story being similar, but the characters and plot developments being different. At least we got a cool poster for the film inspired by the book’s cover. We’ve already written that we liked the film’s promotional campaign.

What Is Fear Street: Prom Queen About?

“Fear Street: Prom Queen” presents us, in the very first minutes, with a very long list of suspects in what will quickly become a slasher. Lori Granger (India Fowler, who played a small role as a waitress in “The Strangers: Part 1” and a leading role in the “Safe” series by thriller writer Harlan Coben) is an unconventional girl who dreams of becoming prom queen.

What hurts her popularity is the suspicion of her classmates and even some adults that a few years earlier, her mother murdered her father, although she was ultimately found innocent. Lori has one best friend, a slightly goth, heavily stoned horror-movie-loving girl named Megan (Suzanna Son of the critically acclaimed comedy “Red Rocket” and a role as a still in the Oscar-winning “Anora”). Lori is secretly in love with Tyler (David Iacono, “Jurassic World Rebirth,” “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “The Flight Attendant”), who happens to be the boyfriend of the popular, bitchy mean girl in her class.

Lori is determined to run for prom queen, but she’s up against five other candidates, some of whom make up the “Wolf Pack.” Tiffany Falconer (Pina Strazza, best known for her critically acclaimed role in the Broadway musical “Matilda”) is the popular and bitchy mean girl, “Queen Bee,” or whatever you call the evil leader of the gang is, Regina George-style, who happens to live right across the street from Lori. Tiffany has three “mean girls” friends who are also candidates for prom queen, most of whom we can describe shortly and one-dimensionally: Melissa (the talented Ella Rubin, who started on Broadway and who you can also see these days in “Until Dawn”), Debbie (Rebecca Ablack, “Ginny and Georgi,,” “The Luckiest Girl in the World”) and the redheaded Linda (Ilan O’Driscoll, “Believer”). The official drug dealer of the class, Christy (talented Ariana Greenblatt, “65”, “Barbie,” and “Borderlands”), completes the list of prom queen nominees.

Oh, and there are also a few other adults who become suspects, especially when you see that the actors playing them are pretty well-known. Chris Klein (forever Chris “Oz” Ostreicher from the “American Pie” films, and most recently a serial killer in the fifth season of “The Flash”) is Dan Falconer, Tiffany’s father, who also teaches at the same school. He is married to Nancy (Katherine Waterston, “Alien: Covenant,” “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” and most recently “Afraid,” a horror film about murderous artificial intelligence), who is determined that her daughter will win. There is also the vice principal, whom we mainly mention because Lily Taylor plays her from “The Conjuring,” the unnecessary remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and many other non-horror movies.

With Too Many Suspects, You Don’t See The Mystery

In short, you already understood that there are too many characters: in this review, we reduced some of them, like a few more annoying guys from the school, a DJ in the making, a school principal who says strange words, a campus reporter whose contribution to the plot is unclear, and even a somewhat scary-looking janitor who is shown in several unrelated scenes as a threatening character, without us knowing anything about him behind the fact that he is a scary-looking janitor. At one point, the film felt like a version of “The Masker Singer,” or “Killer” in this case, where the guys throw names of potential but not many logical murderers into the air to get well-timed applause from the audience and make the viewers confused.

Here’s a spoiler, which probably won’t surprise you: Most characters will die, especially some of the prom queen candidates and their dates, because they’re around and the men in this film are useless, like much of the adults, by the way. The second, more disappointing conclusion is that many of the characters here will not receive any significant development, if at all. After all, we are talking about a slasher of a little over 80 minutes and something like 80 characters.

The dynamics between the characters are forgettable, and we get subplots that are far from meaningful. For example, the relationships between Lori and her mother, the guy she is in love with, and even her best friend (a relationship with some lesbian sexual tension) are not presented interestingly and certainly do not develop.

The Gore Is Gone Too Soon

“Fear Street: Prom Queen” follows the formula we can expect from a teenage slasher, especially one related to high school and the big prom. This is not only true of the rather stereotypical types (even if most of them fall into the categories of the outsider versus the hot girls) but also in the structure, which is very routine and far from new to us. There are several scenes here that have a big title that says, “Something will be killed here,” even if the film tries to surprise us in some cases regarding the manner of the murder, that is, the moment of the hit or the killer’s sneaking will be a surprise.

It’s hard to say that it works and manages to be suspenseful or scary, or that the murders are something we’ll remember until the next slasher (unlike some of the murders in the original “Fear Street” trilogy, which were indeed memorable in some ways). To the film’s credit, it offers gore and severed organs now and then, corresponding with its R rating and slightly less with the world of R. L. Stine (we’ve already mentioned that this is a pretty free adaptation). To its detriment, we’ll note that in a few cases that seemed quite unnecessary to me, the director chose to flood the screen with a particular color precisely at the moment of the hit.

