Fear Street: Prom Queen | Film Review

 

Shadyside High's 1988 prom night becomes bloody when a mysterious figure starts to kill the candidates for Prom Queen.

The Fear Street trilogy was almost perfect. I loved all the movies and the world that was created; it was such an inventive, unique and complete trilogy. So when I heard a new film was coming out, I was definitely apprehensive about it.

And I was right to be apprehensive because this was not good at all.

For a start, the writing was the first thing that told me this wouldn't be as good as the first three films. It wasn't as tight as it was in the trilogy, and it was written in a way that felt like we were already supposed to know the characters we were introduced to. And because of that, they weren't developed particularly well.

We were never given a chance to either know or care about the characters, which just made the entire film feel pointless.

This film is completely disconnected from the 'Fear Street' universe. I tend to feel neutral about blatant cash-grabs because it's just the way these businesses run, but this one was too much even for me. Not a second of effort was put into trying to connect these worlds other than the name of the high school. They didn't even use one of the villains that the first three films set up perfectly, which would have been really interesting to see. It just took the name and that's all.

The effects were, for want of a better word, lame. And in addition to that, not only were the kills boring, but they were really unimaginative.

The reveal was completely predictable. There was one thing about it that I didn't guess right away and even then it was still really guessable as you got further into the film. Not only that, but the way it was done disconnected the film even further from the 'Fear Street' universe - what was the point?

The only good thing about the film was the soundtrack, nothing else really worked.

Overall, this isn't a 'Fear Street' movie. It shouldn't be labelled as such and it shouldn't have the same name. This was a generic slasher that would have been exactly the same it they changed the name of the high school - and even then, it wasn't a particularly good slasher.

3/10