After the success of the Fear Street trilogy in 2021, it’s been a surprisingly long wait for more installments in the franchise. The nostalgia train is still chugging steadily down its tracks, and the horror genre has seen an immense resurgence into the mainstream in the past couple of years, with slashers seemingly hitting that sweet spot of the perfect blend of reminiscence and gore. If they wanted to, they could keep turning out Fear Street movies as frequently as literary legend R.L. Stine does the books they’re based on, and people would watch and enjoy them. Even in the hands of a different writer and director this time, there is something substantive about this series that gives the audience what they want. It may not be original or particularly imaginative, but it hits all the right beats, and easily has the potential to be the Friday the 13th of a new generation, spanning dozens of movies and seeing where the core story could take them.
Now, four years on, the Fear Street saga continues with Prom Queen. Set in the unfortunate town of Shadyside, a place that the original trilogy tells us is tainted by a murderous curse set in motion centuries before, the high school seniors are getting geared up for prom. However, the usual competitiveness and silly teenage hijinks pale in comparison when an ominous figure in red starts stalking and murdering the students. In the grand tradition of Carrie and, of course, Prom Night, the end-of-year festivities create a fun, colorful, and energetic setting for a night of murder and mayhem, and bring the previously supernaturally-charged Fear Street franchise down to a more human level.
What is ‘Fear Street: Prom Queen’ About?

Despite what the mid-credits scene of Fear Street Part Three: 1666 suggested with its shot of a pair of hands snatching the spellbook from the crime scene, Prom Queen has basically nothing to do with the trilogy that preceded it, besides taking place in the same town that just can’t get out of its centuries-long funk. It’s Prom Night of 1988 in Shadyside, and a handful of girls are in the running for prom queen: there’s the popular ones who actually seem to have a shot at winning, one token grungy girl who scowls in her headshot, and then there’s Lori Granger (India Fowler), the outcast. God knows why or how she has come to be nominated, but that’s not the point. What you need to know is that Lori has a tragic backstory, which is hinted at constantly throughout the movie before being incredibly clumsily spelled out to us by Queen Bitch Tiffany (Fina Strazza) in one of her many instances of bullying Lori.

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She is just the latest kid convinced that living in Shadyside is essentially a curse that will doom her life to failure, but, buoyed somewhat by her nomination, Lori wants to go against the grain and enact change. When her cool, androgenous best friend Megan (Suzanna Son) grills her on why someone on the fringes of school society would want to actually take part in its pageantry, Lori says she wants to believe that things can be different, that underdogs can be victorious. What she doesn’t count on is masked figures crashing prom and murdering the nominees one by one, potentially helping her get to the top just by process of bloody elimination.
There’s Plenty of Mystery in the Murder of ‘Prom Queen’

Like any respectable slasher, Prom Queen plays its cards well when it comes to casting suspicion. We’ve got quite the array of characters here, from students and teachers to pushy parents, and without getting too overcrowded, the movie manages to involve them in the action and get you wondering who is doing the slashing and why. It’s established early on that the killer is not acting alone, which opens up any number of possibilities. As the original trilogy did, the movie isn’t afraid to get gory, and does a good job of giving the audience what it wants, never skimping on the blood or fun effects.
Where it lacks is in its direction. The first three movies were made back-to-back with strong, clear, realized direction from Leigh Janiak. Sure, they may not have been anything groundbreaking, but they had a distinct sense of self and a visual style that felt loyal to that. While Prom Queen is a perfectly serviceable horror in the hands of director Matt Palmer, it isn’t quite so visually compelling, and there are certain sequences, particularly the chases, that feel quite generic, like you’ve seen them in a hundred other slashers. It gets a little muddled in places, but at least it works to a decent structure. At a neat 90 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and gets into the prom action refreshingly quickly. We don’t have to wait two-thirds of the runtime for something to happen, and it is paced quite well in terms of regularly dosing us with fun kills.
‘Prom Queen’s Best Performances Come From Surprising Places

Image via Netflix

I love it when a secondary character is played with such flair and gusto that they end up taking center stage, and that is exactly what we get from Fina Strazza. She absolutely understood this assignment, and with her pearl earrings and perfectly coiffed hair, storms into every scene, playing for the back rows with her entitled, bratty antics. She squeals and stamps her feet and throws little fits, and she not only makes the antagonist incredibly entertaining, but surely reminds everybody of at least one person they went to school with. This delicate balance of comedic exaggeration and realism is not an easy one to pull off, but Strazza nails it and ends up stealing the show.
Alongside her is Katherine Waterston as her mother, Nancy, who is the perfect accessory to her nightmare daughter. With a look that combines all the worst aesthetic elements of the 1980s into one single being, she is what Regina George’s mom would look like if she went to the dark side. They’re a great duo to watch, and the movie gives them just enough material to really make an impact. Surprisingly, one of the strongest elements of this teen slasher is its characterization, proving that even movies that aim to appeal to the most basic tenets of entertainment can do so with an element of sophistication.
It’s not breaking any new ground, but Prom Queen is a solid enough teen slasher that does a nice job of continuing the ever-expanding universe of R.L. Stine. The Fear Street franchise has set itself up to have a lot of potential, with its very basic throughline of the town of Shadyside allowing plenty of free rein for the principles and stories to be taken in any number of directions, as this fourth movie proves. In a landscape where the only regular horror franchise character now is Art the Clown, we need to fill that space, which offers safe, reliable, easily digestible horror that doesn’t get too extreme. We are short on new horror franchises, with many simply adding to decades-old IPs like Final Destination and Halloween. Sure, the Fear Street books have been around just as long, but their translation to the screen offers a new cinematic setup with its own lore for the audience to get invested in. If the horror genre really wants to lean into the nostalgia of the ’80s, then we need new and exciting franchises to be born and expanded upon, and Fear Street is a great fit.
Fear Street: Prom Queen arrives on Netflix on May 23.

Fear Street: Prom Queen

This slasher with a classic prom setup may not offer anything new, but it is a very entertaining time.

Release Date

May 23, 2025

Director

Matt Palmer

Writers

Matt Palmer, Donald McLeary

Producers

Jenno Topping, Peter Chernin, Kori Adelson

India Fowler

Lori Granger

Pros & Cons

The movie is snappy and well-paced, never outstaying its welcome at 90 minutes.
A strong and varied cast give some excellent performances, with Fina Strazza delivering an outstanding turn.
There are some great moments of comedy to offset the violence.

Matt Palmer’s direction is not as strong and focused as Leigh Janiak’s was in the first three movies.
There are generic qualities that don’t make for a particularly memorable experience.