Adapted from yet another one of author R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books (specifically The Prom Queen) and following up the 2021 trilogy of films directed by Leigh Janiak, Fear Street: Prom Queen drops us at the end of yet another school year at Shadyside High circa 1988, right before the senior prom. Sadly, Janiak is missing from the franchise’s fourth installment, with Matt Palmer (Calibre), who also co-wrote with Donald McLeary, taking the reigns and bringing us a less subversive but still appropriately blood-soaked entry.
India Folwer (The Strangers: Chapter 1) stars as Lori Granger, the daughter of Rose (Joanne Boland), who years earlier was accused of killing her husband but eventually cleared of the crime but not the stigma in this hyper-judgmental community. Lori is an outcast, relentlessly bullied by a wolfpack of girls led by Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza), but even that hasn’t stopped her from desperately wanting to be voted prom queen (not unlike 75 percent of her class, apparently), hoping that even a shallow victory would help people accept her more readily. Her only close friend is Megan (Suzanna Son, Red Rocket, The Idol), who is clearly attracted to her best buddy but would likely never make a move; she would, however protect Lori with every fiber of her being.
But as the prom fast approaches, the other girls vying for queen start disappearing, beginning with Christy (Ariana Greenblatt). To everyone in the film, these girls are vanishing, but we know they are being killed quite brutally by a slasher in a red raincoat and mask. The murders are particularly nasty, so much so that they don’t quite match the frivolous tone of the rest of the film. The deaths aren’t anything extraordinary (especially when you compare them to the wonderfully creative kills in last week’s Final Destination Bloodlines), but they’re still jarring because the rest of this Fear Street chapter feels so generic and lacking in creativity, from the “teen” dialogue and period music choices to the way the film plays out, including a groan-worthy reveal of the killer’s identity.
In a heavy-handed way, Prom Queen pays homage to movies like Prom Night and Carrie (there’s even a movie theater marquee for a theater in downtown Shadyside playing Phantasm 2 and Miracle Mile). But these little nods don’t make up for broadly drawn supporting characters like Lili Taylor as the school’s controlling vice principal or Katherine Waterston and Chris Klein as Tiffany’s fawning parents. In fact, the few well-known, seemingly overqualified actors cast in this production should give you some clues as to what’s really going on in the story. I appreciated the complicated nature of Lori and Megan’s relationship, and I wish the film had focused more on the bond between those two characters. But what’s here is surface-level, cheap scares; buckets of blood; and thinly drawn characters that all combined to bore me to tears, even at a scant 90-minute running time.
The film is now streaming on Netflix.
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