After the critical success of Netflix’s 2021 Fear Street trilogy, the streaming service took another swing at the horror series with Fear Street: Prom Queen. This one, though, was a miss. From the acting to the pacing to the predictable ending, Fear Street: Prom Queen is more akin to a cash-grab for Netflix than a follow-up to the original trilogy.
Let’s dive into where exactly Netflix dropped the ball this time around, and what might have saved this film.
What is the Fear Street trilogy?
In 2021, Netflix acquired a trilogy of horror movies written by Leigh Janiak. These movies were based loosely on the R.L. Stine series, Fear Street. In addition, the inspirations for the first three films were classic slasher films, like Scream or Friday the 13th. Each movie acts in tandem as they follow characters from the fictional town of Shadyside through various decades as they face the result of a curse which plagues the town. Set in 1994, 1978, and 1666 respectively, the trilogy introduces us to the town and its bleak history of witchcraft and murder set against the backdrop of a period piece.
Fear Street: Part One – 1994 sets up the story of Shadyside in a fun, gory way. Deena Johnson (Kiana Madeira), a high schooler from Shadyside, is a skeptic to the folklore of Sarah Fier – a “witch” who cursed the town in the 1660s and henceforth caused Shadyside to be “the murder capital” of the country. After a mall massacre and subsequent vigil in the neighboring town of Sunnyvale that disturbs Sarah Fier’s grave, Deena and her friends begin to experience the curse for themselves. Fier sends all of Shadyside’s killers to murder Deena and her friends, resulting in the classic Scream slashings that make the first installment so rich with entertainment.
Within this film, we are introduced to C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs), the survivor of the Camp Nightwing massacre, the setting for the second movie, Fear Street: Part Two – 1978. We also meet Sarah Fier’s character, but her story and the origin of Shadyside are fully realized in Fear Street: Part Three – 1666. These films, too, are full of entertaining horror and gore, all while staying loyal to the time periods in which they are set. The fashion, music, and writing feels as authentic as it can be for a horror trilogy that is more fun than scary.
How come the trilogy works so well?
The Fear Street trilogy is effective in a couple of ways. For starters, the series is rich with the kind of nostalgia that is coming into a revival on social media and in entertainment. The first film is brimming with the 90s nostalgia that Gen Z has been obsessed with in the last few years. The second film has the same vibe as Stranger Things, another Netflix classic, and even stars Sadie Sink. The ability this trilogy has to immerse its audience so deeply in the world of Shadyside, in the exact time period that it wants you to be in, gives these movies a special quality. Not only are you watching the townspeople of Shadyside grapple with the terror and fear of the curse, but you are essentially living it all the same.
Another nod to this movie is its inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters in an effective, positive way. In the first and third installments, main characters like Deena Johnson and Sarah Fier are intimately involved with female characters. Deena’s girlfriend is even possessed by Sarah at the end of the first movie. While the relationships exist realistically in the time periods of 1994 and 1666, the queer representation is largely positive and not fetishized in a way that it is in other movies. It adds an element to the film that allows it to work in current media, as well as in the canon of vintage or retro horror.
Overall, the Fear Street trilogy is by no means a masterpiece or the Next Great American Horror Film. It is, however, fun. The film meets a lot of the genre conventions of the slashers that audiences of the past and present have loved. Unlike Fear Street: Prom Queen, it dives headfirst into being a twist on the typical cult classics of the 90s, embracing the amusement and campiness that is so easily discarded in modern horror.
IMDB: 6.2/10 (Part 1), 6.7/10 (Part 2), 6.6/10 (Part 3), Rotten Tomatoes: 84% (Part 1), 88% (Part 2), 89% (Part 3)
Where to Watch: Netflix
FEAR STREET, in terms of average quality, is one of the best horror trilogies ever made. No exaggeration. All three films are really special and awesome. None of them are “bad.”
— BJ Colangelo (@bjcolangelo) July 17, 2021
Genuinely and sincerely—few horror trilogies can match that consistency. pic.twitter.com/k1CyU3bYn9
Pretty much everyone hated Fear Street: Prom Queen (Spoilers ahead)
Within the first week of release, Netflix’s Fear Street: Prom Queen is sitting at a 27% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.2/10 on IMDb. The movie, set in 1988, was released in Netflix’s top 5 on May 23, and is the fourth installment of the original trilogy. Shadyside’s 1988 Prom Night is coming up, and there are six nominees for Prom Queen: our unpopular protagonist, Lori (India Fowler); Tiffany (Fina Strazza), the Queen Bee of school; Tiffany’s followers, Linda (Ilan O’Driscoll), Debbie (Rebecca Ablack), and Melissa (Ella Rubin); and rebellious Christy (Ariana Greenblatt).
