The logic behind the latest entry in Netflix’s Fear Street horror franchise is clear. The streamer debuted the series with a trio of 2021 films subtitled 1994, 1978 and 1666, overseen by the creative vision of a single director, Leigh Janiak. Each film had a clear antecedent in the history of the genre, as 1994 resembled Scream, 1978 resembled Friday the 13th and 1666 resembled The Witch. Instead of this seeming like a self-indulgent name-checking and style-checking of influences, the series worked as a cohesive trilogy of adaptations of R.L. Stine’s novels, which got better as it went along. (We reviewed all three together, if you’re interested.)
Which period horror archetype is missing from that list? The 1980s high school prom movie, of course, which might rightly be embodied by the 1980 movie Prom Night if that film were better known, and weren’t a better example of late 70s horror filmmaking, akin to Friday the 13th. But horror aficionados know the type of movie Fear Street: Prom Queen is, where pretty girls in poofy dresses get an axe through the head.
It might have worked, too, if – not for you meddling kids? No, if not for Janiak ceding her creative oversight to Matt Palmer, a British director helming his second feature. Janiak still gets a producing credit, but she shouldn’t want one. This second effort should be the final effort for Palmer, if this is his best notion on furthering a concept that clearly should have remained a self-contained trilogy.
The action takes place in 1988, still in the neighbouring and oh so symbolically named towns of Sunnyvale and Shadyside, which played host to the centuries-spanning mythology in the first three films. Other than that, there appears to be no connection to the characters or families explored in those films. There is a legacy of trauma, though, as Lori Granger (India Fowler) is trying to win the honour of prom queen, a peer voted honour, even though her mother was found guilty of stabbing her father to death. She wants the title seemingly only because it might change the fortunes of her family name; the sweet Lori otherwise is not the type of girl who aspires to such shallow accolades.
Unfortunately, the other candidates most certainly do have those aspirations. Leading the pack is Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza), a mean girl so mean that she might have been solely responsible for the trope. She’s naturally got a mean mother (Katherine Waterston) and an apparently good-natured father who is also a teacher at the school (Chris Klein), while the other hopefuls are Tiffany sycophants in some fashion or other. Making Lori a target beyond her family heritage is the fact that Tiffany’s boyfriend Tyler (David Iacono) has eyes for Lori. The only one in Lori’s corner is her best friend Megan (Suzanna Son), who is coded as gay and has a thing for freaking people out with staged gore.
It’s hard to decide where to start talking about why Prom Queen is so bad. Its total lack of distinctiveness and cleverness seems as good a place as any. While not seeming original was kind of the point of the first three Fear Street movies, they made up for it by connecting the narratives of all three, not to mention following a throughline of two teenage girls in love. Coding Melissa as gay, with the male formalwear she wears to the prom, is the closest this sequel can come to something progressive or even interesting, preferring to exist within the same closet in which such a character would have actually lived in 1988.
Speaking of the year, the design details feel false. Prom Queen doesn’t really look like a 1980s film, botching the standard of authenticity it sets for itself. It’s made without accuracy but also without irony, so it just kind of sits there.
As just one example that stands in for the larger problem, the best sequence in Prom Queen might be a choreographed dance among the contenders, all wearing American flag leotards, scored to the Roxette song “The Look,” which is meant to be diegetic there at the dance. (All except Lori, who is naturally excluded from participation.) You might have had to live through the era to know this – not that this writer did or anything crazy like that – but “The Look” wasn’t actually released as a single until 1989. Does that matter? It does if your movie is working so hard to say “Look at me, I’m actually from 1988.”
And there’s so little beyond that window dressing. Interesting kills? No. Fleshed out back story? No. Creepy costume for the killer? Sure, if you think a generic mask and a red rain slicker is creepy, though rain slickers are about the most cliched outfit there is for mysterious killers. Just about anything at the narrative level feels perfunctory, a necessary evil to deliver unremarkable gore that is instantly forgotten.
The real mystery here is what someone like Katherine Waterston, a respected actress, is doing as the vamping bitchy mother of a bitchy teenage mean girl. Sam’s daughter should have sniffed the odour of this turd wafting off the script itself. Lily Taylor, awkwardly playing an assistant principal, also should have known better, but at least her career has fallen on hard times, leaving any exposure as good exposure. Still well within her prime, Waterston shouldn’t have been anywhere near this. (It’s sort of fun to see American Pie alum Chris Klein, though. He’s the type of relic we should be seeing in a movie like this.)
Movies as terrible as Fear Street: Prom Queen turn critics into bad writers. We can’t properly express the utter vapidity of what we’ve watched, so we get sidetracked on details that don’t seem important. Though it’s definitely lame to call something lame, Fear Street: Prom Queen is a lame movie – lame in the truest sense of that word, like there’s some able bodied version of this movie out there, but it’s been hobbled by poor craft and empty thinking.
Fear Street: Prom Queen is currently streaming on Netflix.