Frankenstein (2025)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Literary purists were going to hate this anyway. Frankenstein, for being one of the most-adapted works of English literature, has never had a film version lauded as faithful to Mary Shelley's Gothic nightmare of a vision. The material itself, sublime and terrible, has always seemed eager to have a life of its own, thus spawning so many takes and versions and interpretations and deconstructions and homages that "Frankenstein" has come to mean, for any generation of readers or viewers, whatever its artists want it to mean. Like the infamous monster it dramatizes, the story's meaning has become an amalgamation of sordid parts, wet connective tissue, and a spark of creative enthusiasm. Take anything from Young Frankenstein to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, with a lot in between (and since), and you'll see what I mean. Hell, pay the cost to watch Danny Boyle's theatrical production with the National Theatre Live company; in two parts, in which the two main actors switch roles as Victor and Creature, the production is gobsmackingly brilliant and deeply moving.

In fact, there's only one adaptation I've ever seen that feels truly faithful to the novel. And no, I don't mean Kenneth Branagh's pseudo-camp, very wet 1994 version, though that will probably now have to retain its deeply misleading and frustrating accolade of being the most faithful feature adaptation. Rather, I refer to the 2004 Hallmark made-for-tv film in two parts, which has its obvious budgetary restrictions but manages nevertheless to faithfully adapt the entire Shelley narrative (!!) with some notably impressive moments (their encounter in the ruined medieval castle is a brilliant scene, cinematographically) and a couple knockout performances, especially from a career-best Luke Goss as the monster. William Hurt's weird accent and flat performance notwithstanding, the production even features a score for days and a few scary images that will knock your socks off.

We all knew Guillermo del Toro would add his signature style to the material, and the trailers reinforced that idea. We all knew this would feature some obnoxious sci-fi imagery, with lots of beakers breaking and animated lighting zapping all over the place; it's annoying, from a purist's perspective, because almost none of the "science" in Shelley's work is like this, yet almost every adaptation uses these trappings to convey something about a very specific idea of (mad) science. And it never makes sense, especially the bizarre stitching patterns used on the creature. If Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs can make a prettier skin suit from girls in a dry well than can an actual surgeon (never mind the century), something is very wrong. Sadly, del Toro's monster follows the same path, offering more stylization than is good for it. The monster so rarely resembles a real dead body that it never feels as scary or gross as it should; its whole point is that it is incarnate abjection, a large living corpse. Do yourself a favor and reread Shelley's description of the monster, and think about what it would really look like. Just don't do it before bedtime!

I say all this because it's important to go into this film with basically no expectations regarding the material. Even a passing knowledge of the novel and its themes will lead you to disappointment. Del Toro has crafted, in his latest film, a travesty of aesthetics. What was so obviously a dream project reveals itself to us as an obsessive, forced mess that butchers its source material on the altar of autership, sacrificing any attempt at philosophical soundness, thematic imagination, and movingly dynamic characters to the false gods of beautiful but hollow imagery, and uninspired and derivative storytelling.

Do we have time for everything? This will be a long one, so gird your loins.

Broken into chapters as it is, I rather expected a more thematic approach. Either a new way of viewing the plot (a la The Last Duel, or Boyle's stage production), or perhaps something linking this more strongly with the Prometheus myth. But no, del Toro merely uses these arbitrary chapter divisions to clarify that the first half of the story is Victor's and the second half is the creature's, as if that wasn't already manifestly apparent in the narrative itself. Worse, despite some ham-fisted dialogue relating Victor to Prometheus -- almost all spoken by Christoph Waltz -- the film ambiguously provides the creature as much if not more imagery associated with the myth (his regeneration, his relationship with fire), so the blending of names and titles becomes functionally meaningless instead of meaningful.

Oscar Isaac plays Victor with his typically excellent craft, though more than once here his voice felt parodic of his own as the title character in X-Men: Apocalypse. Though Isaac has already played the Victor-character before, in the modernized Ex Machina, here del Toro has him set in 1857, several decades after Shelley's original setting, for no apparent reason except to lean farther into the sci-fi trappings of his laboratory. Changing the setting simply to have more reason to insert unnecessary effects sounds pretty artistically bankrupt to me, and it distracts from Isaac's otherwise committed performance. I'd have much preferred to see him going mad while lurking around churchyards and sweating in a lonely, Gothic attic lab. For no clear reason, del Toro has Victor prowling snowy battlefields of what I gather to be the Crimean War; in what world are these corpses of better use to a man looking for ideal, healthy body parts to cobble together a giant man? 

