Fear Street: Prom Queen
Introduction
There should be a Netflix documentary on the algorithm that Netflix follows to churn out one crappy content after another. The crappiness isn’t only associated with stalely brewing content closer to home, but also elsewhere wherein any successful formula is so digitally shredded that it all too films staged and predictable while serving the extremely glossy but hollow product for consumption. The Fear Street trilogy remains an interesting case-study in this scenario – initially planned for a one-movie-release-a-month to being dumped on Netflix in a tactfully curated one-film-a-week format, it literally was a spectacular cross pollination of genres that was marketed as a slasher horror before transitioning into campy and silly comedy or even a time travelling genre, with the roots of murders spaced across years! In that way, it remained an innovative concept with its director Leigh Janiak opening doors for how films of this genre should be made. But Netflix being Netflix decided to milk its success by announcing the fourth film of the franchise Fear Street : Prom Queen, tactfully curating it for the Netflix algorithm and replacing Leigh with Matt Palmer! And that in short was a recipe for disaster in this slasher horror that was a homage to the 80s slasher films, all for the wrong reason!
Story & Screenplay
Lol, if you are still in it for the story, Fear Street : Prom Queen has a plot thinner than the thinnest slice of wafer that is stalely kept in the fryer for too long! It is a simple serial killer template of an underdog who is bullied initially and later hunted by a serial killer that gives direct vibes of the Scream franchise or I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise. If this was an episode of The Studio, I would totally imagine Matt Remick instructing the director (who is Matt too, lol) to ‘borrow references’ from the famous slasher films without wasting time on the infodump that is associated with these films. The conversations between Matt to Matt would be – people have signed up for the kills, don’t kill them with boredom! And that sets the ball rolling initially by literally skimming through the characters, each of whom could be potential suspects in the film.
One of the early classroom scenes of the film reminded me of the other Netflix dud, Nadaaniyan (2025). The difference being that Miss Briganza (ah haaa) is replaced by a male teacher who prompts his students to participate in the Prom, much like what Raj Aryan Malhotra would tell his students in Mohabbatein (2000). The setting of the drama is in the town of Shadyside, a neighbouring town to the incidents that have transpired in Sunnyville with regards to a serial killer. In that regard (further on), you are introduced to the underdog Lori (India Fowler) who is the center of attraction for all the wrong reasons given how her mother had allegedly killed her father at a certain point in the past. The crowd favourite is Tiffany (Fina Strazza) who is competing from the Prom Queen title at the Prom Event. And oh by the way, the year remains 1988 because Netflix allegedly wanted to pay a stale homage to the 80s mindless slasher films. In other words, if Nadaaniyan was a slasher horror film then it would be called Fear Street : Prom Queen!
After most dullest opening act, things started to pick up, not because of the urgency in the writing but more because I switched to 1.5x speed to get this torture of a film past me soon (thank you for this feature, Netflix…you really know how to balance things out). The setting changes to the Prom event, and you just know that people, particularly Tiffany’s without-an-introduction friends are going to be the first in line to get bumped in this film. But the most exciting part of a slasher films besides guessing the identity of the killer is in the ‘kills’ itself. The campiness and the frivolous comedy would be important key ingredients to the setup of knowing that a character is about to get killed, yet tactfully awaiting a silliness of the situation to result in humour. It is typically like the Final Destination franchise that has excelled in it. But, what we get here are such generic kills – heads sliced, people electrocuted after an attempt to make out, limbs cut off, and a chase that is unexciting as ever! This wasn’t the writing but more the Netflix algorithm flattening out the levels in a bid to provide some polished fun.
The worst part of the multiple ‘kill’ sequences is that there is no buildup whatsoever. People are randomly killed, randomly chased and the first of the many grand reveals was ridiculous to the core. It again was the algorithm speaking – create a facade for the viewers only to make a U-turn two scenes later by a couple more revelations that would shock the viewers. Guess what? The real killer of this film was revealed to be…………….The Netflix algorithm, that was so poor and even further poorly executed that I for once felt like a character in the Final Destination film trying to escape it, but eventually succumbing to it. The screenplay is trashy and poorly executed!
Dialogues, Music & Direction
The dialogues are corny and had me distracted even during the duration of 90 minutes. The BGM is woefully poor and does nothing to elevate the drama beyond the ordinary. In a way, the BGM remained an anti-thesis of the Undertaker score that was chilling while alerting the viewers on an event that would soon take place. This literally felt like a snooze-fest. The cinematography comprises of frames that aren’t bloody or gory enough to evoke any sort of fear. The core reason being that there was no effort made on building the atmospherics of the drama that would inculcate a sense of fear in the minds of the viewers. As a result, even the kills felt abrupt and sudden. The editing is pretty poor, never fully committing to the horrors of the kills while incorporating multiple jump cuts that severely dilute the impact of the film. Director Matt Palmer delivers a woefully insufferable drama that fails to take-off. The drama almost gave me an impression that the director doesn’t understand the grammer of constructing a slasher horror, wherein it suffers from poor staging and execution. The skill-set remained absence, probably killed off by the Netflix algorithm, even as the drama remained heavy on steroids that ultimately were self-destructive!
Performances
The performances are downright mediocre by the members of the cast. Katherine Waterstone as Nancy is woefully wasted and she doesn’t have enough substance in her character to impress. Rebecca Ablack as Debbie and Ella Rubin as Melissa are literally used as fillers in the drama. Darrin Baker as Principal Wayland and David Iacono as Tyler have very little to do. Fina Strazza as Tiffany is way too superficial and doesn’t have any logical reasoning towards her hate for the protagonist, and she is forgettable to the core. India Fowler as Lori is quite mediocre wherein the fear of her past and present is almost never reflected in her body language or with her expressions. The lone spark remained Suzanna Son as Megan and a side-character being the best actor is an even bigger issue for me in a slasher film.
Conclusion
The weekend remained a meta-cinematic version of the Final Destination series for me. I tried escaping the horrors of Kesari Veer and instead turned towards Fear Street : Prom Queen. But guess a ‘bad movie’ still found my sanity! Fear Street : Prom Queen is a trashy Netflix algorithm-driven drama that feels like a reimagining of Nadaaniyan if it was a slasher-horror film…..thereby being as bad as bad could ever be! Available on Netflix.