“Fear Street: Prom Queen” takes place in the 1980s, and you can see the representations of this in the soundtrack, which may please 80s fans but manages to be very predictable (really? Another version of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This?”). I felt the film could have taken place in any other decade with a few minor changes in clothing, character behavior, and so on, and we wouldn’t have noticed the difference. When I see a “period” film, I expect little more than period-appropriate songs, a character reading Fangoria magazine, and a few posters of 80s idols, such as Johnny Depp, Patrick Swayze, and Prince, who also gets a few marketing credits here in dialogue that he probably no longer needs because he’s dead. Ostensibly, the film fits the 80s, but in reality, there’s no nostalgia here that you might expect from slasher films set a few decades earlier, even though the film’s (successful) advertising campaign did raise expectations about a retro feel.

One reason lies potentially in the filmmaking because the film purports to offer a colorful and festive atmosphere – after all, a grand 80s-inspired graduation ball – but a few scenes here seemed too dark.

The film was directed by Matt Palmer, who broke out in 2018 with “Calibre,” about two men who go on a hunting trip in Scotland that goes wrong – a film that received excellent reviews, including horror writer Stephen King. This is its biggest film to date, and he shows some promising aspects.

Palmer wrote the “Fear Street: Prom Queen” screenplay with Donald McLeary, who played in the same “Calibre.” It’s hard to say anything in the screenplay’s direction is groundbreaking. It has a few problems in terms of story building and tension, the believability of the characters (the behavior of some characters changes too suddenly), and, of course, the revelation of the identity of the murderer or the murderers. At some points in the film, you might think that almost every character there is a candidate to be behind the (pretty generic) mask, for better or worse. For better, because there is a mystery here regarding who is the killer in “Fear Street: Prom Queen.” For worse, the plot tightening here is not good enough because they could have chosen several other solutions, which would have been equally logical and illogical.

Beyond her outstanding looks, India Fowler carries the film on her shoulders and does a decent job overall. The cast includes too many actors whose potential we feel is much greater than the character allows them to display, such as some of the girl group (say, Greenblatt, who we’ve already seen in excellent roles, or Fina Strazza), and of course, the older generation, who gets lost and sometimes remains a curiosity.

I believe a more modest film regarding characters and killing scenes would have given more room for development and story building, and would have left a more positive impression. And yes, characters who were less annoying – so we would be less happy to get rid of them – would have helped. If a serial killer is abusing bitchy girls, let me see it as we should in slasher, and don’t make unnecessary cuts or paint the screen different colors so that they connect with the next shot.

Should You Watch Fear Street: Prom Queen?

“Fear Street: Prom Queen” lacks the elements that would make it memorable and iconic, such as memorable characters, humor (there are a few good jokes, but they are few and far between), references to well-known films, unusual kill scenes or a twist that will make you jump out of your seat in surprise.

On the plus side, there were some creative scenes. The film made me try to find out who the killer was, and it was not dull in any way.

And most importantly, who can say no to a slasher about a masked killer who kills prom queens based on a story by R. L. Stine?

Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) – Frequently Asked Questions

When did the Fear Street: Prom Queen come out? The film’s release date for “Netflix” was May 23, 2025.

Who directed Fear Street: Prom Queen? The film was directed by Matt Palmer, and it was his second feature after the highly acclaimed “Calibre.”

Who Plays in Fear Street: Prom Queen? The film’s cast includes bright young names like India Fowler, Suzanna Son, Fina Strazza, Ella Rubin, Ariana Greenblatt, and more. The film also has some more experienced and well-known names, in the likes of Chris Klein, Katherine Waterston, and Lili Taylor.

Who wrote Fear Street: Prom Queen? Matt Palmer and Donald McCleary wrote the film’s screenplay. The film is loosely based on “The Prom Queen” book from the “Fear Street” series by R. L. Stein.

How long is Fear Street: Prom Queen? The running time of the film is about 90 minutes.

Where was the movie filmed? In Canada. The principal photography started in Toronto on March 25, 2024, and continued in Hamilton for a few months.

What languages can you hear in the film? English, with some slang by mean girls.

What was the budget of Fear Street: Prom Queen? We have not found official information about the film’s budget.

How much did the movie gross? Since the film was meant for home streaming (via Netflix), it isn’t easy to estimate its revenue.

What do the reviews say about Fear Street: Prom Queen?

The IMDB rating of the film, as of now, is 5.2 out of 10. On Rotten Tomatoes, only 27% of the professional critics gave it a positive review (“Tomatometer”).

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