I just don't understand why, in adapting such a clearly and simply constructed story, you'd change so many details that cause you more problems in conveying ideas. Moving things from Regency England to Victorian England only seems justified if the point is to let Victor play with electricity, which isn't even the point of any of this. Worse, it's not even used medically appropriately. By the waking of the creature (and Jacob Elordi gives a fine performance, though his design is too weird and distracting), we quickly learn that he can heal from any wound almost instantly. Heck, in the opening sequence, he's given an animalistic roar and superhuman strength that allows him to singlehandedly move the entire icebound ship loaded with its crew. Imbuing the creature with such superhuman abilities makes him both more monstrous and potentially more heroic, pushing what could and should be a horrifying chamber piece into the realm of Disney-fied superhero flicks.

Del Toro retains the framing device of Victor's final chase through the Arctic and his encounter with sailors trapped there, but the minor theme of the captain's own obsessions is practically absent. In its place, he forces a few action scenes to showcase the supreme might of the creature and its The Terror-like ghostly presence in the frozen wastes. While beautiful, these scenes only confused me more, as they immediately reveal the creature to be immortal and immune to grievous injury. Yet the creature still loiters around, allowing Victor (who looks too healthy to be on death's door) to tell his full account to the captain (Lars Mikkelsen, with nothing to do) before intruding to share his own story. The timing just doesn't add up, even if the views of golden firelight flickering in the icy darkness are lovely on screen.

Victor's story -- told through rather obnoxious voiceover by Isaac -- launches into his childhood home life, quickly bypassed in favor of his days at university, Edinburgh rather than Ingolstadt for unexplained reasons, where he is the subject of an ethics tribunal. He's animating gory, half-corpses and getting them to politely catch and return objects. It's an insane change to the material, not least because it undercuts his entire tragic personality: the whole point is that Victor cannot and does not tell any other soul about his experiments or his eventual creation. His secrecy is wrapped up in his monomania and ego, but del Toro seems thrilled to showcase Victor's efforts to every single character in the film. Impressed by his grotesquerie, Christoph Waltz's original character of Henrich (an arms dealer, for no reason) generously offers to bankroll all of Victor's science, even relocating him to what appears to be an abandoned water treatment tower alongside a reservoir. It's beautiful, sure, but it's also an illogical and gratuitous move in order to force cheap Gothic imagery into the film. 

This reveals a central problem to del Toro's film: in attempting to force Gothicism, he ends up butchering it. How much scarier and more cinematic -- yes, even on a home screen via Netflix -- would Victor's lab have been had it remained true to Shelley's vision? A darkened, locked attic, shrouded in secrecy and night, with much of the body horror seen only by candlelight. Instead, the camera swoops around what might as well be a giant stone lighthouse with a gaping tiled hole running down through its center. Architecturally, it makes no sense at all, and adds a sort of Chekhovian bit of foreshadowing: someone will fall through this inviting hole without guardrails. And indeed, before long, the bizarre and totally extraneous character of Henrich does just that. I hoped we'd retain some of the academic and ethical debate so central to the novel through his character, even if he wasn't one of the iconic professors Victor studied under at university. Alas, he's just there to pay for an expensive and impractical setting.

After the creature is born, Victor is not repulsed or ashamed, but rather takes the creature by hand and walks him around, trying to communicate while teaching him to walk. He even has the creature, who seems shy or pained by sunlight, reach out as if to embrace the yellow rays. There's an impetus of kindness and fatherliness here that actually interested me, because it's so foreign to the material and character. Yet instead of building on this dynamic, del Toro has Victor promptly take the creature to a dungeon -- again, what exactly is this architecture?! -- and chains him up before walking away for the night. For some time after, Victor attempts to teach the creature various things by day before chaining him up again, though the creature only seems able to repeat the name "Victor." 

Until, that is, Victor's family arrives. I don't even know where to start with this. First, his younger brother William (the favorite of their father, played by Charles Dance, in a delicious casting choice for the bit part) is significantly older than he is in the book (so is Victor, to be fair), which changes their dynamic drastically. Worse, Elizabeth is in this version Henrich's niece and William's betrothed. Victor repeatedly makes advances on her, which she rejects; yet upon visiting the tower, Elizabeth immediately wanders into the dungeon and meets the creature, making physical contact without much ado, after which the creature is smitten with her. It's obvious, too, that she's smitten with the creature.

