Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)
Standard Slasher Fare
Lori Granger (India Fowler) is determined to wear Shadyside High’s prom queen crown. Her family is the black sheep of Shadyside due to her mother allegedly killing her dad years earlier.
Granger is harassed by a group of mean girls led by Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza), who is also vying for prom queen. The competition is upended when a mysterious red-hooded figure begins offing students one by one.
Fear Street: Prom Queen has its moments. The killer’s costume, which is inspired by the classic ’70s horror flick Alice Sweet Alice, is fiendishly creepy. Fowler delivers an earnest performance as the protagonist. This is her first major lead role. I would enjoy seeing her in a film with a better script.
This movie also does a decent job of hiding the killer(s) identity, which surprised me. After watching so many slashers, I can often pinpoint the culprit long before the climactic reveal, but not this time. Prom Queen features plenty of entertaining over the top gore, as any ’80s slasher should.
It’ll Make you Appreciate the Trilogy Even More
Unfortunately, Prom Queen never really lifts itself above the slasher fray. There are hundreds of movies about a masked killer going berserk on a bunch of teens (and even many prom-themed slashers). This movie does little to distinguish itself. It also rips off elements from non-horror movies like Heathers and Mean Girls.
Worse, this doesn’t feel like a Fear Street movie. It’s like Netflix planned to produce a prom horror flick and decided to make it Fear Street as an afterthought. You could delete all the franchise elements and the script would be 95% the same.
Prom Queen aims lower than the Fear Street trilogy that premiered on Netflix in the summer of 2021. I wasn’t making reviews back then (The Slasher Shack was born a year later) but I would have given those movies ratings in the 7-8 range.
The trilogy took care to adapt key elements of the books. It included commentary on social issues and had character development. I actually cared about some of the people in those films. The trilogy was ambitious. This one isn’t.
It’s ironic because Prom Queen is based on a Fear Street book, while the trilogy were original stories. You’d think that a book adaption would be more faithful to the source material.
Where does Fear Street go from here? If the series continues, I would love to see a Halloween-themed installment. But please, for the love of God, bring back Leigh Janiak and Phil Graziedi, who wrote the trilogy. If they’re not available, at least have it made by someone who is familiar with the franchise.
Rating
Fear Street: Prom Queen has entertaining kills and some funny moments, but it falls far short of what it could have been.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 6
