Latest news with #R.L.Stine
Tatler Asia
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Tatler Asia
These new horror movies prove the slasher genre isn't dead
'Fear Street' trilogy Divided into three parts ( 1994 , 1978 , 1666 ), the trilogy, based on R.L. Stine's popular Fear Street book series, traces the origins of the Shadyside curse back to the execution of Sarah Fier. Accused of witchcraft, her vengeful spirit possesses others to kill on her behalf. Part of the trilogy's appeal is its reverence for slasher and horror movies that came before, evoking nostalgia in fans of the genre. Part 1: 1994 borrows elements from the Scream franchise. Part 2: 1978 , set in summer camp, pays homage to the Friday the 13th movies. And Part 3: 1666 incorporates elements of folk horror. 'Scream' (2022) Jenna Ortega steps into her scream queen era in this clever, Gen Z-driven revival of Wes Craven's legendary slasher series. Set 25 years after the original Woodsboro killings, a new Ghostface begins targeting a group of teens. The attacks draw legacy survivors Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) back into familiar—and deadly—territory as they help a new generation of victims survive the carnage. See also: How Jenna Ortega nails gothic fashion with a nod to 'Beetlejuice', 'Wednesday' and more 'Scream VI' After surviving the latest round of Woodsboro horrors, sisters Sam and Tara Carpenter (Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega) try to rebuild their lives in New York City. But a change of scenery doesn't mean they've escaped the nightmare as Ghostface emerges to stalk them anew. In a direct callback to the original Scream sequel, familial revenge serves as the motive behind the killings in this update. Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) returns with Scream 4 alum Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere)—now an FBI agent—to assist in the investigation. 'Fear Street: Prom Queen' R.L. Stine continues to terrorise a new generation with the latest addition to the Fear Street universe. Set once again in the cursed town of Shadyside, Prom Queen follows Lori Granger (India Fowler), an outsider at her high school who soon finds herself fighting for her life when the prom court starts turning up dead, one by one, at the hands of a masked assailant. With its blood-soaked blend of teen drama and mystery, Prom Queen nods to horror classics like Stephen King's Carrie —minus the pig's blood and psychic meltdown—and the 1980s cult classic Prom Night . Don't miss: In 'Nosferatu', true horror lies within the human 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' Already hailed as the best entry since the original, the opening set piece alone is guaranteed to fuel the anxiety of a new generation of viewers. The latest instalment in this horror movie franchise takes generational trauma to the next level, introducing a clever twist: life—and death—are inherited legacies. But as much as that adds a fresh new layer to the mythology, it's the deaths that steal the spotlight, each one unfolding like a morbid Rube Goldberg machine. 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' (2025) Instead of a reboot, fans are getting a direct sequel when I Know What You Did Last Summer hits cinemas on July 18. While the film introduces a new cast of characters—led by Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders and Jonah Hauer-King—it's expected to revisit the original movie's core premise and tropes: a group of teenagers bound by a dark secret are picked off one by one by a hook-wielding killer. Legacy characters Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr) return to confront the past and help uncover who's behind the new wave of murders.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
These Prom Queen Wannabes Keep Getting Murdered at the Dance
Netflix's gimmicky Fear Street trilogy was a minor sensation when it debuted in the summer of 2021, but its cultural footprint is zero because the films were, in the final tally, hackneyed rehashes that neither scared nor amused. Four years later, the streamer attempts to resurrect the brand (based on R.L. Stine's novels) with Fear Street: Prom Queen, a stand-alone feature premiering May 23 that mimics and remixes innumerable superior efforts to fatally formulaic ends. Cartoonishly gory and drearily unoriginal and predictable, it's a collection of tired devices and shout-outs that plays like training wheels slasher cinema. Taking place, like its predecessors, in the hard-luck town of Shadyside, where murderous tragedy is a constant, and where everyone lives in the shadow of wealthy neighboring Sunnydale, Fear Street: Prom Queen is set in a Stranger Things version of 1988 awash in every decade-specific cliché imaginable. It's a vision modeled on previous period-piece movies about the era rather than the real thing, and that artificiality extends to its by-the-books horror narrative, whose prime focus is Lori (India Fowler). An outcast because her mom is thought to have murdered her dad back in high school (while she was still in the womb), Lori