What the fuck, del Toro? I'm all for fresh interpretations of classic stories that aren't bound to purity. Look at Lisa Frankenstein. Look at James Whale's original film. Heck, look at Poor Things. These take a nugget or two and run with it into new and exciting directions. But to pass off your adaptation with integrity while bastardizing the material to suit your own oeuvre feels like the work of an amateur, not an auteur. I'm fine with a dark romance teased out of an ambiguous story: Robert Eggers just did that with his Nosferatu. Del Toro himself has done this! The Shape of Water takes our beloved Gillman from Creature from the Black Lagoon and moves him into a different setting with different themes attached, yet his story is still one of being a missing link and deciding to love a human woman who connects with him. If that's the story del Toro wanted to tell, why didn't he just write that? Why does he try to pass it off as a reasonable adaptation of Frankenstein? He could have taken the character and written a story around it finding romance, acceptance, and forgiveness, and he could have titled it The Shape of Flesh. 

A few moments do offer cool beats we don't always get in these adaptations. Most center around Elordi's creature, though I still think his design looks less like an animated corpse and more like an alien; in fact, he appears to have been visually inspired by Ridley Scott's Prometheus, which is an intriguing connection in genre intertextuality. Woodland creatures seem quite at ease with the monster, and we see him feeding elk and rats a few times. Elordi's physical performance and emotional conveyance is laudable, though I wish he was given more to do by the screenplay. His few scenes of real action are so drenched in CGI -- and yes, while I was at first excited for the wolf pack attack sequence, it quickly derailed into frantic, nonsensical animation -- that they made me lose respect for his performance. You just can't tell what's real or not, which hinders our ability to relate.

Speaking of which, del Toro takes such pains to equalize "monstrous" traits to both Victor and the creature that neither ends up being very dynamic. Victor has urges to be a kindly father or benevolent god, yet his lecherous attitude toward Elizabeth and cruel, almost blasé treatment of his child make him eminently unlikable. The creature is gentle and natural, yet does not hesitate to crush and eviscerate any potential physical threat. By changing the roster of characters in the story, and their ages, we lose several deaths enacted by the creature that increase our complex understanding of his monstrosity, and Victor's by extension. We don't get children being killed or maids being framed (justice for Justine!), and we lose the sorrow of Victor's best friend. There is almost no reason for us to care about Victor because he cares about no one; there is almost no reason for us to care about Elizabeth (and, frankly, Mia Goth's performance is flatter than a pancake in garish, unsightly costumes) because she has no trait of interest beyond liking bugs (so, she's a lay scientist?) and being unfaithful to her betrothed before being passed from brother to brother to child. 

After a messy final act, the film ends on a note that I took particular umbrage with. Having told their respective stories, Victor suddenly and inexplicably feels close to death, and begs the creature's forgiveness, apologizing for his cruelty and negligence. The creature immediately and tearfully accepts and forgives him, and Victor begs the creature not to perish but to "live." The creature disembarks the ship, pushes it out of the ice, and then tries to embrace the sunlight as Victor taught him. It's disgustingly sentimental and anti-Gothic, and profoundly stupid : what life does Victor think this creature could possibly have? He's greeted by horror in civilization. And without Victor, the creature will now forever be alone. Why would the creature want to live? It's a question Shelley asked and had an answer for: he doesn't! But in del Toro's vision, the creature seems fine with living a hermit's life in the Arctic circle, so he tries to affirm that bizarre choice with sunlight and flourish.

And what makes it all worse is that, however we want to define "monster," del Toro could have gone dark with this film. His Nightmare Alley is still on my list of almost-too-disturbing films due to its nihilism and garish theatricality. Can you imagine, here, an ending of the creature drifting away into the inky ether on an ice floe, perhaps holding a torch, slowly disappearing into the blizzard? A haunting chill of possibility, the kind of bleak frisson of the opening scene of Midsommar or that carriage scene in Nosferatu? For that matter, can you imagine an approach to Frankenstein in the style of The Lighthouse, vis-a-vis Robert Eggers?

