"Fear Street" Sinks to a New Low with "Prom Queen"

[the following review is spoiler-free]

In July of 2021, Netflix released a horror film trilogy based off the R.L. Stine book series, Fear Street. Audiences praised all three films at the time and the series ended up being a net positive for Netflix, but Fear Street wasn't without its critics. Detractors tore apart the series' cheesiness, unlikable characters, and weak plotline. But while the original trilogy divided viewers, it seems everyone is in agreement over Netflix's latest installment: Prom Queen. A movie so bad it has people questioning if the series was even good to begin with.

As the halfway point of 2025 approaches, Prom Queen is easily the worst film of the year so far, and that's saying something. It's one of those very rare cases where there's virtually nothing to praise and everything to loathe. Defenders of this film will say "it's camp!" or "stop taking it so seriously!" But as a diehard John Waters fan, there's a difference between camp and a poorly made film and Prom Queen is unfortunately the latter.

I pride myself on my ability to find merit in even the most abysmal movies. There have been plenty of incidents where a film has a terrible script but is shot well, or the plot is uninteresting but at least the lead performance was decent. Very, very rarely do I come across a film where I can find legitimately nothing I like about it, but that is unfortunately the case with Prom Queen.

Fear Street's latest installment follows the story of Lori Granger and her campaign to be crowned her high school's latest prom queen. For her entire life Lori has been ostracized by her hometown of Shadyside due to rumors of her mother murdering her father years prior. On prom night, a vicious slasher sets out to kill every prom queen candidate and then some, turning everyone's dream night into a bloody mess. Emphasis on the mess.

Prom Queen is cheesy, but it's not the kind of self-aware cheesy that people are responding to. For something to be camp it must be self aware, and while defenders of this film may argue that the filmmakers were conscious of what they were making, it sure doesn't come off that way. All of its characters are downright detestable and the dialogue genuinely feels like it was written by a thirteen year old on Wattpad trying their best. The rival towns are literally called Sunnyvale and Shadyside. The main character, Lori finally gets her confidence after putting on some winged eyeliner and has a big dramatic walk-out in a sequence that can only be described as "eye-roll inducing."

Every character in Prom Queen is an exaggerated stereotype of the characters you'd find in any 80's high school movie. Unfortunately, all of these characters are detestable, even the ones the audience is supposed to root for. The main antagonist, Tiffany doesn't make for a convincing mean girl at all and that's just as much due to the script as it is Fina Strazza's performance. Every character meant to come off as "cool" just reads as cringe-worthy and desperate. Some Letterboxd users have even taken digs at the casting choices citing that all the actors have "iPhone face" and don't make for convincing 80's teenagers.

The sad truth is that nothing about this film works. Not the performances, not the comedy, not the storyline, nothing. It's incredibly awkward at times to see R.L Stine's middle school level writing paired with such jarring gore.

It's clear what director, Matt Palmer was trying to do here, he was trying to make Terrifier; a sanitized, Netflix-ready Terrifier. But the whole reason people are drawn to those movies are because of how little industry-grooming is involved. Damien Leone and company set out to make their films as ridiculous as possible because they know what their audience wants, and it's really hard to figure out who the target audience for Prom Queen even is.

This latest iteration of Fear Street was certainly a doozy in more ways than one. Let's hope that the next installment is better and that we'll all have something worthwhile to watch this Halloween.