is now determined to win the title of prom queen. Unfortunately, she has stiff competition from rebellious weed-dealer Christy (Ariana Greenblatt)—who's a preposterous candidate, given her non-conforming bad-girl reputation—and b---hy popular girl Tiffany (Fina Strazza) and her 'wolfpack' acolytes Melissa (Ella Rubin), Linda (Ilan O'Driscoll), and Debbie (Rebecca Ablack). Shadyside takes its prom queen contest absurdly seriously, to the point that it's all anyone talks about. Vice Principal Brekenridge (Lili Taylor)—who used to work at a Catholic school and now runs the show alongside weak-willed principal Wayland (Darrin Baker)—has them practice ahead of time for the upcoming ceremony. Lori is the clear underdog in this race, and she's mocked as the offspring of a killer by Tiffany, whether they're in class or at the diner where Lori works. Tiffany believes her teacher father Dan (Chris Klein) and mother Nancy (Katherine Waterston) when they tell her she's 'special,' and she spends the entirety of the film acting like an arrogant, scheming caricature. Lori is her polar opposite, a good girl with chaste romantic interest in Tiffany's boyfriend Tyler (David Iacono), who seems to be into her, thus amplifying tension between the girls. Lori's best friend Megan (Suzanna Son) is a lesbian-coded Fangoria reader (with a poster of Lucio Fulci's Zombie on her bedroom wall) who pulls monster movie pranks on her classmates, thereby providing Fear Street: Prom Queen with early fake-out gruesomeness. Genuine bloodshed comes courtesy of a fiend whose attire—a yellow rain slicker and a spooky mask—suggests he's a big fan of I Know What You Did Last Summer. This enigmatic assassin begins by offing Christy in a scene whose staging is almost impressively lethargic. Afterwards, he crosses out her picture on the yearbook page for prom queen candidates, indicating that his real aim is throwing the pageant for his preferred entrant—or, perhaps, simply ruining the competition because of some long-held grudge. Fear Street: Prom Queen exists in a silly throwback fantasyland and it can't stop reminding its audience that it knows the '80s, whether via a soundtrack of notable hits ('White Wedding,' 'U Got the Look,' 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)'), posters of Johnny Depp and Patrick Swayze, or a story indebted to, among others, Prom Night and April Fool's Day. As such, it operates on the knife's edge of parody, and though its gnarly murders demonstrate that it has a sense of humor about itself, such winking is more self-satisfied than satiric. It's also decidedly dull, as is everything else about this endeavor, which quickly sets up shop at the prom. There, Tiffany and her wolfpack perform a laughably sexualized dance routine in Stars-and-Stripes bathing suits ('pornographic' is how Brekenridge describes it), couples routinely ditch the festivities to wander the dark and empty school hallways, and Lori and Tiffany eventually confront each other in a dance-off announced by a DJ whose use of over-the-mic profanity at the function is arguably its most unbelievable element. One by one, prom queen aspirants are slaughtered by the maniac, and Fear Street: Prom Queen tries to complicate efforts to guess the baddie's identity via a revelation that, conversely, winds up drastically narrowing the field of suspects. That clumsiness is complemented by characterizations that are thin and inconsistent; over the course of the prom, multiple characters have epiphanies and/or alter their personalities as if their maturity process was taking place in fast forward. Director Matt Palmer and co-writer Donald McLeary's script cares less about logic than hitting familiar beats, and its metronomic quality drains the proceedings of any potential suspense. There are only three well-known actors in Fear Street: Prom Queen, and they didn't take this paycheck just to be random nobodies. The fact that it's easy to figure out the film's conclusion, however, is less deflating than Palmer's orchestration of the preceding mayhem. Whereas the initial Fear Street trilogy at least strove to create a real feel for its warring-community dynamics, this follow-up is a paint-by-numbers affair without anything like a unique atmosphere or attitude. On the contrary, its every move is a pose modeled on prior poses, turning it into a faded photocopy of better massacres gone by. Horror fans have to start somewhere, of course, and Fear Street: Prom Queen is designed to give them a handy introduction to the tropes and twists that define the genre. Yet in doing so, it presents a safe and comforting nightmare that trades in stock trauma while avoiding any seriously disturbing material. From the catty Tiffany to the de facto final girl Lori, everyone is a type rather than a person, and if that's in keeping with tradition, it's handled so unimaginatively that there's nowhere for things to go except toward foreseeable bombshells and preposterous resolutions. Palmer's sequel may be full of dismemberment and decapitations, but its all-around tepidness is likely to make its real victim the franchise itself.
