Don’t Go to the Dance

I really do like the original three Fear Street films. Produced by NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it)., the trilogy came out week-to-week-to-week in 2021, consisting of three films – Part 1: 1994, Part 2: 1978, and Part 3: 1666 – which told a complete story about how evil spread across a quiet little town and essentially left that town cursed for over three hundred years. It was a combination slasher film series mixed with preternatural horror, one that effectively made for a solid anthology trilogy, and it left me (and other fans) hungry for more adventures on Fear Street.

The trick, though, is that if the series continued it would have to find new stories that not only connected into the overarching mythology of the starting trilogy but that also managed to add something new and fresh to the whole concept. Bear in mind I haven’t read any of the Fear Street books written by R.L. Stine, of which there are over one hundred and counting (including all the continuations, spin-off novels, and crossover materials), so I don’t really know much about the series outside of the Netflix movies. I’m sure there’s a ton of stories in the series that don’t connect to an overarching narrative, and that’s fine if that’s how those books function.

In a film series, though, you have to treat the story like it exists in a void, new to anyone watching. As such, when you open with a trilogy that has an overarching story that affects the whole of the central location, the town of Shadyside, any sequels that come out would also need to connect and hang on that storyline as well. That, more than anything, is where the fourth entry in the series, Fear Street: Prom Queen, really falls down. It’s a fine, if fairly generic, slasher film that does its beats decently well. But it’s a slasher that could have been released in any film series, at any time. Outside of a few references to the fact that the film takes place in Shadyside, this film doesn’t even feel connected to Fear Street at all. And if it’s not going to have a connection to the larger world, why make the film in the first place?

The film focuses on Lori Granger (India Fowler), one of six contestants for High School Prom Queen. The Grangers are the black sheep of Shadyside, with Lori getting mocked regularly by the school’s queen bee, Tiffany Falconer (Fina Strazza), because of events that happened to Lori’s mother before Lori was even born. Her father was killed, seemingly by her mother (although there was no evidence to tie her to the crime), all because it seemed like the baby daddy didn’t want to deal with the child after Lori was conceived. A black cloud has hung over the Grangers ever since.

Lori hopes that becoming Prom Queen would help change that. She just has to get through Tiffany and her mean girl friends – Ella Rubin as Melissa McKendrick, Rebecca Ablack as Debbie Winters, and Ilan O'Driscoll as Linda Harper – to win it. But when the Prom Queen contestants start disappearing, starting with rebellious teen Christy Renault (Ariana Greenblatt), Lori starts to wonder if there’s something more going on. Are the girls just disappearing, or is something far more sinister afoot in Shadyside High?

At its core, Fear Street: Prom Queen is a fairly basic slasher film. A bunch of girls are set up, along with their friends, supporters, enemies, teachers, and all the rest. The film has a large and diverse cast, with more than a few people getting little character traits that help to color them in. It’s a lot of people, which means we have plenty that can get killed off when the slasher arrives. But it also means that the characters really have to work to stand out because anyone that’s only somewhat shaded in is clearly grist for the mill, as it were.

This is one of the areas that Fear Street struggles. We don’t see enough of the lives of the various characters to really understand them beyond their basic, surface level traits. We get the mean girls, the nice girls, the cut boy, and strict teacher, and that’s all well and good to make the school (and the film) feel populated, but it doesn’t really turn them into true characters that we care about. We have to care about the characters in the film so we feel bad when one of them dies, but very rarely does Fear Street: Prom Queen get any of its characters to that level of caring and understanding.

It’s surprising, really, because when we compare this film to the previous trilogy, it feels like night and day. The characters in the original Fear Street trio were fully realized and interesting. Every major character was fleshed out and interesting, with hopes and dreams, desires and interests, and you generally felt bad when they died because they could have been heroes in a different version of the story. No one in Fear Street, not even Lori or Tiffany, rise to that level, so you don’t really care when they die and you aren’t invested when they manage to escape their fate.

It’s the worst for Lori since she’s our final girl and we just don’t care. I think some of the fault lies with the film, since it keeps piling on to Lori with more and more “bad past” tropes. She lost her father; her mother is never there, depressed, and often evasive; she has a bully that hates her simply for existing; she has to work, serving the very people that hate her, because she’s poor. On and on it desperately tries to add more weight to this character to a level that feels almost comical. If she were just a fun-loving party girl trying to distance herself from her mother’s past then that would feel more realistic than when we get from this character.

But what makes it worse is the performance from Fowler. Her Lori is totally bland without much spark or personality. She’s practically a doormat the way Fowler plays her, soft and meek without anything that makes her interesting. She needs to be dynamic, charismatic, lively, but Fowler plays her so quietly that you expect someone to literally wipe their feet on her. She doesn’t really come out of her shell until the final confrontation with the killer (spoiler), but by then it feels like too little, too late for the character.

What really ruined the film for me, though, was just that it was so basic and generic. While it has decent kills (which, sadly, are mostly augmented by poor looking CGI instead of the film going with practical effects), the film doesn’t really feel like it’s pushing against genre formula, not like the previous three films did. It sticks to the formula, adapts itself to the formula, and bathes in it as well. This is as tried and true a basic slasher as you can get, which feels distinctly out of place in this series after all the work the first three films put in. Could you release a generic, basic slasher in the Fear Street universe? Sure, eventually, once enough films have come out to really flesh out the whole of the world, but that shouldn't be what we got for the first continuation of the series.

Instead we should have gotten a film focusing on one of the killers we saw in a previous film, like Skull Mask, Ruby Lane, and any one of the other creeps. In fact, at one point there were talks for future films that focused on those killers, but instead we got a movie about a random dude in a red rain slicker swinging an axe (I won’t spoil who is in the costume). It feels like the creators were told, “don’t do anything interesting or thought provoking. Just make a slasher so we can keep the rights to the series.”

Whatever the reasoning, the decisions that led to Fear Street: Prom Queen made a film that is as bland and generic as you get. It’s a competent, but not very interesting, slasher that does its basic job and nothing more. It might sate some viewers that simply wanted more blood and guts, but for anyone that tuned in looking for something that felt like a proper part of Fear Street, this film fails to deliver.

There’s still potential in this series to deliver cool slasher stories with interesting mythology and twists. Fear Street: Prom Queen is not that. It’s basic, even a little sad, lacking the ambition to rise anywhere near the original trilogy of films. And because of that, it’s going to make it harder to care when later entries in this series come along (if they ever do).