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Metro
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Netflix horror sequel soars to number 1 after viewers stay up to watch
A new horror movie sequel has dominated the global charts on Netflix, despite scathing reviews and a dismal Rotten Tomatoes score. Fear Street: Prom Queen was released on the streaming service on May 23, becoming the fourth instalment of the terrifying franchise, based on RL Stine's book series. The latest slasher was set in 1988 and starred Ariana Greenblatt, Chris Klein, India Fowler, Ella Rubin, Suzanna Son and Fina Strazza, with Matt Palmer taking over as director from Leigh Janiak – who helmed the previous three. It followed students at Shadyside High as they prepared for their prom, despite dead bodies piling up around town. Fans clearly watched the new horror in their droves as it quickly topped Netflix's most-watched chart, with more than 10.7million views in the last seven days, and over 16m hours watched. Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro's TV Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we'll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you. However, the success may be a surprise as the Prom Queen sequel has been panned by critics and viewers alike, and currently commands a 27% Rotten Tomatoes score. Sharing his thoughts on the platform, Chris P fumed: 'It was like they took all the cool parts from a bunch of recent horror movies and put them all in one movie hoping it was pass as original. It didn't.' Christina B agreed: 'It was terrible. Terrible. Just. Terrible. Has absolutely nothing to do with Fear Street, or the curse, or anything. Just a basic slasher… but even then it was poorly done. 'Not even in a campy way. It was just bad. Cannot recommend, especially if you are a big fan of The Fear Street Triology [sic].' 'This show is an absolute stain on the fear street trilogy,' Alex B said. Gregg C commented: 'It's impossible to understate how bad this is.' Twitter users echoed similar sentiments, sharing their disappointment that they had stayed up for a 'snoozefest'. 'Stayed up to watch the new fear street and it was just mid,' Jenna wrote. Mika posted: 'Fear street prom queen is the worst movie I stayed up late to watch.' As Ria added: 'Fear street prom queen was a waste of time. Literally stayed up for a snoozefest.' The first three Fear Street instalments hit our screens in July 2021, with part one – set in 1994 – focusing on a group of teenagers battling against an evil force after a series of slayings. Part two was set in 1978, and returned to Shadyside as a killer began a murderous spree, while the third flick swapped between the 1600s and the 90s, showing the teens trying to save their town. More Trending The official synopsis for Fear Street: Prom Queen reads: 'Welcome back to Shadyside. 'In this next installment of the blood-soaked Fear Street franchise, prom season at Shadyside High is underway and the school's wolfpack of It Girls is busy with its usual sweet and vicious campaigns for the crown. 'But when a gutsy outsider puts herself in the running, and the other girls start mysteriously disappearing, the class of '88 is suddenly in for one hell of a prom night.' Fear Street: Prom Queen is available on Netflix now. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Netflix fans rave over 'perfect cast' as The Thursday Murder Club trailer drops MORE: Matthew Goode insists Downton Abbey remark 'was not meant to be derogatory' MORE: This London Underground horror getting a reboot is your ultimate travel nightmare
Indian Express
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Fear Street Prom Queen movie review: Netflix's new slasher is a TikTok version of Carrie
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
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Netflix's "brutal" sequel to its hit horror trilogy is available to watch now
Netflix's "brutal" Fear Street sequel is now available to watch on the platform. Fear Street: Prom Queen follows on from the 2021 trilogy of movies, all based on the RL Stine books, and centres on a prom night in 1988 as a bloody murderer is on the loose. The movie is now available to watch for Netflix users globally as of today – so if you're looking for a chilling weekend watch, look no further. The film follows prom season at Shadyside High, with the school's It Girls "busy with its usual sweet and vicious campaigns for the crown". However, "when a gutsy outsider is unexpectedly nominated to the court" and other girls mysteriously disappear, "the class of '88 is suddenly in for one hell of a prom night," the synopsis adds. Related: Best streaming services Prom Queen has landed a largely mixed reception from critics, sitting at a 45% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes, with TheWrap writing: "Fear Street: Prom Queen isn't a bust, it's just not very inspired. Again, those brutal murders will help you get through it." "Fear Street started as a series that tried to reinvent the wheel, even just by dint of its structure and nods to the innate curse of marginalization; this is empty-headed, straightforward slasher schlock on purpose," added "That's all well and good in some contexts, but if that's what you want, why not just watch one of the classics instead?" Related: The Daily Beast called the movie "cartoonishly gory and drearily unoriginal and predictable", adding: "It's a collection of tired devices and shout-outs that plays like training wheels slasher cinema." Prom Queen stars The Nevers' India Fowler, Red Rocket's Suzanna Son, Paper Girls' Fina