I really wanted to love this movie, but it might be the first del Toro film I've actively disliked. Very few choices within it are elements I found engaging, thoughtful, or worthwhile. It's loud and bright and kinetic and pretty much everything I don't want from Frankenstein. Worse, his changes to the source material are unfounded, confusing, and detrimental to the story he himself is telling, causing what is a remarkably coherent literary work into a literary travesty without internal logic. Alexandre Desplat's score was lovely, and provided some nice atmosphere. The cinematography was beautiful, if often distracted; editing is more messy, with lots of redundancy, but it's not awful. David Bradley has a nice couple scenes as a rural blind man who becomes the creature's friend, and those might have been the best part of the film (until the giant wolves descend). But pairing my disappointment in the film with my disappointment in del Toro is a nasty shock that I wasn't prepared to handle as we hurtle into awards season.

Shelby Oaks (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

Much will be said of Chris Stuckmann's pedigree and history, yet apart from its inspiration, these things will be said to effectively limit Shelby Oaks, its scope, and its impact. I've yet to hear much response to his feature film debut that isn't couched in some kind of condescending tone that heavily references his years-long passion project and its troubled history or that hinges on something to the effect of "well, once Mike Flanagan joined the creative team and Neon picked it up, then it became a real movie." And I think that's a shameful approach to film criticism. Historicizing can be cool, and it can provide insight, but as soon as you use it to limit and control what the art does and what it means, that context ceases to be useful or believable. After all, a film made by a lifelong fan and critic is going to reference other movies. Most movies do, anyway, regardless of their maker. At least this one makes those references not only obvious and fun, but also crucial to the story being told.

Starting with a faux-documentary a la Lake Mungo or Noroi, Shelby Oaks details the rise of the Paranormal Paranoids, four young YouTubers investigating haunted places, who suddenly go missing in the titular ghost town. Bodies of three are found, along with some of their footage, but Riley Brennan and the second camera are nowhere to be found. As with The Blair Witch Project and its subsequent franchise, this story follows someone eager to find the missing person and learn what happened to the Paranoids. Riley's older sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) is convinced Riley is still alive somewhere, even now, twelve years after her disappearance. This seems wildly unlikely to me, but since that's the only serious jump I had to make to suspend my disbelief, I leapt and was better for it. Once we're in the film proper, Stuckmann has a hell of a story to spin, so you'd better get on board.

There is another version of this film that doesn't feel so dated and that engages in an earnest conversation about how found footage can operate in the twenty-first century and how we, as mindful viewers, should engage with videos of questionable authenticity. Media literacy is in crisis, and a film like this could bravely showcase a side of things we don't normally see while forcing us to grapple with social media algorithms, ever-listening phones, and the specter of artificial intelligence. That's very much not Stuckmann's project here, but I wonder what follow-ups might do in that regard, as the film seems to be breaching between the boundaries of urban legends and ghost towns and our dwindling post-millennial obsession with paranormal web series. Actually, it's not wholly unlike some of Flanagan's early work in that regard of suggestively reaching into a wider conceit without fully engaging, like in Absentia or Oculus.

I won't spoil any plot points here at all, because this film is a bona fide mystery, eager to suck you in and reveal itself in sinister turns. Needless to say, we will find out what happened to Riley -- and why -- and it's probably not what you're expecting. Stuckmann's premise, apart from the Blair Witch of it all, is quite original and hybridizes some key points that feel disparate until later. As Mia investigates, she eventually goes to a prison and an abandoned amusement park, both of which also refer to other iconic horror stories. There has obviously been a killer, and there may be a kidnapper, but beyond that, Stuckmann allows us to think there are ghosts, demons, monsters, and all manner of horrors before film's end, and some of those prove to be true. All predicated on a primary plot distinctly reminiscent of Prisoners or Barbarian, these things begin to take on fantastic lives of their own, so that just like Mia, we are searching through limited available evidence to establish a rational way out of this mystery.

To be fair, rationality may not be the key element of this film, and Stuckmann does sacrifice rich character development (or even realism) in favor of some rural Gothic adventuring. I don't mind that, generally, and Mia's nighttime escapades make the movie pretty amazing. It's just not reasonable for Mia to be this obsessed with her missing sister for over a decade; we're even told it has ruined her marriage and might have something to do with her inability to become pregnant (which she fervently wants or, perhaps, wanted). It's also not reasonable for her, after being scared out of her mind by the inciting incident of a crazed man delivering her the missing tape before fatally shooting himself on her porch, to not call for backup or even leave a note before launching into a nocturnal investigation at abandoned places that would be dangerous even in broad daylight, without demonic dogs hounding her steps.