The general premise for the film isn’t terrible. A masked killer is killing off Shadyside’s 1988 Prom Queen nominees one-by-one. It falls in line with a classic slasher concept, and it had potential. Key word: had. There is a bit of a Shadyside drama to beef things up. Lori’s mother was accused of murdering Lori’s father in high school, which has made Lori a social pariah. Her nomination for Prom Queen is a surprise.
This movie is so predictable. Some mystery killer is slashing the nominees, and we are expected to believe at any point in the movie that it isn’t Tiffany’s family? Tiffany’s mom and dad (Katherine Waterson and Chris Klein) are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that Tiffany wins Prom Queen. There are multiple moments in the movie where the ending is so obvious that I almost turned it off. If I wasn’t writing this article, I probably would have! At one point, two killers corner Melissa, the Gretchen Weiners of Tiffany’s group… So obviously there are two killers. After Tiffany’s dad is revealed to be the killer, the natural conclusion is that Nancy is involved, too, and with 15 minutes left of the movie, she’ll make one final attempt to kill Lori. But we should still act surprised, right?
Prom Queen had every problem imaginable
It’s hard not to harp on every issue in this movie, because it would take all day. Netflix tried to do way too much. For starters, nowhere at this 1988 Prom is there a 1980s dress. No big hair, puffy sleeves, neon colors. There’s a sad dance-off, but even they couldn’t get that right. The closest we get to the 1980s in this film is the casting of Lili Taylor, who appeared in Say Anything in 1989. The original trilogy is so vivid and captivating in its setting; the first film fits so well into the 1990s aesthetic. This movie fails to exist anywhere but 2013. I mean, I think I wore Tiffany’s dress to a middle school dance, courtesy of Kohl’s.
The pacing and writing was almost as bad as (if not worse than) the acting. This movie moves so quickly that you don’t care about a single character, especially when being hacked to pieces. The writing, too, doesn’t help this fact. It seems like the writers cared more about fitting in retro lingo (see: “What’s your damage?”) than building a story that was remotely entertaining. Poor performances across the board made it even worse. Honestly, the only fun party of this movie was the slashings, and even those paled in comparison to the original trilogy. I was just glad we had fewer characters to weigh down an already bad story.
Generally, Fear Street: Prom Queen was a total flop
Netflix had the opportunity to revive this trilogy with another exciting and entertaining teen horror movie… but they dropped the ball. The original trilogy worked because it had culturally significant source material—Scream, Friday the 13th, the R.L. Stine series, and subsequent spin-offs or parodies of these. The fourth installment could have mirrored this with films like Carrie or any of John Hughes’s movies. Instead of bouncing off the canon and films about 1980s proms that worked, Fear Street: Prom Queen tried too hard to be camp and witty.
This isn’t to say that Fear Street movies only work because of the pre-existing films they resemble, but by subverting those genre-defining movies. The original trilogy placed itself uniquely within the canon of horror. The fourth film doesn’t do that, because it bit off more than it could chew by disregarding an essential element of what made the story originally work.
In that same vein, Fear Street: Prom Queen acts less like a sequel and more like a cash grab. It just shares a title with its successful predecessor. The only real similarity between the 2025 movie and the 2021 trilogy is the setting of Shadyside. Even so, the entire lore of Sarah Fier is never acknowledged. Instead, the plot revolves around an unsolved murder that could have been tied into the established Shadyside curse.
This alone could have made this movie feel less foreign to the Fear Street trilogy. While watching, I could not stop thinking about how this was such an obvious cash grab. Netflix saw how well the original trilogy performed. They brought in a new team and decided to see if lightning would strike… but it didn’t. The latest movie lacks all of the charm and personality of the first movie, both in its canonical lore and the rich wardrobe, setting, and writing that establishes each film in its time.
Rewatching fear street trilogy to clear my mind from the train wreck prom queen was pic.twitter.com/MjFeorrm8Q
— gabe itch (@beabadoopee) May 24, 2025
What’s next for Fear Street?
Unfortunately, this is not the end of the Fear Street series. Netflix is said to be working on more movies in the series. Like many other series that started too good, Netflix will drive this ship into the ground. They will entice audiences the way they did with Prom Queen, and put all their money into campy and cool posters, while falling flat in every other way. If this article is anything, let it be a reminder to watch the original trilogy and other genre-defining slashers that deserve a spot in the horror canon.