Express Tribune
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Fear Street: Prom Queen takes over LA's Fonda Theatre as Netflix turns to immersive experience
Netflix marked the release of Fear Street: Prom Queen with an immersive 1980s-themed prom event in Los Angeles, transforming a local theatre into the haunted halls of Shadyside High as cast members joined fans in celebrating the latest instalment in the slasher franchise. The fourth film in Netflix's Fear Street series, Prom Queen, began streaming on Friday. The horror film, directed by Matt Palmer and based on R.L. Stine's novels, follows a series of disappearances from a popular clique at Shadyside High in 1988. To promote the release, Netflix hosted a live experience from 17 to 19 May at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. The event recreated locations from the film — including the gymnasium, lockers, and girls' bathroom — to immerse attendees in the slasher setting. On 18 May, Palmer and cast members India Fowler, Suzanna Son, David Iacono, Ella Rubin, Ariana Greenblatt, and Rebecca Ablack attended the 'Shadyside High Senior Prom '88.' The actors mingled with fans exploring the interactive venue, which included staged jump scares and theatrical interactions with costumed performers. 'Fear Street is a beloved franchise, so our main goal was for the experience to mirror everything the fandom loves about the films — terrifying jump scares, solving a mystery and wall-to-wall fun,' said Jonathan Helfgot, vice president of film marketing at Netflix. The franchise began with Fear Street Part One: 1994 in July 2021, and each instalment is set in a different decade. For the new film, the team leaned into 1980s nostalgia, with decor and music from the era as fans encountered horror scenes, including an axe-wielding character emerging from a janitor's closet. Helfgot added: 'We meticulously recreated Shadyside High circa 1988 so that fans could fully immerse themselves in the world of the story. Whether it was cheering along to an impromptu dance-off or getting reprimanded by a strict teacher, everyone loved being at high school in the '80s — even those chased through it.' The film continues Netflix's attempt to build on the cult following of the Fear Street series, which blends horror, humour and teen drama. Critics of previous entries praised the series' balance of genre elements and nods to both the source material and modern classics like Scream. Fear Street: Prom Queen is now streaming on Netflix.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Fear Street: Prom Queen' ending explained: Who dies, who killed them, and who is crowned queen?
Based on a 1992 R.L. Stine novel, Fear Street: Prom Queen sees prom queen candidates brutally murdered at the big dance. India Fowler stars as Lori Granger, whose mother may or may not have murdered her father while she was pregnant with Lori. The body count reaches hits double Street, the series of teen slasher paperbacks that served as a horror gateway for countless millennials, found new life on Netflix in 2021 with a trilogy of gore-spattered films. Now, a fourth entry has hit the streamer. Like its predecessors, Fear Street: Prom Queen, a loose adaptation of R.L. Stine's 1992 novel The Prom Queen, honors the broader franchise by pairing teen melodrama with shockingly gnarly kills and a motley crew of suspects. Set in the series' trademark Shadyside in 1988, the story centers around Lori Granger (India Fowler), an outcast rumored to come from a cursed lineage. They say Lori's mother killed her father after he impregnated her and tried to hightail it back to the neighboring Sunnyvale. But Lori believes her mother is innocent, as does her best friend, the loyal (and demented) Megan (Suzanna Son). Lori doesn't want to be defined by her family's dark past, and hopes that becoming prom queen could help her reinvent herself. It's a curious thing, then, when Shadyside's prom queen nominees begin getting brutally killed off by a masked killer in red pleather. Who's the killer? And do they have any connection to Lori's past? Read on as we answer those questions and more with Entertainment Weekly's Fear Street: Prom Queen ending explainer. A lot of people die in Fear Street: Prom Queen. The majority of them belong to the it-girl clique of Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza), the popular girl with a penchant for bullying Lori about her mother's reputation. Linda (Ilan O'Driscoll), Debbie (Rebecca Ablack), Melissa (Ella Rubin), and Claire (Eden Summer Gilmore) get disemboweled, electrocuted, face-cleavered, and axed, respectively. Another prom queen candidate, the drug-dealing bad girl Christy (Ariana Greenblatt), takes an axe to the back. Their boyfriends, meanwhile, suffer the painful indignities of paper cutters, buzzsaws, and other sharp objects. And then there's hunky Tyler (David Iacono), who dumps Tiffany for Lori during the dance. Well, he gets a knife dropped into his skull before he and Lori can consummate their new relationship. We'll save the rest of the movie's kill count for below. A better question is, "Who are the killers?" While viewers are initially led to believe only one killer is roaming Shadyside, Melissa's murder reveals two killers are stalking the dance in knock-off Alice, Sweet Alice getups. One of those foes is exposed when Principal Wayland (Darrin Baker) crowns Lori as prom queen. As she takes the stage, warning of a killer on the premises, an axe-wielding masked murderer chops his way through the crowd. After lopping off Wayland's arm, Lori triumphs by jamming her tiara into one of the mask's eyeholes. After unmasking the killer, it's revealed