Strazza, and The Summer I Turned Pretty's David Iacono, with Matt Palmer directing. Fear Street: Prom Queen is available to stream now on Netflix. Digital Spy's first print magazine is here! Buy British Comedy Legends in newsagents or online, now priced at just £3.99. at at Audible£49.99 at at £99.00 at Amazon at EE at £328.00 at at at EE at at at at at at at Amazon at at at at at at Game at EE at at Pandora at at at at Sky Mobile at at Game at at at at at at Pandora at at at Three at at at AO at at at at at at at at at Fitbit at £49.99 at at at John Lewis£119.00 at at at at at at at at at at at at at Amazon at at at at John Lewis & Partners at at John Lewis at at at at at at Amazon at Three at at John Lewis & Partners at at at at at Fitbit£15.99 at Amazon£119.99 at at at at at at at Three£699.00 at at at at Apple£189.99 at at Amazon£21.99 at at at Audible at EE at at at at at at at at John Lewis at at at at at at at at at at Apple at EE at £449.00 at John Lewis£32.99 at Amazon at at at at Samsung at at Microsoft£229.00 at John Lewis at at at at Three at Apple at at at John Lewis at at AO at crunchyroll£79.00 at Samsung£79.98 at at Amazon at at at Microsoft at at at Microsoft at at John Lewis & Partners£79.98 at at at at Amazon at at at John Lewis£269.99 at at at at John Lewis & Partners at now at at Microsoft at at at at at John Lewis at at at at at at £199.00 at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at at You Might Also Like PS5 consoles for sale – PlayStation 5 stock and restocks: Where to buy PS5 today? IS MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7 THE BEST IN THE SERIES? OUR REVIEW AEW game is a modern mix of No Mercy and SmackDown
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Fear Street: Prom Queen review – disappointing Netflix teen slasher
The Fear Street trilogy was one of the many casualties of the cinema-shuttering Covid pandemic, originally scheduled for an ambitious one-film-a-month summer release by Fox before being offloaded to Netflix. But while it was a little disappointing to see horror films made with such unusual cinematic flair released straight-to-smartphone, it was also a wise business decision, the unorthodox original strategy unlikely to have paid off. Based on the series of books by teen favourite RL Stine, the three films set up an exciting, expansive world, shifting between the 1660s to the 1970s to the 1990s, gliding from teen slasher to queer romance to supernatural fantasy and within a genre that typically fails to win critics over, they were surprise successes (each boasts a Rotten Tomatoes rating over 80%). It was a rousing win for writer-director Leigh Janiak, whose steady tonal balance of serious and silly showed so many others how it can and should be done, and it opened up a new universe of potentially interconnected horrors for Netflix, the first of which lands this week. Smartly, Fear Street: Prom Queen does not have quite as much on its plate, a simple standalone slasher with a tight focus on just one timeline. But that's where the smart decisions both start and end, a misfire not quite bad or powerful enough to undo Janiak's great work but one that questions whether the world of Fear Street is one we need to spend much more time exploring. If the introductory trilogy started us off on a thrilling journey, here we're brought to a sudden dead end. There was always going to be an inevitable aesthetic downturn, as we slide from studio to streamer, but the distractingly tinny feel of Prom Queen is a particularly bitter pill to swallow after how sleek and transporting the previous films had been. We're taken back to the 1980s for this instalment but it's all thin, theme party pastiche, overly reliant on hairstyles and needle drops to do all of the heavy lifting. The plot is equally thin, as high schoolers compete to be named prom queen before getting picked off one-by-one in a rushed 90-minute runtime. It's a face-off between good girl from the bad side of the street Lori (India Fowler) and bad girl from the good side of the street Tiffany (Fina Strazza). Comically both girls actually do live opposite each other on the same street, despite considerable architectural differences … The red flags start flying early, as Scottish writer-director Matt Palmer and co-writer Donald McLeary race through an ungainly infodump opener, introducing far too many characters far too soon, a superficial and ineffective introduction to the specifics of Shadyside high school politics. They sprint toward prom without any dynamic filled in enough for us to understand or care and the catty standoffs are so toothlessly written, that the film immediately fails at the teen comedy side of the Venn diagram. Sadly, the teen slasher side is almost as bad, poorly choreographed kills with zero suspense and a killer in a rubbishy dime store costume with only one entertainingly gory moment to wake us up (a victim trying to use a door handle after his hands have been chopped off). There's just no pace or atmosphere or, most importantly, fear to any of it. One of the many exciting surprises of the trilogy was the introduction of an outstanding young cast of mostly unknown faces, filled with so many standouts that the real MVP was casting director Carmen Cuba, who's previously worked with Larry Clark, Steven Soderbergh and Ridley Scott. She's returned to oversee but any luck has run out with none of the high schoolers breaking through (Anora and Until Dawn's Ella Rubin comes close but she's frustratingly sidelined) or even given the opportunity, their dialogue never rising above rote. The adults – Chris Klein, Lili Taylor and Katherine Waterston – fare slightly better but, aside from Klein, one wonders why they're even here. Prom Queen isn't just a disappointment because of what came before in the Fear Street universe but for what Palmer himself had previously done. His 2018 thriller Calibre was a remarkably gripping debut, an incredibly tense, watch-through-hands nightmare about a hunting trip gone horribly wrong (I highlighted it in the best underseen films of that year), but any edge he might have had has been smoothed out by the bland Netflix algorithm, his follow-up as anonymously milquetoast as streaming content gets. The fear is gone. Fear Street: Prom Queen is available on Netflix on 23 May
