Fear Street Prom Queen movie review: Netflix's new slasher is a TikTok version of Carrie

Indian Express

3 days ago

There was a time when slasher films had teeth, not just in their kills, but in the way they sank into your brain. Halloween, Scream, even Final Destination (which made a very strong comeback recently) in its prime, these films weren't just gore-fests, they were social rituals. They knew how to tease, how to thrill, and above all, how to build. But with Fear Street: Prom Queen, Netflix reminds us once again that when horror is left in the hands of algorithms and empty nostalgia, what you get is not a movie, it's an echo. Pretty, blood-splattered, but lacking a soul.
This film doesn't sneak up on you. It doesn't lure you in. It doesn't even bother pretending it's going to be clever. Instead, it arrives like an overeager emcee at a school function, announcing every character, every subplot, within the first five minutes. 'Hi, I'm Lori. This is my school. That girl's a b***h. That guy's trouble. I'm the underdog.' All delivered via a voiceover so crammed with exposition, you half expect it to come with a bullet-pointed PowerPoint presentation. In horror, mystery is half the game. Here, everything is laid out like a fast-food tray. However, it doesn't spoil the fun, because there isn't any to begin with.
Set in 1988, Fear Street: Prom Queen is the latest in Netflix's attempts to spin R L Stine's beloved teenage horror books into some kind of sprawling horror-verse. You might remember the earlier Fear Street trilogy from 2021. It was not flawless, but fun in their own retro, gory way. But Prom Queen is no such slasher symphony. It feels less like a love letter to the genre and more like a hastily written breakup text – impersonal, formulaic, and very easy to delete.
The story centers around Lori Granger (India Fowler), an outcast who puts her name up for prom queen at Shadyside High, a school where bad things – very bad things – always seem to happen. Lori is an outcast because of her past, which, of course, everyone knows. And guess what? They tease her about it. How typical – both for high school students and for Netflix. Naturally, there's the mean girl clique among the nominees: perfect hair, sharp tongues, and even sharper teeth when it comes to protecting their social turf. And of course, the prom queen competition is treated like the Holy Grail – the ultimate goal, the golden crown, the center of all drama. It's all so 'textbook' that it forgets to be compelling.
Soon, the other nominees begin to die, one by one, in increasingly stylish but unmemorable ways. As the glitter and gore mix, the killer's identity is revealed in a twist that feels less like a sharp turn and more like driving straight into a neon sign flashing 'Are you for real?'
There's something almost admirable about Netflix's relentless output of horror content. After all, they once gave us genuine genre gems like The Haunting of Hill House and Gerald's Game. But lately, it feels like the streamer has confused algorithmic greenlighting with actual curation. Fear Street: Prom Queen is the latest addition to this pile, an assembly-line product parading around like it is couture.
Let's not pretend that slashers don't sometimes lean into trashy territory – they do. And sometimes, that trashiness becomes cult classics (Showgirls, Jawbreaker, Jennifer's Body). But Prom Queen doesn't revel in its sleaze. It wallows in it. There's a moment – no, a sequence – where teenage girls perform a sultry swimsuit dance on stage during prom night, and the principal, on seeing it, mutters a cartoonish 'Wowzers' like he's in a rejected Family Guy gag.
You're left wondering: is this parody? Camp? Satire? No. It's just lazily provocative, the cinematic equivalent of that one classmate who says 'sex' loudly in every conversation just to get a reaction. Except here, the reaction is mostly cringe.
And then, like a cherry on top of this confused sundae, the film dares — dares — to reference Rosemary's Baby. Yes, Polanski's masterclass in paranoia and maternal horror. It's not so much a homage as a name-drop, the kind you make when you want to sound clever but haven't actually read the book. Mentioning Rosemary's Baby in Prom Queen is like comparing an overcooked Maggi bowl to a seven-course meal by Massimo Bottura. One changed the horror genre forever. The other can't decide whether it's a slasher, a teen drama, or an extended TikTok skit.
For a film branded as a slasher, Prom Queen feels oddly neutered. Yes, there are murders, and yes, the camera moves like it went to Wes Craven school, but the violence lacks bite, the suspense fizzles, and the killer – oh, the killer – has the charisma of a mannequin wearing a scream mask. There's no inventiveness in the kills, no rhythm to the stalking, and certainly no tension that makes you grip your armrest.
What Prom Queen never understands is that slasher films – even the cheesy ones – work best when characters feel real, even if their situations are unreal. We need to root for someone, fear for someone, or hate someone passionately enough to want them gone. Here, we just watch people walk in and out of scenes, say lines that feel AI-generated, and then die without consequence.
In a twisted way, Prom Queen is just like its killers – pretty on the outside, dead on the inside. The film postures as a horror flick, wears the right outfit, shows up to the party, but contributes nothing to the conversation. It's glitter without grit. The kind of horror film that's afraid of being too scary, too weird, too bold.
So while horror continues to thrive elsewhere, on bigger screens and bolder scripts, Fear Street: Prom Queen is content being the background noise – the song that plays at the party that no one really dances to. It might think it's Carrie. In reality, it's a TikTok filter version of it.
Fear Street: Prom Queen
Fear Street: Prom Queen Cast – India Fowler, Suzanna Son, Fina Strazza, Katherine Waterston, Lili Taylor, Chris Klein, Ella Rubin
Fear Street: Prom Queen Director – Matt Palmer
Fear Street: Prom Queen Rating – 1/5