Review: Fear Street: Prom Queen

I didn't expect the next Carrie, but I hoped for a reasonable facsimile of Prom Night II. Turns out I didn't even get a reasonable facsimile of a Fear Street movie.

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While I am bound by blood pact to review at least 15 horror movies each year, that does not in fact represent all of the horror movies I watch. One trilogy that I've seen numerous times, but never got around to reviewing, is Netflix's original Fear Street series. Before sharing my thoughts on the fourth, and latest, entry into the Fear Street catalogue, I figured I'd share some brief impressions of the first three films.

• Fear Street Part One: 1994 - Probably my favorite of the movies. I enjoy the characters of this one the most, and the set-up of the broader Sarah Fier mystery had me invested in tuning into the later installments. These movies all top out at B+, but 1994 certainly achieves that score. Also has the single best, and most jarring, kill in the entire franchise so far.

• Fear Street Part Two: 1978 - Every Netflix original movie I've seen has been saddled with the same sort of studio sheen, a not-quite-a-TV-movie / not-quite-not-a-TV-movie vibe. To its credit, 1978 features enough of a gnarly mean streak to disrupt that perception a little bit. I had a hard time rooting for anyone besides Sadie Sink in this one, and I'm not sure if I actually like her character or if she is benefitting from the halo of affection from Stranger Things: Season 4 (Vecna, Running Up That Hill, the whole deal). Still, I appreciate the brutality and the contributions to the broader story.

• Fear Street Part Three: 1666 - This is the one I'm least likely to throw on in the background, but it truly functions as the perfect closer for the Sarah Fier saga. Probably my least favorite of the original trilogy, but I was completely satisfied with the way things ended.

Which brings us to Fear Street: Prom Queen, the first of the Fear Street films that is independent of the Sarah Fier story, though still taking place in the series' setting of Shadyside. That fact, or combination of facts, represent the first problem I have with this movie. I don't know if it would have been better to weave the narrative more closely with the events of the first three movies - it would probably be difficult to tell a novel story when we all just assume that the killer is possessed in the same manner as the rest of the antagonists of these films - but not tying it in at all opens up even more questions. If we are to believe that the events of Prom Queen are completely unrelated to the curse that hangs over Shadyside, that seems highly coincidental and begs the question of why Shadyside is the setting at all. Unfortunately, that is not the only nit I have to pick with this particular presentation.

The prom has been the scene of countless grisly murders across horror cinema history. To suggest that the idea for Prom Queen is unoriginal is sort of beside the point - The Fear Street movies are all about playing within the boundaries of the genre's most archetypal settings. Yet, there is a difference between picking a generic starting point for your story and deciding to follow it through with the most generic decisions at every point in the movie-making process. The plot of the film is whisper-thin, the type of thing that is fully apparent just from reading the title: It's 1988 and there is a race for prom queen of Shadyside High School. That contest results in most of the contenders getting picked off one by one (along with a handful of unlucky bystanders). That's… pretty much it. Our protagonist is an outcast with a dark family history who wants to be prom queen to change the narrative that surrounds her. It is a bit of a puzzling motivation, and she does not seem to have any plan to overcome the massive gap in popularity between her and her opponents. No time to explore that though, because while this movie clocks in at a modest 90 minutes, there is only about 40 minutes of actual plot and we arrive at prom night in the blink of an eye, ready to start carving through some teenagers. What follows is a string of mostly uninspired kills doled out by the laziest "hooded mask guy" you can imagine, all to the soundtrack of what amounts to an algorithmically generated Spotify playlist of 80's party hits. To pad the runtime, we have an onslaught of exposition delivery, which is truly comical given how little this plot demands exposition. The dialogue is poor, which is a shame given that the actors are all generally charismatic and might have delivered something memorable with more to work with.

The nadir of this fiasco is a dance-off between our heroic outcast and the queen mean girl who is her primary competition for the tiara and sash. I have mixed-to-negative feelings about 1980's Prom Night, despite some recognizing it as a classic of the genre, but in my review I did praise it for its show-stopping dance centerpiece. The big dance-off in Prom Queen has much higher stakes - it is the pivotal point that turns the crowd and influences the outcome of the race - but it is laughably underwhelming. It doesn't seem like either young lady was given any choreography or even shown a few TikToks in preparation for their big scene, and so you have the entire plot hinging on one girl dancing poorly to a song that doesn't seem to be the one we hear playing, and another girl dancing equally as poorly and throwing in the occasional exaggerated stumble to indicate she's losing the contest. Words can't do justice to how silly and unprofessional the whole thing comes off. By the time we get the reveal of the killer (or killers - we're allowed, nay, mandated to have more than one ever since 1996), it is the least surprising outcome you could imagine. An anti-twist, so to speak.

So, there you go, this was a bad movie. I'm sure I'll watch it again. That's the thing about sitting down and picking apart something this ephemeral (which you'll recall I am obligated to do via the blood pact I mentioned earlier) you can't help but make it sound terrible because it is designed to be utterly disposable. It cannot stand up to the slightest scrutiny. However, sometimes I watch scary movies without applying the slightest scrutiny, and this will be just fine for those occasions. Halloween's warm orange glow can wash away anything, even expectations.