‘Fear Street: Prom Queen’ Review: A Rote Standalone Slasher in the ‘Fear Street’ Series

Set in 1994, 1978, and 1666, respectively, Leigh Janek’s Fear Street trilogy is, in many ways, a perfect encapsulation of the streaming era. The films’ period settings are little more than justifications for needle drops, while the costuming and set design are so broad in their presentation that the characters feel like modern teens dressed up in historical drag. For the first two films in particular, the reference points are closer to Stranger Things, Bridgerton, and American Horror Story than to the slasher films of the mid ’90s or late ’70s, and the same can be said of the series’ newest incarnation, the 1988-set Fear Street: Prom Queen.

Also based on R.L. Stine’s long-running book series, Prom Queen continues the earlier films’ offbeat, often awkward melding of YA drama and R-rated gore, here set to the tunes of Bananarama, Billy Idol, Tiffany, and Duran Duran, among others. The Shadyside-versus-Sunnydale town rivalry that’s so central to the previous installments is mostly sidelined in Prom Queen, as the focus here is mostly on the Shadyside High School battle for the titular title between a quartet of mean girls, led by the vain and pompous Tiffany (Fina Strazza), and a quiet outsider, Lori (India Fowler), who’s looking for redemption among her peers.

As a standalone film, Prom Queen is less bogged down by mythology and supernatural lore than the films in Janek’s trilogy. But in their place is a regurgitation of the most hackneyed conventions of slasher films and high school dramedies. The prologue introduces us to the major players, including Tiffany and her toady, Melissa (Ella Rubin), as well as rebel Christy (Ariana Greenblatt) and Lori’s nerdy, horror-loving bestie, Megan (Susanna Son). Some of them will survive the night in which a masked killer takes out the prom queen contestants one by one, but none can escape their woefully familiar, one-note characterizations.

In this sense, Matt Palmer’s film is very much like the most rote slasher films of the ’80s, with its threadbare narrative mostly functioning to line up fresh teen meat for slaughter. Had the film taken on a tone of archness or campiness, it could have at least had fun with its simple-minded premise, but only Katherine Waterston, as Tiffany’s uptight, rage-filled mom, understands that going ludicrously over-the-top is the only way to breathe some life into such tired material.

Throughout, the film’s kills are suitably gory, but they’re so blatantly helped along by CGI that they lack the tactility needed to give them any sort of bone-chilling effect. But even less hollow are the stabs at emotional and thematic resonance. Lori’s tragic past is repeatedly mentioned but never revealed in detail—at least not until the cheap third-act rug-pull. And the depiction of the ever-intensifying interpersonal drama between Tiffany, her friends, and her boyfriend, Tyler (David Iacono), is as telegraphed and predictable as it is rushed through.

A generous reading of Prom Queen is that the absurd, whiplash-inducing changes in character behavior that we witness across one fateful night are to be expected from an ode to the ’80s slasher. If so, that’s no excuse for the film to be so dispiriting in execution.