It brings me no pleasure to report that Fear Street: Prom Queen, now streaming on Netflix, fails to live up to the standard set by the Fear Street trilogy. The 2021 slasher flicks—released over three consecutive weeks on Netflix—were a refreshing spin on teen horror for, in my opinion, two main reasons. First, they were genuinely scary. Second, they were each anchored by a sweet, romantic, lesbian love story. Unfortunately, Prom Queen—though it has some campy ’80s fun and creative kills—achieves neither.
Directed by Matt Palmer, who also co-wrote the script with Donald McLeary, Fear Street: Prom Queen is a standalone entry into the horror franchise, loosely based on a story from R.L. Stine’s Fear Street book series. The all-new cast stars India Fowler as Lori Granger, a Shadyside High student in 1988. Lori hopes to win Prom Queen to redeem her reputation as the daughter of a rumored murderer, but she faces stiff competition from Shadyside’s resident mean girl, Tiffany (Fina Strazza), and Tiffany’s lackeys. Lori’s burnout, horror-obsessed BFF Megan (Suzanna Son) can’t imagine why Lori cares about prom, but she agrees to help, out of loyalty. But the plastic crown starts to lose its shine when a mysterious masked killer starts to brutally kill off the Prom Queen candidates, one by one.
Director Matt Palmer has fun with the ’80s setting, employing “home-video” shots that set the film’s nostalgic, silly tone. And it is silly—much sillier than the first three movies, especially once the killer starts doing his killing people thing. There’s gore, absolutely. But, perhaps in an homage to the low-budget horror flicks of the ’80s, the bloody kills are so over-the-top—so fake—that the stakes feel non-existent. Don’t get me wrong, I laughed with delight when a kid got both his hands cut off with a paper guillotine, and then tried to open a door with his bloody stumps. That’s fun, no doubt. But unlike the original trilogy, it’s not particularly scary. It’s hard to feel a real sense of serious danger in a movie with a spontaneous dance-off.
There are three big relationships in the movie: Lori’s friendship with Megan, her rivalry with Tiffany, and her romance with Tiffany’s boyfriend (played by David Iacono). Megan, who slicks back her short hair and dons a suit for prom, is queer-coded. Maybe in another version of the script, Megan could have had a crush on Lori. But in this version, she’s simply a supportive, platonic BFF whose under-baked storyline exists mostly for red herring purposes.
Far more interesting is the relationship between Lori and Tiffany, thanks in large part to the compelling performance from Straza, who was recently nominated for a Tony for her performance in Broadway’s John Proctor is the Villain (also starring Sadie Sink, a Fear Street alum). The two girls play up their romantic tension, despite the fact that it is never made explicit.
It’s disappointing, to say the least. The queer romances at the heart of the Fear Street trilogy were what set them apart from the noise. It’s why the fan base of women-loving-women horror fans held watch parties with friends. It’s why they made GIFs for Tumblr and recommended the movie to anyone who would listen. Without that element, Prom Queen is, unfortunately, just another bland teen slasher with a few fun kills. It doesn’t come close to stealing the OG Fear Street‘s crown.