‘Fear Street: Prom Queen’ Review: Death Stalks High School Halls in Overfamiliar Netflix Slasher Filled With Old Tropes

Insanely prolific “Goosebumps” author R.L. Stine’s other major publishing franchise, the young adult “Fear Street” series, made a decent splash on Netflix four years ago with the premiere of three interlocking features, each set in the same fictitious “cursed” town during a different era. All directed by Leigh Janiak, the trio (“Fear Street: 1994,” “1978” and “1666”) was uneven in some respects, but lively, stylistically diverse and reasonably ambitious — overall, a definite cut above the usual formulaic run of horror entries. 

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That sense of occasion is missing from the new “Fear Street: Prom Queen,” a belated stand-alone chapter that feels considerably more mundane. Reprising high-school slasher cliches dating back at least to 1980’s “Prom Night,” minus any particular invention or irony, this new entry is a slick-enough but disappointingly unimaginative effort that can’t even be bothered to reference the mythology established in the prior films.

The story is back in perpetually ill-starred burg Shadyside, “where the future crawls to die,” as heroine Lori Granger (India Fowler) grouses in opening voiceover narration. Glimpsed this time in 1988, it’s an outwardly normal, all-American small town that nonetheless constantly suffers grotesque incidents of violent tragedy — one of which took the life of Lori’s father, leaving her mother (Joanne Boland) forever suspected of his murder. Improbably located right across the street from their humble abode is the upscale manse inhabited by the Falconers, a rich couple (Katherine Waterson, Chris Klein) who’ve raised only child Tiffany (Fina Strazza) to be a particularly stinging WASP. She is leader to a high school mean-girl clique known as “the Wolfpack,” whose three other members she keeps well under thumb — while directing their venom at everybody else, particularly Lori and her goth BFF Megan (previously seen in “Red Rocket”). 

Nonetheless, Lori is so tired of being kicked around that she’s entered herself as a candidate for prom queen, alongside all the she-“wolves.” The sixth contender is “big-time rebel” Christy (Ariana Greenblatt): a proud “bad girl” who’s running probably just to spite the entire school, including its stuffy primary administrators Principal Wayland (Darrin Baker) and Vice Principal Brekenridge (Lili Taylor). Selling drugs in a dingy area of town one night — like its predecessors, this film takes for granted less-parentally-approved activities amongst today’s adolescents — Christy gets accosted by someone in a mask and red slicker, like an adult-sized version of the killer in “Don’t Look Now.” From there, the film is commits to its slasher premise.

After that, we’re soon at the prom, where that same lethal mystery figure begins to stalk and stab the queen aspirants. Survival odds rapidly winnow for the Wolfettes, plus their unlucky boyfriends and anyone else who gets in the way. Megan is the first to suspect something amiss as these prominent participants disappear during the event, though at first no one believes her — including Lori, who’s distracted by the attention coming her way from Tiffany’s fed-up beau Tyler (David Iacono). But once heads start rolling right out on the dance floor, everybody gets the message.

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, as well as high school satires like “Heathers” and “Mean Girls,” without ever figuring just how seriously it wants to take them. (Nor does it bear much resemblance beyond a title to Stine’s 1992 “Fear Street” entry “The Prom Queen.”) So there’s a half-heartedness to the whole enterprise, though it’s paced expertly enough to hold attention. 

The characters are too one-dimensional to care about — though we’re sporadically asked to do just that — yet at the same time their cartoonishness isn’t treated with enough gusto to actually be fun. The supernatural cause that underlied the mayhem in the original “Fear Street” trilogy is absent here. Yet the climactic, very human explanation is ludicrously over-the-top for a film that doesn’t seem to revel in its own improbability, rendering that conclusion more laughable than flamboyant or knowingly funny. Even a dance-off duel between underdog protagonist and villainess, offering prime opportunity for camp excess, falls flat. 

That’s not the fault of the competent, generally well-cast actors — doing their best, even if you may lament the veteran talent wasted — but rather with the film’s tonal uncertainty. Perhaps British director Matt Palmer and his co-writer Donald McLeary just aren’t comfortable with the very American milieu (despite a Canadian production) or genre tropes at hand. Certainly the shiny, shallow “Prom Queen” is a far cry from their prior feature, 2018’s “Calibre,” a thriller set in the Scottish Highlands that was all about psychological nuance. 

Those who keep their expectations geared to the level of a well-produced generic slasher will find this exercise passably entertaining. Gore FX aside, its closest attention is paid to the trappings of 1980s teen culture, from garish fashions to the expected soundtrack of vintage pop hits by Billy Idol, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Judas Priest, Roxette, Rick Astley, Bananarama, Tiffany, Laura Branigan etc. The Newton Brothers’ original score hews to a similar synthy template. One notable holdover from the prior films is providing a thread of lesbian desire, though Megan’s unrequited pining for Lori occupies a more marginal place in the narrative this time around.