The race for Prom Queen is killer… literally, as a slasher takes down the crown in Netflix’s Fear Street: Prom Queen.
Fear Street: Prom Queen, directed by Matt Palmer and written by Palmer & Donald McLeary and adapted from the 1992 The Prom Queen book, is unconnected to the 2021 trilogy, save for a few mentions of the camp slaughter and overall feel. You won’t find witch Sara Fier or her street here. I’m putting it out there before anyone is confused. Prom Queen doesn’t add to the mythos. Think of it as another book entry in R. L. Stine’s long-running series. Some connect to a larger milieu, some don’t; X-Files mythology vs monster-of-the-week.
I love the separation. For better or worse, Fear Street: Prom Queen plays like an episode of a non-existent Fear Street show. For better, the tone and history of the town are established by the previous entries (although you need not have seen them). Shadyside is a dangerous town, with a cursed history of murder, magic, and mystery; the flip side to the beautiful, rich, trouble-free Sunnyvale. Bad things happen, blood is spilled, and people are ruined. For worse, much of the characterization and story beats feel like an episode expanded from 45 to 90 minutes, without beefing up, leaving a lost feeling as it tries to gain footing. Fear Street: Prom Queen is entertaining, no question. But it also doesn’t commit to what it wants to be, pulling back from reveling in the 1980s slasher cliches and the humor to try to give a depth that isn’t there. Uneven, but worth a view.
Lori Granger is a long shot for the crown at Shadyside High’s 1988 prom, but she’s trying anyway. She’s unpopular, with one friend: the horror loving, cynical Megan; apparently this stems from her mother being blamed for her father’s stabbing on prom night eighteen years previously (a weirdly thin way to give her high school hate, but it connects to the prom night of the plot, so shrug?) Between her and the title are this school’s Heathers and the wild drug-dealing Christie. And an axe-wielding killer taking down the teens and others in the way. 
How is the slashing? Solid. The bloodiest prom since Mary Lou Mahony returned from the dead in my favorite Nightmare on Elm Street ripoff, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II. Okay, Carrie in her various iterations killed far more students, and there is a decent body count, but I wanted to talk about Hello Mary Lou. I adore that wild flick. Palmer sets up each sequence well, with a certain level of shock, sense of tension, and surprise. There are some great kills, often feeling right out of the 1980s. They feature wonderful, practical effects, but a bunch revert to iffy CG. It’s strange, as similar effects are practical in the same movie. However, all are done in the glee that comes from a knowing, self-aware modern kill flick.
Between the kills, the characters and plotting are lacking. The characters aren’t given much: I often was confused on who was who, some of the driving points for them don’t amount to much (Lori’s parentage past, a family rivalry with lead Plastic Tiffany), characters come in like we met them before but hadn’t, and others vanish for too long. They mostly exist as victims and/or red herrings. There is a looseness to the proceedings, a frustrating scattershot.
At ninety minutes exactly, it seems like more of the meat of the matter was cut in favor of blood, or more often, filler, strangely enough. Yes, I say this despite noting it also feels like 45 minutes stretched to 90. Both are true. Many empty bits do nothing with those moments to build the world or characters, or give more for the audience to latch onto. Give more character, or at least dig into the cliches or subvert them. As it stands, the genre riff is airy, not solidifying.
The performances are fine. India Fowler as Lori gives an easy charm as the wannabe Prom Queen. The mean girls, Fina Strazza, Ella Rubin, and Rebecca Ablack, bring the right amount of over-the-top menace of movie high school terrors. Among the younger cast, Suzanna Son as Megan brings a spark, stealing the show wherever she’s on screen. But it’s the older cast’s Katherine Waterson, of Alien: Covenant, as Tiffany’s mom, with a delicately unhinged performance, who most understood the assignment, channeling Carla Gugino. Sadly, American Pie’s Chris Klein and especially The Conjuring’s Lili Taylor are wasted as little more than “hey, I know them.”
It’s not a great film, but it isn’t truly bad. It’s an enjoyable slasher that does what you’d expect it to do, even if it drops the ball too often. Fear Street: Prom Queen reminds me of one of the titles you’d get at a video store as part of a Five Movies, Five Bucks promotion. You didn’t come in to get it specifically, but “sure, why not?” and pop in after Gremlins and everyone winds down. It has a silly under-cooked reveal after obvious red herrings, oddly holding back on some aspects, and the point-by-point doesn’t make logical sense outside of the viewer. But those same films it pulls from did the same. Put yourself in that mindset, sit back, and enjoy Fear Street: Prom Queen as the light but entertaining slasher it is.