And while Sullivan delivers what she needs, I couldn't help but wonder why the screenplay didn't let her do more. Or perhaps why she felt so one-note. She's just kind of always there, shuddering and grimacing and looking, rarely speaking or acting proactively. It's a stoic performance of a kind we almost never see leading a horror film, and it freezes us in place when it should mobilize us into reacting to the frisson. Indeed, I found myself reacting to Stuckmann's well-crafted and effectively employed scares more vocally and physically than Sullivan does. She just keeps her head swivel going, like an owl on an old clock, and it's up to us to search the shadowy surroundings for what might have made the alarming noise.

It might have been going for, simply, too much. The whole subplot of the prison is fascinating, and Keith David's bit part is really effective. But the film pivots again after this, and its final act is a frenetic experience in its own right, tonally led by a terrifying Robin Bartlett, veering close to what Ann Dowd provided in Hereditary. For a plot to take place in a single, hellish night, I'm glad this didn't become a shitty web miniseries; its episodic narrative needs dramatic unity to make sense, and in a single film, it does. It took me some time to get into the story, but by the climax and finale, I was locked in and on the edge of my seat. Stuckmann's technique as a filmmaker might be half-baked as of yet (I'm not sure this is fair of me, but it is a sometimes wonky film; that said, his visuals are stunning and occasionally beautiful, like Mia's foray into the prison block, which looks like something out of Bergman or Fulci, atmospheric and Gothic, as if the ruins itself breathes contagion), but his instincts as a storyteller are fabulous, carrying this material through to the glorious cinematic release it always needed. Seeing this on a big screen in the dark with surround sound is the only way to appreciate what he's done here, and it deserves to be appreciated.

Black Phone 2 (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The Black Phone was, in my opinion, over-hyped and hasn't really stood the test of time, even in only four years. I liked it well enough, but repeat viewings have made its substantial plot holes increasingly difficult to swallow. Some movies are just meant to be seen once and enjoyed as such; Derrickson's mastery of suggestive suspense and brutal scares is too profound for him to make a mediocre cinematic experience. However, the story was simplistic, messy, and too vague for its own good. Perhaps that's why Ethan Hawke's villainous Grabber character has maintained its interest: he's enigmatic enough to be upsetting. I think of him the way I think of Michael Myers: sure, he's scary enough, but it's not until he should be dead and rises again anyway that we really lock into the horror Laurie Strode is up against.

When a sequel was announced, I blanched. Joe Hill only wrote a single short story, and that was adapted into the first film; what could happen next, with the Grabber dead? But I'm glad I reserved judgment, because Black Phone 2, despite its terrible title, took me on a wild ride that scared me, provoked my curiosity in refreshing ways, and eventually helped me think of its predecessor in a kinder light. That's pretty remarkable these days, with strung-along sequels and remakes that never try to do something really weird and make it work.

I won't recount much plot here, because piecing it together is part of the fun to be had, but Black Phone 2 relocates Finney and Gwen, now considerably older, to a Christian camp alongside a mountainous lake in their home state of Colorado. Led by Gwen's visions of their dead mother's time working there, the kids (and Gwen's new boyfriend) arrive amidst a terrible snowstorm, isolating them in cabins along with the four camp staffers stationed there. Gwen's visions worsen, and Finney receives calls via the camp's decommissioned payphone: the Grabber, long dead, has figured out a way to seek revenge on Finney for killing him. The logic is a bit unclear, but he's haunting a site of his own early murders, reinforcing the psychic connection between the Grabber and the kids through their mother, whose unwelcome visions allowed her to see his victims and eventually drove her mad (and to suicide, as was presumed in the previous film). 

Less like Michael Myers and more like Freddy Krueger, this film swings into directions I was not at all expecting, and Derrickson's aesthetic choices in the first film are doubled down on here, making his earlier choices make more sense. For example, the first film features intercuts of what appear to be Super 8mm footage indicating the abduction/murder scenes of what we know to be missing persons; it's utilizing a sort of mockumentary/found footage technique for no reason because of course no one was filming those crimes. Yet in this film, it's finally clear that that technique is simply a visual cue as to how Gwen's visions appear: grainy, blurry, awkwardly spliced together. Whereas I thought it was, before, a cheap ploy capitalizing on Derrickson's terrifying successes in Sinister (which it may well have been), now I see it as a suitably reasonable approach to non-anachronistic visual representation that the character herself would be familiar with.

