Fear Street: Prom Queen

This deeply disappointing new Fear Street instalment leans too hard into worn-out tropes and excessive gore, at the expense of fun, engaging characters or any genuine scares.

While the identity of the villain knocking off the prom queen candidates is obvious, the sheer uninhibited Road Runner meets Wile E. Coyote excitement of the climax remains delightfully infectious.

There’s a lot of limb-severing and such. But “Fear Street: Prom Queen” never rises above its pedestrian concept, which simply lifts cliches from standard slice-and-dice opuses...without ever figuring just how seriously it wants to take them.

Flirty and fiendish, “Prom Queen” is the pick if you want to laugh, gag, and chant “KISS!” (in a homoerotic manner) without leaving the house this weekend.

Fear Street: Prom Queen comes to Netflix laden with lore, but the movie itself is an indifferently made and stiffly acted YA exercise that struggles to sustain even a halfhearted level of engagement.

Scottish writer-director Matt Palmer and co-writer Donald McLeary race through an ungainly infodump opener, introducing far too many characters far too soon, a superficial and ineffective introduction to the specifics of Shadyside high school politics.

Despite some committed performances, the lazy Fear Street: Prom Queen can't help but fall under the shadow of the original trilogy.

The mystery remains stagnant when it comes to the curiosity surrounding who could be responsible, and the movie’s look does it no favors either. For a slasher flick, this one wasn’t close to winning the crown.

The result is an entertainingly lean and mean slasher that, while somewhat forgettable, is an engaging evocation of a bygone era.

While the film is aggressively fine, it is a BIG step down from the trilogy. Blame the writing, direction and Netflix's obvious cost-cutting, but it feels like no one except the actors cared