The Guardian
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
O'Dessa review – clumsy sci-fi musical is a rocky road to nowhere
Sadie Sink needs to be freed from whatever nostalgia curse has condemned her to a career full of pop synth soundtracks. If Sink seemed the obvious choice to lead O'Dessa – a dystopian rock opera that feels like an 80s retro futurist screensaver lurching to life – it's because of her impact in Fear Street: Part 2 and Stranger Things. Both situate the seemingly wise-beyond-her years star in the reimagined past of 40 to 50 years ago. Fear Street, the RL Stine adaptation, had Sink sinking her teeth into a giddy homage to Friday the 13th. That came after Stranger Things – that popular mashup of John Carpenter, Steven Spielberg and John Hughes – put her on the map. Who could forget Sink's most iconic (and viral) moment in Stranger Things, reviving Kate Bush's 1985 hit Running up that Hill with a needle drop that releases Sink's character Max from demonic possession, while sentencing the actor to even more time spent in the era of neon fever dreams? The lilac hues and barren future landscapes from Bush's music video for Running Up That Hill are among the recycled looks in O'Dessa, a mood board of a movie that cites Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain among its references, but in its final incarnation harkens back to cult faves like Phantom of the Paradise and The Running Man. Writer and director Geremy Jarvis, a former indie musician who scored a crowd pleaser with his hip-hop coming-of-age musical Patti Cake$, conjures up a world where a dreary metropolis drenched in plasma colours is surrounded by scorched earth. The images can be intoxicating, but his narrative, following Sink's Mad Max-like drifter, meanders along, as if awestruck by its own lo-fi visual design. Sink's O'Dessa hails from the farmlands, her auburn hair complementing the rusty landscape. She comes from a long line of 'ramblers', nomadic musicians who believe their songs can change the world, which at present is ruled by a tyrannical gameshow host (The White Lotus's Murray Bartlett). O'Dessa is special. She's the so-called 'seventh son' according to prophecy, inheriting a guitar from her late father with the etchings of a tree, its roots flowing with liquid that turns luminous at her touch. In one of the film's early folk rock musical numbers that stop the narrative dead in its tracks, and take on the qualities of self-contained music videos, O'Dessa hollers out, 'On these six strings, I'll sing my destiny.' After her mother dies due to some undefined illness, O'Dessa lights out on the road, has her cherished guitar stolen by a carnivalesque travelling troupe and finds herself in Satylite City, a neon-lit industrial wasteland where the masses are kept in thrall to Bartlett's grandstanding dictator with a man bun, Plutonovich. He hosts 'The One', an America's Got Talent like competition, which is where O'Dessa will inevitably be reunited with her guitar and stage a televised revolution. It takes a while to get to that telegraphed finale, as O'Dessa first fumbles around in a romance with Kelvin Harrison Jr's Euri Dervish. He's a tragic lounge performer, regularly draped in fineries, occupying the kind of seductive role that would typically go to a woman. The film's casual gender ambiguity, where Sink's character, costumed to look like David Bowie, is referred to as the 'seventh son', is noteworthy even if it doesn't amount to more than just vibes. And those vibes aren't enough to carry this dragged-out love affair, with O'Dessa and Euri occupying far too much time in bed, either caressing each other or crooning together, searching for chemistry that just isn't there. Harrison (recently heard in Mufasa) and Sink are both wonderful actors who just aren't in tune, what with him purring like a sexpot, and her rewiring the adorable teen romance energy from Stranger Things. Regina Hall is another supremely talented star completely at a loss in this environment. She plays the black-leather-clad Neon Dion, a ruthless local crime boss who preys on and traffics Euri. Hall, sporting electric brass knuckles and delivering villainous platitudes with a stilted archness, can't even lean on her screwball comedic instincts for some fun, never mind the levels of camp all around her. Everyone's stumbling along in a vaguely defined universe, which really only serves as a backdrop to catchy musical numbers that evolve from folk to pop rock. You might charitably forgive the clumsiness in the plotting were O'Dessa packaged simply as a visual album rather than a feature-length movie that long overstays its welcome. But for that to work, the music needs to be memorable. Instead, O'Dessa, in its aggressive pursuit to look and feel like a thing of the past, is doomed to be easily forgotten. O'Dessa is showing at the SXSW film festival and is available on 20 March on Hulu in the US and Disney+ elsewhere
