Fear Street: Prom Queen

"Prom Queen” blitzes through familiar pop-comic vignettes, only pausing to make its loathsome characters’ adolescent nightmares just a little bit freakier.

2021 was an excellent year for slasher fans, and the Fear Street trilogy was one of the big reasons why. Four years later, Fear Street: Prom Queen, which exists in the same town and timeline but functions as a standalone, continues the fun.

Unfortunately, Fear Street: Prom Queen simultaneously goes out of its way to steal directly from all its major influences, demonstrating little if any original thought.

Fear Street: Prom Queen fails to channel both the outrageous aesthetics and the brutal violence of the films it’s imitating, making this indifferently made exercise in YA horror supremely skippable.

After the original "Fear Street" trilogy, I was itching to return to Shadyside. It was not worth the wait.

No characters in this are developed enough to invest in them or pin them down as suspects. At about the time Blood Red Raincoat Killer whips out a circular saw, which is as inventive as the murders get, the movie invites us to check out.

This deeply disappointing new Fear Street instalment leans too hard into worn-out tropes and excessive gore, at the expense of fun, engaging characters or any genuine scares.

Fear Street: Prom Queen features a compelling narrative that connects to the Fear Street trilogy. However, it is important to note that it is not as closely integrated as the earlier films but rather a standalone within the universe for the time being. The characters are well-developed and the atmosphere, visuals and music are excellent, complementing the overall tone of the film. The pacing is also well-balanced. Overall, it is an enjoyable movie that many overlook and dismiss as inferior simply because it is not as closely connected to the original trilogy at this stage.

Fear Street: Prom Queen is an entertaining film, the kind you can watch easily if you enjoy slashers. It has high school, prom queen candidates, an 80s atmosphere, murders, suspicion and that basic pleasure of trying to guess who is behind everything. It is not a great film, but it is not a disaster either. It works as bloody, disposable **** problem is that it arrives after a much more interesting trilogy. Those three films had the curse, the witchcraft, Shadyside’s past, the jumps between different periods and a larger sense of story that gave everything more weight. This is not a direct sequel to that trilogy, and you can feel it. It shares the same universe, a teen tone and a taste for slasher horror, but it lacks that saga dimension that made even the earlier flaws feel like part of something bigger.Here, everything is simpler. The film plays as a prom-night slasher, with its clichés, popular girls, outsiders, secrets and showy deaths. And it partly works, because the franchise clearly likes the genre. There is blood, there is pace, and some scenes have enough energy to keep your attention. If you go in expecting a teen horror film without too many complications, you can have a decent time with it.Still, it is also much less memorable. The characters do not have the strength of those in the original trilogy, the story is more predictable, and the film never really makes Shadyside feel as unsettling as it did before. There are fun moments and a couple of striking deaths, but it lacks imagination, it lacks bite, and it lacks a stronger reason to exist beyond continuing to use the Fear Street name.Even so, it is watchable. It has that quick-consumption slasher feel, with a direct entertainment purpose and very few pretensions. It is not fair to expect the emotional complexity or curse-driven force of 1666, because this is not that kind of film. This one is lighter, more superficial and closer to a standard high-school horror movie.Fear Street: Prom Queen is not on the same level as the witchcraft-and-curse trilogy, but as a standalone teen slasher it has its moments. It entertains, offers some blood and keeps the connection to Shadyside alive, even if in a much smaller way. For slasher fans, it is enough. For anyone expecting another entry with the strength of the trilogy, it falls short.

An average slasher film and essentially a "Prom Night" remake with creative (albeit CGI-ridden) kills, a good 80s pop playlist as a soundtrack, and a pleasing 80s Instagram filter. The highlight is the Newton Brothers' score; I've already forgotten the plot, but the finale was quite entertaining. Anyone between 12 and 17 years old looking for a sleepover movie will definitely enjoy "Fear Street: Prom Queen" more than I did.

What a complete disappointment, this carries over none of the quality or lore from the original trilogy. This is just a completely bland slasher in a generic setting that has been beaten to death in the genre.

This movie was so bad, the plot was ridiculous and everything else was horrible, only one scene when the massacre happens in the main hall was decent but nothing else.