Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) Review: The Curse of Shadyside Continues
We are now on the fourth installment of Fear Street, this time tackling R.L. Stine’s Prom Queen. It follows Lori Granger and a group of other Shadyside High Schoolers on the night of their senior prom. As Lori is just trying to be noticed and potentially win Prom Queen, her competition is slowly picked off by a masked killer. Seeped in 80s nostalgia with its attire and needle drops, Prom Queen is entertaining as it deepens the lore of already established while not doing a whole lot to elevate itself amongst other 2025 horror.
The story is reminiscent of early slashers where a masked killer stalks and hunts down a group of teens, save for a final girl. Our final girl, Lori, comes from a tragic background as her father died during his and her mother’s prom night, and she was accused of his murder. As the movie opens, she knows this night will end with her either dead or killing someone. There are plenty of red herrings running around, leading to a satisfying killer reveal. There are good crumbs left to put it together, even if it falls into a common trope that I’m beginning to grow tired of.
The kills were decent enough, but I felt like they could’ve played more into the school setting. As the movie got to the end, they got more and more brutal as you can feel the killer’s rage and frustration begin to boil over. They did a decent enough job letting us know that no one was safe. One kill used the paper cutter, but aside from that, none played into the prom environment. The killer’s design was alright as well. The mask was creepy enough, and the red hood gave them a cool silhouette, but I wouldn’t call it incredibly memorable.
The performances were fun and matched a high school vibe, in my opinion. No one felt perfect, but they at least felt real. Lori and her horror fan friend Megan had a fun dynamic. The mean girls group was well-defined and fun on screen. They clashed well with everyone on screen and even with their group. Watching Lori come into her own throughout the movie added depth, while everything else felt pretty shallow.
My holdup with Prom Queen is that it is okay at everything it does. The performances are okay, the kills are decent and formulaic, and the twist reveal at the end is fun, but once you start to pick up on it halfway through, it is pretty telegraphed. For a movie that is only 90 minutes long, it doesn’t feel like it flies by. The 80s nostalgia might work for someone who lived through the times, but for a younger audience, it is just an excuse to cram a bunch of older songs, VHS-style segments, and show off apparel of the time. If the story took place in 2025, nothing fundamentally changes with the story. It is pretty formulaic in how it tells its story, down to the conflict between best friends Lori and Megan and how fast it is resolved.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Fear Street: Prom Queen is a decent, entertaining horror film, but it suffers from its formulaic story. At the end of the day, if all they hoped to accomplish was to deepen the lore of Shadyside, then they accomplished their mission. The kills were decent and the killer had moments to shine. This is just not a movie I think I have much interest in revisiting but I think it’s well worth watching once.