Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Fear Street: Prom Queen’ on Netflix, a Witless Pastiche Of ‘80s Slasher Tropes

By John Serba

This week on Holy Shit That’s Chris Klein Theatre is Fear Street: Prom Queen (now on Netflix), the fourth in the movie franchise spun out of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street book series. The first three movies were a tight trilogy, and a hit for Netflix back in 2021, possibly because they’re very Stranger Things at times, and because Covid was still raging and lots of us were stuck at home, bored and looking for something to say nice things about – which is a way of saying we might’ve been too generous with our praise for the Fear Streets, which quickly evaporated from the zeitgeist and our memories. Prom Queen is a standalone feature set in 1988, so prepare yourselves for the ol’ nostalgia buffet – the poster pays homage to A Nightmare on Elm Street, its atmosphere consists primarily of hairspray and there are times when the movie feels like a few dozen era-specific needle drops in search of a place to land. Now let’s get into whether you should jump into this one with a rebel yell, or just relax, don’t do it.

FEAR STREET: PROM QUEEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Shadyside. The town, in case you didn’t see the first free Fear Streets, is cursed. Like every other town, people die there all the time. Unlike every other town, they die in miserable, horrible ways. It usually has to do with masked creepos wielding very sharp tools. Lori Granger (India Fowler) reminds us of this via voiceover, before getting into the nitty-gritty of her own crummy existence. For vague reasons – something to do with somethingsomething, I think – she’s running for prom queen, even though she’s not one of the popular girls. The probable winner is Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza), the rhymes-with-ditch with a posse of toadies dubbed the Wolf Pack, all of whom are also running for prom but will be voting for their mean girl leader. The other queen wannabe is Christy (Ariana Greenblatt), the school weed dealer and bad girl who doesn’t need to be in this movie at all other than to give it just enough scenes to hit the 88-minute mark, and the killer another potential victim.

Lori’s only ally is her bestie Megan (Suzanna Son of Red Rocket fame), the probably-queer girl who’s good at art and loves horror movies and therefore makes gory props to prank her classmates. A cloud of inherited trauma hovers over Lori – when she was in utero, her father was murdered on prom night, and everyone believes her mother did it. And shitty Tiffany leaps on every opportunity to remind Lori of this rumor, even in the middle of class with everyone listening, and she gets away with it because it’s 1988, and also because her father, Dan (Klein), is the total derp of a teacher. Lori has to work a crap job at the diner where all the other kids hang out so she can afford a thrift store prom dress. And to further complicate things, there’s a spark between Lori and Tiffany’s boyfriend Tyler (David Iacono), who may be growing weary of all this mean-girl horsepuckey, or may be a mere cog in this cookie-cutter slasher plot.

Speaking of. A masked and red-raincoated ax murderer with his own thrice-ripped-off synth theme has been skulking around Shadyside, which is perfect for any residents who need to air out their intestines – especially since they’re being suffocated by all those high-waisted acid-washed jeans. Exquisite timing, really, since it’s now prom night, and the school gym is full of kids waiting to be hacked up to the tune of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams,” despite the prayers of the Jesus-freak vice principal (say it ain’t so, Lili Taylor). Funny thing is, the psycho appears to be targeting Tiffany’s prom-queen competitors, although he/she/it creates a few non-queen corpses just to keep the list of potential suspects from narrowing too much. Place your bets!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Fear Street: Prom Queen is a hacky slasher that wants to nod to Elm Street and Halloween (there’s even a peering-throught-the-louvers-of-a-closet-door ripoff shot), and the killer is a facsimile of the baddie from I Know What You Did Last Summer. And to persuade you from thinking the movie isn’t cool, Megan has a poster for Fulci’s Zombie in her room, and the kids go to a theater that’s showing Phantasm II and Miracle Mile.

Performance Worth Watching: I’m just gonna use this space to remind you that Suzanna Son was a revelation in Red Rocket. 

Memorable Dialogue: A recurring joke pertaining to the school’s powerless and emasculated principal finds him repeatedly saying “Wowzers” when something notable happens. Such are the heights of this movie’s wit.

Sex and Skin: Nah. This movie’s too wussy to truly pay homage to vintage slasher flicks.

Photo: Alan Markfield / © Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Our Take: I want to slap the words Miracle Mile out of this movie’s mouth, like Lili Taylor’s character would do to a kid who uttered the lord’s name in vain. Miracle Mile is a wild cult masterpiece. Fear Street: Prom Queen is, to be blunt, peux peux. Like the previous Fear Streets, it’s a witless pastiche, but unlike them, it’s borderline unwatchable, a vaguely directed, vaguely plotted, vaguely scripted mess of sloppy audio, sloppy editing and sloppy whatever it is a grip does. But hey, the movie makes lots of references! Most blatantly to seemingly dozens of pop hits of the ’80s, which hold the movie together like watered-down rubber cement. Oh, and there’s plenty of nods to all the influential horror movies you should be watching instead of this one.

Like every other filmmaker who holds slasher touchstones in reverence, director Matt Palmer makes sure the movie has a grainy ’80s look, like it was run through a Camp Crystal Lake Instagram filter. But, the sickos will ask, what about the kills? Well, you’ll see a bunch of ’em, and one might be tempted to praise the gore and practical effects if they weren’t so stylistically off the rack – decapitations and disembowelments have never been so dull. Its stabs at comedy are even more listless, the plethora of non-laughs undermining any sense of dread the movie might’ve churned up. It also features one of the stupidest dance-off sequences ever committed to film. Prom Queen is a bad movie, Netflix at its dreckiest. I wanted to push it into a threshing machine. That’d be a worthy kill.

Our Call: Even Chris Klein revisiting a plot with a high-school election as its dramatic fulcrum can’t save Fear Street: Prom Queen. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.