Regardless, the Grabber's crimes are no longer so pedestrian, and here he's got a nasty axe to grind. Literally. The bloody violence of this film had me gagged, and I mean that literally as well, because it was not what I expected. Hawke returns, and this time he's not quite as chillingly spooky; nor is he as sexually suggestive, which I both liked and wish we had some closure about. His first outing was like Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates: performative and cerebral, rather femme and quietly disturbed. This time, he's full-on psycho, an edge of diabolic malevolence to his gravelly voice, launching headfirst into rooms from shadowy corners and taking broad swings with his weapons of choice. He's not going to trick or toy with his victims now. He's going to dismember them. 

Surreal nightmare logic won't work for everyone, but this movie worked for me on that front. I also liked that Gwen takes more of a leading role here, and the actors (excellent already in the first film) deliver shockingly mature performances yet again. Finney has the thankless position of trying to become a man with the only role model of his father (Jeremy Davies, who returns in a diminished capacity here), who is only tenuously no longer alcoholic and abusive. Naturally, Finney has some junk still to sort through mentally, and he's numbing his pain and his life as a result. Gwen's visions this time are more brutal, and so is her treatment by the Grabber, making the nature of violence in this film a really cool counterpoint to the first: then, it was suggestive, abductive, and sexual, whereas now, it's explicit, bodily, and psychic. 

This is still a big-budget slasher film, even with its ghostly elements, and it doesn't all cohere the way we might want. Rather than allowing the kids' dynamics to breathe naturally, they're forced into conversations that reveal key things laid out as breadcrumbs by the writers, building to a contrived climax that only works as the sum of these crumbs. The camp staffers, including Demian Bichir and Arianna Rivas, are mostly forgettable, only there to allow the kids chances to explain what's happening and to spur them on to make tough decisions and help with physical tasks, such as searching a frozen lake for bodies stashed there more than twenty years prior. 

Crazy? Yeah, and that's the kind of weird thing that a film like this should have worked out in, well, workshop. Derrickson is too good to let a weird screenplay get in his way, but this story (like the previous one) could have used some serious help in development. But if you're willing to let plot holes and strange logical jumps be what they are, Black Phone 2 has boons in store. Terrifyingly choreographed and edited sequences turn nightmarish visions into impossible realities, shifting between visual modes as we watch the Grabber viciously tearing apart his victims while, in waking cuts, bodies of teenagers are flung about with spurts of blood. Derrickson and his cinematographer milk the snowy, mountainous landscape for all its worth, often using window panes and ice as our actual frame into their world. And while Derrickson's penchant for religious content isn't gone here -- Gwen still talks to Jesus for help in her wonderfully crass way, and the Grabber's mask is about as demonic as you can get -- it does feel earned and grounded in ways we so rarely see (these are not idolatrous possession films bogged down in Catholic imagery or emotionally manipulative Warren-esque normative families). This works surprisingly well in a film that basically turns a one-off spooky story into a full-fledged supernatural slasher franchise. Where else has the Grabber killed kids? Will he go on to haunt those places, too?

Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)

Score: 1 / 5

I still think the Fear Street trilogy from 2021 is one of the coolest original ideas from Netflix, though it's almost certainly Leigh Janiak who deserves the credit. The films were among my favorites that year, due to their content and aesthetics alike, and even their marketing and "distribution" on the streaming service within mere weeks of each other was experimental and brilliant. I never read R.L. Stine's young adult book series of the same name, but from what I understand, Janiak's stories were mostly original; regardless, I find them highly entertaining and deeply fascinating. So when I heard a new entry had been greenlit and that it would be based on one of the books, I was thrilled.

Sadly, Janiak has no credited presence in Fear Street: Prom Queen, the first attempt to expand her series into a franchise. And it's a palpable, consequential absence. Part of what made Janiak's trilogy so memorable and fun was her ability to synthesize relevant pop culture with genuinely upsetting scares, mixing genre conventions with keen attention to the time period of her chosen settings. Sometimes, horror just feels bespoke: this same aesthetic is why I so dearly love the Williamson/Craven Scream franchise and the Murphy/Falchuk AHS series. They just feel made for me. I wasn't too worried about a new creative in charge of Prom Queen, because Janiak's considerable foundation was sure to carry through, right? Bring in some '80s slasher vibes, pretty dresses, and solid rock music, and it's bound to be a good time, right?