to be Dan Falconer (Chris Klein), a teacher at the school and Tiffany's father. Tiffany was favored to become prom queen, with her mother, Nancy (Katherine Waterston), placing ample pressure on her to win the crown. When asked why he murdered Tiffany's competition, Dan replies, "Because I knew how much you wanted it. Both of you." He's promptly arrested. But there's still another killer on the loose. After Lori and Tiffany bond and retreat to Tiffany's house to recuperate, we discover that the second slasher is actually Nancy. When she climbs the steps to Tiffany's room with a butcher knife in tow, the girls try to escape. That's when we learn that Tiffany is in on it, too, making the murders a Falconer family affair. No, Lori's mom, Rose (Joanne Boland), did not kill her father. It was actually Nancy, who confesses that she killed Lori's father after he dumped her for Rose. "You really remind me of your two-faced dad," she says to Lori, knife in hand. "He was mine first, you know. Before your skank of a mother came along... My face was the last thing that he ever saw." For Nancy, the Falconers represent the glamorous side of Shadyside. As such, Tiffany deserves to be prom queen, which is why the couple sought to slaughter their daughter's competition. Lori's efforts to become prom queen were particularly grating. "You Grangers are always taking things that belong to us," Nancy hisses. "No one crosses the Falconers." Yes. After a bloody struggle, Lori vanquishes both Tiffany and Nancy. First, she kicks Tiffany off the second-floor landing of the Falconer home, impaling her on a decorative carving atop the bannister. Nancy chases Lori throughout the house, but Lori slugs her with the blunt end of a trophy, leaving her to bleed out on the carpet. As the life drains from her eyes, Nancy spits vitriol at Lori, calling her a "bitch" and "trash." Lori leaves, and Nancy cries out, "Who the f--- do you think you are?" Lori, taking ownership of her "cursed" name, declares, "I'm Lori f---ing Granger." Fear Street: Prom Queen is now streaming on Netflix. Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
Digital Trends
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Fear Street: Prom Queen director on slashers & executing the perfect kill
Matt Palmer is unapologetic about how to kill someone in his new movie, Fear Street: Prom Queen. 'We spent a lot of time working out how to kill people,' Palmer tells Digital Trends in an exclusive interview. Palmer is the co-writer and director of Prom Queen, the fourth film in Netflix's Fear Street franchise. While the first three Fear Street movies are considered a trilogy, Prom Queen is a standalone movie with new characters and stories. However, the common denominator is the setting, the town of Shadyside. Based on R.L. Stine's novel, Fear Street: Prom Queen transports audiences to 1988. Senior prom is two days away, and six girls are running for prom queen. Two of them — the kind outcast, Lori Granger (India Fowler), and the popular bully, Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza) — are bitter rivals. Executing political maneuvers to win votes for a popularity contest is difficult enough. Yet the toughest challenge on prom night will be avoiding a masked murderer stalking the candidates. Recommended Videos Ahead, Palmer talks about the importance of needle drops, the key changes from book to screen, and how to execute the perfect kill. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Digital Trends: I wanted to start with the needle drops. They stood out right away. What was the one '80s song you knew had to be in Prom Queen? Matt Palmer: I'm Not Scared by Eighth Wonder. Why is that? I think there are bigger needle drops in terms of known songs, but that song, there's something special about it. It was actually written by the Pet Shop Boys, which is why it's such a good tune. But it's a slightly lesser-known tune. It has this throbbing and pulsing. Very early on, I was like, this is what the prom looks like from the sounds. That pulsing and blaring thing. I feel like the whole tone of prom came from that song. Also, the lyrics as well. It's a kind of Lori Granger story. That was the one. We switched things up during the edit. There were different tracks pulled out and changed to get the right energy. That was the one right from the beginning. That's going right there after that kill, and it's not going anywhere. With your musical process, are you a director and writer who builds a scene and knows exactly what song to put in? Is it more about getting a playlist from your music supervisor, running through things, and seeing what works? Take me through that musical element. It's funny because, in the first movie I made, there is a lot of music in it, but it's composed music. It goes under the radar. A lot of people with Calibre are like, 'Oh, that's great. There's no music in it.' I'm like, 'Eh, it's kind of there. You're just not noticing it.' But this one [Prom Queen] was a completely different assignment. You hear [Quentin] Tarantino talk quite a lot about how he'll pull out a record and that'll start the movie in his head. It was a lot more like that with this one, which was really fun. Like the Billy Idol one, you start to assemble montages around the music. It's a very different way of working, but a really fun one. It's quite addictive. I'd like to do it again. It's like building a long playlist. Yeah, I spent two months at the very beginning, when we were just starting to write the movie, agonizing over this playlist. There were tunes that were key like You're the Inspiration by Chicago. I had a whole scene where the Devil character dances