Fear Street: Prom Queen is not a good movie. I hate writing reviews like this for most movies.  However, when a high-profile studio delivers such a charmless, low-effort production, the best I can do is warn people. Also, it’s a criminal waste of the usually amazing Lilli Taylor. For that, it deserves all the hate coming its way.

• Directed By: Matt Palmer
• Written By: Matt Palmer. Donald McLeary. R.L. Stine
• Starring: India Fowler. Suzanna Son. Fina Strazza

I can’t even get into theme or character development yet. At a base level, the concept, that prom is somehow THAT important, is laughable. Yes, there is some tragic backstory. The main character’s mother is accused of killing her father on their prom night.  There is very little mystery as to what actually happened that night, and who the real murderers are.

Sticking to the Basics

Once that’s established, we get the usual high school slasher tropes, regardless of whether they make sense or not. There is a lot of mean girl bullying, class divide, an elaborate slasher costume, and excessive narration. So. Much. Narration.  Why bother showing anything through character action, when you can just narrate it?  It drags down what the movie is trying to be.  What it ends up being is a movie where a lot of terrible people get killed.

Once you get past the questionable premise, equally questionable acting, and similarities to other, better movies, there could be a decent movie somewhere in here. It’s just buried in everything it’s trying to reference or accomplish.

Missed Opportunities

This could have been a movie about how being a teen makes everything seem bigger than it is. How it can be hard to differentiate between serious issues and temporary drama. Unfortunately, the pacing is messed up. It’s hard to make a horror movie where none of the characters realize they are in danger. Prom Night, the original prom slasher, did it by starting with a shocking intro and building tension slowly. The opening for Fear Street: Prom Queen isn’t nearly big enough to sell us on the horror that is coming.

And honestly, I don’t care enough about any of these characters enough to be concerned if they lived or died. All we know about most of them is from the narration. They aren’t people, they’re slasher bait.

No Thrills or Chills

There are no surprises in Fear Street: Prom Queen.  You could get tricked by illogical inconsistencies or be lulled into thinking the movie was smarter than it actually is. However, everything resolves as expected from the beginning.  This brings us back to the under used Lilli Taylor and the red herring issue.

The script wants the audience to believe that there are multiple suspects that could be responsible for the killings. However, the filming and/or editing choices early on eliminate all but a few of those. The others are killed in short order. With no real suspects, and no characters we care about, it’s hard to stay invested in the killings.  It’s a long slog of what the story could have been, and what it ended up being, working against each other.

How NOT to Adapt

At first, I was thinking that maybe some of the awkwardness was due to Prom Queen being an adaptation of a YA novel written in the early ‘90s. After I looked up the synopsis for the book, it became clear that this version of the story only adapted a few elements from the original. This only brings up more questions. If they weren’t going to stick to the original story, which I’m not advocating, why go in this direction? It’s not connected to the first trilogy other than existing in the same place, Shadyside. It also fails to expand our knowledge of Shadyside in any significant way. Worse, since it’s set before the final events of the trilogy, everything is mostly resolved by those movies anyway.

Slasher Elements

Technically, Fear Street: Prom Queen is a slasher. Mostly in that people do get, well, slashed. There is some light stalking during the prom scenes and a creative use of items found around the school as weapons.

The killers believe they have a tragic backstory, or that they have overcome one. Which had it been presented differently may have been interesting. By the time that character element is revealed, it’s too late to be interesting.

A better movie would have made a point to focus on social isolation vs. isolation through physical location. But Fear Street: Prom Queen is not that movie.

Final Thoughts

I could keep going on why Fear Street: Prom Queen didn’t work for me, but at this point it feels like bullying. The movie isn’t good.  Worse yet, it had the opportunity to be and just kind of blew it.

Fear Street: Prom Queen is now streaming on Netflix.