Yet Matt Palmer's tepid film seems less inspired by Prom Night and Carrie and more scared of them. It doesn't even really feel like part of the Fear Street franchise, as almost nothing connects it to the previous trilogy. Sure, there's a lot of chitchat about Shadyside, the town's lamentable history, and its eternal tensions with neighboring Sunnyvale, but such dialogue is only barely enough connective tissue to suffice. This may as well have started as a draft for a rejected subplot of Riverdale on the CW, and one hewing far too close to generic high school melodrama to actually engage any of its own interesting ideas.

Everyone's a suspect? Randy's famed and mostly accurate accusation of Prom Night in Scream does help us view the 1980 cult classic differently than most of its slasher ilk in that there isn't a clearly identified (and/or identifiable) masked killer with possibly supernatural abilities. Yet there are also arguably too many characters and not enough interest in them to drum up any suspense here; we know there will be at least one killer, and it could be anyone, so we don't get attached to any characters at all. Attempts at dynamic queer characters? Lili Taylor pops in for a few scenes as a lesbian-coded vice principal a little too interested in the prom's success, but she's little more than the same kind of red herring than in any other prom movie (opportunistic, pitiful teacher wanting connection). Good music? At bare minimum, a prom movie should have killer beats, and this one

The acting is mostly passable, though the ensemble fails to mesh stylistically. The Regina George of school, Tiffany Falconer and her Wolfpack gang -- a name which simply does not fit, though I hoped for a moment we might get a supernatural Trick 'r Treat moment with them (if you know, you know) -- are written flatly and predictably, so Fina Strazza's pseudo-camp delivery feels forced and Sisyphean. Her foil, protagonist Lori Granger (India Fowler), is the underdog of the prom queen competition. One wonders how the mild-mannered, constantly bullied girl who shows no interest in her classmates or her hometown even got in the race, and Lori herself seems ambivalently annoyed and annoying about the whole affair. Does she want the crown just to spite her nemesis? Does she actually want Tiffany's boyfriend Tyler (David Iacono), who seems to have eyes only for Lori? By the time they dance off alone in front of their peers, I found myself kind of hoping they'd just brawl already; instead, we're treated to a curious inversion of the Ozdust dance in Wicked, whereby Lori dances strangely and endearingly while Tiffany is so desperate to be cool and popular that she makes a damn (and sweaty) fool of herself.

Oh, and while all this is happening, there's a killer on the rampage. In a striking slash of red, the killer emerges periodically wearing a mask and scarlet rain poncho that is almost interesting. Appearances aren't what make a killer memorable, but this one is lacking on all fronts. Palmer can't seem to construct a reasonably intelligent chase or even ramp up much by way of suspense, making the kill scenes random and clunky, forced and brief. He doesn't hold back on the gore, that's for sure, but then he doesn't even do anything interesting with the gore (maybe that could have painted the killer a la It's a Wonderful Knife, or the killer could have left blood-smeared notes on the lockers, or maybe if prom was a whiteout theme with red highlights so people made tie-dye dresses that looked bloody? I don't know, but there was room to play here, and instead the entire realm of possibility is left unexplored). 

Palmer's seeming desperation to force this story into the Fear Street aesthetic also leads him to pitfalls in other areas. Grotesque costumes and hair beg audiences to feel nostalgic, as if the only way Palmer thought this film could work was by making people want to relive prom night of forty years ago. The soundtrack includes some nice choices -- Laura Branigan's "Gloria" gets a lovely extended moment during the dance off that feels directly referencing the climax of Prom Night -- but they never stop, and rarely play enough of a song to get into it. The music isn't supporting story beats; it's forcing us into a headspace through what amount to slapdash sound bytes.

Katherine Waterston has fun with her part -- Tiffany's uptight and demanding mother -- and provides the only overt link to the previous trilogy that I caught (other than a character name or two, like Goode) during a spoiler-y final shot that raised more questions than it answered. Is Sarah Fier at work with this rash of killings, as usual? It didn't seem like it until that final shot, but if it's the old witch, her modus operandi is way off this time. Which is another reason why Fear Street: Prom Queen is ultimately merely disappointing. If you want a nostalgic slasher, why would you pick this instead of watching Jamie Lee Curtis disco dancing? If you want something interesting about Stine's young adult murder town, why would you pick this instead of Janiak's films? Palmer doesn't provide us with any reason to vote in his favor.