with Lori. Then, we were like, we don't need this scene. The scene isn't helping the character or the film. And I was like, 'But the music!' [Laughs] It was so hard to cut because I was so in love with the idea of setting a scene to that music, but it had to go. Sometimes, the images come from the music. Sometimes, it completely switches, like Sweet Dreams. The dance-off was going to be Prince, but Prince tunes are incredibly hard to license. Once Gloria was in, this wasn't going anywhere. Even if we get Prince at the last minute, this [Gloria] is the tune. It's funny how it happens. The morning I found Gloria, I was walking through the pre-production office, and a couple of hours later, it was playing in every room. I heard people singing Gloria, and I was like, OK. This is the tune. The spirit of the book is alive in the movie. I know some changes were made. Obviously, the name of the character Lizzie* is Lori. Why did you change her backstory? In the book, the girls are mean to each other in Prom Queen. … There's a lot in the book, and it's obviously from a different time. There are a lot of girls talking about boys. It was interesting as a man writing a female character. Not just one, but five girls lead the movie. It was really important to have great female producers. They were guiding me on that. If all the girls in the movie were just talking about guys, it would just feel like it was from a different time. You have to make it connect with a modern audience. I don't think those kinds of interactions would really play today. The other thing is it's a whodunit. If you're working from source material where a whole lot of people in the world know who did it, you have to change the story so that people don't know who did it because that's the lifeblood of mystery. R.L. Stine is great. If you like stuff, take it. If you want to go in a different direction, take it. He's very flexible. It gave us the freedom to launch off from a great premise and take it into some new characters and interesting directions. *In R.L. Stine's book, the main character is named Lizzie McVay. In the movie, it's Lori Granger. A lot of these kills are showcases for practical effects. Take me through building a kill. Do you want it to happen one way and then see if you can do it practically? Well, we would write what we wanted and then try and work out how we could do it. We'll try and do this until someone says it's kind of impossible. One of the things I'm pleased with the movie is it does feel like all of the kills are quite different. Quite early on, someone was like, 'What's the killer's signature weapon?' I remember going to see the remake of My Bloody Valentine. He has his ax. It's like every single kill is an ax. After four of them, I'm craving a chainsaw. This killer in Prom Queen will just grab things and have a few things handy. It opens the possibility of different kills. Even tonally, there's one kill that I feel is much darker and scarier. There's one that's comedic and drawn out. There's one that's very abrupt and sudden and probably the goriest thing in it. It's quite satisfying. I've watched a lot of slasher movies, and I'm unapologetically rabid about it. I like [Dario] Argento. What I like about Argento is you can feel when a kill is coming. There's almost a ritual to it with Arengto and a contract with the audience. It's like, 'OK, it's coming. It's going to look cool, and I'm going to focus on my directorial skills. It's going to be gory as f***.' Just bring it. I guess I come from that school of when a kill is coming, it's like a sacred and special moment. You need to do something that's going to satisfy the audience and maybe surprise them as well. Put elements in it and mix it all up. We spent a lot of time working out how to kill people. I would hope a director of a slasher thinks about it a lot, so that's good. [Laughs] Probably too much. I was reading an interview about how you programmed a film festival and picked out movies to run all night. I'll give you the choice here. You have Prom Queen as your first one. What are the next four movies to pair it with? So I wouldn't play Prom Queen first. [Laughs] I'd play Prom Queen either third or fourth. I spent 15 years doing this, and honestly, it's insane. OK, the things I learned. If you're going to play a slow movie, play it second. The third spot should always be the most insane, crazy, mind-bending, psychotronic, f***** up thing. That creates an energy in the middle of the night. People feel like, 'I've seen the craziest thing ever, so anything after this is a bonus. In the fourth slot, play something with a plot. People need something to grab onto at five in the morning. At one event, I played Child's Play fourth. Child's Play has a really good narrative and plot. The manager of the cinema was like, 'My god. They've all woken up. They all look way more awake than they did after the third movie, and they're all ready for the fifth one.' It took me a while to realize, but don't play something long or too abstract at number four. Otherwise, people will fall asleep. It's crazy. You don't always get it right. I played Black Christmas second at the first one. It's a great movie, but I got away with it. That's the other thing. Anything that goes over an hour and a half, and you're really dicing with death. That's why Prom Queen is 87 minutes. I found with 87-minute movies, people tend to feel they were short and sharp. I liked it, and I didn't get sleepy. I was like, can I make a movie that, if it was playing at four in the morning, wouldn't get people bored? I'd probably play Prom Queen third or fourth. Fear Street: Prom Queen is now streaming on Netflix.
