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.

Until Dawn (2025)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Have you played the video game Until Dawn? The 2015 release is basically an interactive film itself, a darkly beautiful and quietly brilliant choose-your-own-adventure experience I played with a former coworker in a single sitting that had us genuinely scared and delighted. A smart and knowing variation on the slasher subgenre of horror, the game involves a group of young people stuck on a snowy mountain trying to stay alive while being stalked and hunted by a mysterious killer. Its cast includes Rami Malek, Hayden Panetierre, and Peter Stormare, and the goal is to keep as many people alive as possible... or not, which is also a valid choice in the game's mechanics. So when I heard a film was being adapted from the game, I was admittedly nervous. Not because it's basically already a film, which it is, but because a film by necessity (I say, knowing full well that Black Mirror: Bandersnatch can offer a different style of film-making and -viewing for audiences these days) has some limited options for narration. 

Maybe that's not fair. After all, cult classic Clue (1985) provides multiple endings within its single runtime; more to the point, our era of multiverses has allowed for any number of possibilities in terms of a single plot having multiple outcomes or arcs. Heck, even a miniseries exploring many different narratives could have been a more fruitful avenue for this IP to pursue. It's not for me to say which would be "better" or not, but I can say that, as it is, Until Dawn takes the seemingly endless possibilities of its premise and squanders nearly all of them. 

A metafictional, postmodern Groundhog Day in a world not dissimilar from The Cabin in the Woods, Until Dawn concerns Ella Rubin and her four friends (they have character names, but who cares?) as they drive to a remote visitor center in Glore Valley, an old mining town where visitors apparently routinely go missing, looking for her missing sister. Stranded by nightfall and torrential rains, they investigate the center and are almost immediately killed one by one. Soon enough, they reawaken to discover their own missing persons posters, learning alarmingly quickly that the day will repeat endlessly as they continue to fall prey to death in its many forms. The guestbook's limited names and a large hourglass spinning around indicate to them their purgatorial fate. As such, the film's structure allows for a series of small-scale horror sequences of varying styles and methods. 

Too bad, then, that all are derivative and mostly devoid of actual scares. What annoys me isn't the premise, or its mishandled linear narrative; Edge of Tomorrow is functionally the same thing in a sci-fi action/war format, and it's excellently handled. And it's not the endless options of horror-fueled violence, because that just makes it cool: what genre tropes will be employed next? Killer clowns? Werewolves? Mad scientists? Extradimensional monsters? Home invasion? Ghosts? "Yes, and" is the rousing answer. But director David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation, Shazam!, Shazam! Fury of the Gods) and writer Gary Dauberman (Annabelle Comes Home, 'Salem's Lot, writer of the Annabelle series and Andy Muschietti's It duology) don't seem to know what to do with the plethora of options at their disposal, choosing to play things safe and predictably. Instead of changing aesthetically with each rest of the hourglass, they proceed with the same visually dark, early-2000s style of their vision, depressingly flat in ocular dynamics, repeating the same night in the same way with the same rhythm of kills. There are a few fun moments, notably an explosive jump-scare related to drinking the house's water, but anything of note in that regard was spoiled by the film's trailers.

Worse, none of the characters are memorable or interesting, only generally a terrible group of "friends" who end up running around, screaming, and dying without distinction before returning yet again to discuss their various traumas. For a premise literally dripping with self-awareness and fresh, witty opportunities for actual terror, it decides to waste its time on familiar and dull archetypal beats. Even a la Silent Hill, I found the film most intriguing as it attempted to dramatically suggest the history of the town, yet it even spoils the fun in that. I'd rather play the game, as with that other mention, or even the Blair Witch game, all of which allow for greater interactivity with stories and lore wildly more immersive and experimental than this sadly underbaked and lackluster excuse for cheap genre commentary. This might be my biggest disappointment of the year, along with Snow White.

I'll note that playing the game again may help my opinion, as I'm sure there are Easter eggs here, particularly around the protagonist's missing sister and Stormare's character, but I was too checked out to make the connections consciously or with any degree of interest.