Death's A Dance, Make It A Prom!: Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)

Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)
Rating: ****
Starring: India Fowler, Suzanna Son, Fina Strazza

The 2021 Fear Street trilogy is, without a doubt, one of the more unique movie events made for the slasher sub-genre. It's practically one five-and-a-half-hour-long film inspired by R.L. Stine's young adult book series of the same name, divided into three parts, each to be played a week from one another. Though each entry has their own strengths and weaknesses, resulting to varying qualities per film, the all-in-all result is still a unique and adventurous blend of supernatural terror, generational trauma and gory slasher action.

Now, the franchise returns with a standalone title set in the same movie universe, this time an adaptation of Stine's book The Prom Queen, done gorier, messier and reeking of pure 80s nostalgia. 

It's 1988 and the small town of Shadyside is getting ready to celebrate one of the few good things to look forward to every year, the high school senior prom and the race for the Prom Queen crown! For this round, the candidates are mostly within the same clique known as The Wolf Pack, led by pompous queen bee Tiffany Falconer. She and her three cohorts are up against street-smart weed dealer Christie, who's just doing it so she can annoy Tiffany, and Lori Granger, the underdog candidate whose mother is rumored to have murdered Lori's father during her own prom many years ago. For Lori, to be crowned Prom Queen is a chance to represent the sunnier side of Shadyside, to break the town's gloomy reputation of being the breeding place of homicidal serial killers and masked psychos, thus hopefully freeing her and her mother from being looked down upon as tragic cases. 

On Lori's side is her horror geek bestie, Megan, rooting from the sides as she go about trying to ruin the Wolf Pack's morale by pranking them with horror effects and magic, from self-dismemberment via prop hand, to life-like replica of Tiffany's head left curiously floating in a punch bowl. However, Megan soon finds herself and Lori are in a horror movie of their own: someone in a red rain slicker and masked-up like a ghoul is out cutting down the competition, hacking up the prom queen candidates and, too, pretty much anybody else who happens to be in their way with an axe. By the end of the night, will there be anyone left alive to be crowned Prom Queen?

A more back-to-basics entry from a film franchise centered around witch curses and maniacs that can regenerate from demonic goo, Prom Queen (2025) is your classic high school bodycounter flick mixing in girl drama with good old-fashioned hack 'n slash, ala Heathers (1988) crossed with Prom Night (1980). Admittedly, this is a direction that isn't going to garner a lot of favorable opinions after the trilogy's more unique swing at the slasher sub-genre, but for those who are not in an overly demanding mood and simply want to watch a dead teenager film for the fun of watching a dead teenager film, this movie serves!

Prom Queen (2025) unfolds quite nicely as we breeze through its high school dramatics and be rewarded for sticking through the scenes with a decent kill or two. Maybe even a dance-off! Yes, the paint-by-number approach is still riddled with slasher tropes like couples repeatedly sneaking away from the party to hook up, only to get a knife buried into a head or being relieved of their limbs with an axe, but the movie isn't one to shy away from doing something shocking and nasty whenever it can to keep everyone on their toes, mainly offing some likable characters, as well as having a madman publicly go after a victim through a crowd while the Prom Queen coronation is happening. The deaths are also a splashy bunch, a real showcase of blood and guts here with a brutal buzzsaw to the face and a savage axe double-murder being among the better examples! 

The throwback aesthetics is workable enough; the snappy soundtrack full of 80s mood classics and modern retrowave is a good hear, plus the fashion sense and lingo here do strike a nostalgic nerve, quite passable attempts for a late-80s slasher tribute such as this. By the near end of the film, we're treated with a twisty set of reveals that, while isn't exactly new or surprising, it still pairs pretty well with the bonkers motivation the killer have for massacring teenagers during prom. It's the kind of crazy slasher finale we've grown to love and I'm all for it! 

Overall, Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) may not win every horror-living hearts out there, but for those who loves a gruesomely bloody teen slasher with the decent amount of nostalgic ham and craziness, this is a great movie to consider for your slasher viewings! Make it a date! 

Bodycount:

1 female hacked to death with an axe

1 female gutted

1 male had his hands lopped off with a paper guillotine, face smashed against a door

1 male had his face eviscerated with a buzzsaw

1 female startled unto a fusebox, electrocuted to death

1 female hacked on the head with a meat cleaver

1 male jabbed on the head with a knife

1 male found with a hammerclaw buried into his head

1 female had a leg lopped off with an axe, bled to death

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 female fell unto and impaled on a falcon statue

1 female fatally brained with a trophy, dies from her injury 

Total: 12