The Prom Queen (1992) or Prom Queen (2025)?

For every teen movie, teen book, teen event of any kind… it all comes down to Prom. That end of the year celebration for Senior high students to dress expensively lavish outfits they will will once in their life and gyrate around a gym to the top hits of today. Prom is also the event that crowns the most popular and desirable as Prom Queen and Prom King. According to high school lore, being crowned means everything. If the pages and screens have any grain of truth, one must do anything to wear the fiberglass crown Maybe even kill for it.

Bring on the disco balls and dive into another, the Fear Street way. For many of us over thirty, we lived for R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps. The Goosebumps series are a campy and lightly spooky series geared for the average middle school child. The 62 book series would feature stories like murderous ventroliquist’s dolls or yeti like creatures. There were spinoffs such as the hoose Your Own adventure series called Give Yourself Goosebumps (a personal favorite). When readers outgrew the campiness and wanted more thrills, they would turn to the Fear Street series.

The Fear Street series were definitely not for young children but they also weren’t scary enough to traumatize. The stories would often feature kills mentioned outside of the chapter and heavy on the suspense, and plenty of teen angst.

PROM QUEENS is the latest installment in the Fear Street franchise on Netflix. It began with the three part journey of Fear Street:1994, Fear Street: 1978, and Fear Street:1666 (And yes,it should be watched in that order to get that satisfying visceral reaction). The three part series introduces Fear Street fans and newbies to the cinematic side of Shadyside, a fictional town where, er, shady things seem to happen. It seems like any typical rural town, only there is something dark and sinister lurking beneath the people and it involves a lot of blood.

Before we get to the screen, let’s reach back into the past and into the pages of where it began.

The Book: The Prom Queen (1992)

Re-reading this book as an adult is a complete nostalgic trip. Even with these wizened eyes, it was too easy to be transported back into a young teen just indulging in the shallowness of the story. It’s a very light read with the barest hint of blood, which explains why it’s such a great transition for kids growing into the horror genre. For “The Prom Queen”, the horror is framed around a mysterious serial killer that is keeping the Shadyside highschoolers in a nervous grip.

The Prom Queen begins with killing. The town is alarmed the murder of a young woman in the Shadyside woods close to town. Mixed with fear and excitement, it’s all that the kids can talk about. Just as exciting as the murder is the upcoming prom, the highlight of high school. The prom queen nominees are Lizzy, Rachel, Dawn, Simone, and Elana. A quintet of frenemies, each embodying a typical stereotype. More murders soon begin to vamp up afterwards and it’s quickly noticed that there is a pattern to the seemingly accidental (really comical) deaths: they’re all prom queen nominees! Will the serial killer be caught before the prom queen tiara is crowned to empty air?

That’s it to the story. As the girls die, one of the the five tried to solve the killer. There are moments of red herrings, misunderstandings, side eyes, and a roster of potential killers. R.L. Stine may be touted as being a very predictable writer of horror but even now, I failed to correctly guess who the killer was.

The Movie: Prom Queen (2025)

Thirty three years later, the story that “The Prom Queen” introduced in 1992 has been infused with more backstory, references, and set in a completely different decade. The book was published in 1992, close enough to the 80’s , so it’s not too much of a stretch that the film takes a firm neon stance.

Prom Queen also breaks apart the quasi-friends quintet of the book into a clear division, reminiscent of a Mean Girls with an 80’s referential humor. In a nod towards Pretty in Pink but with a twist, the protagonist is Lori Granger, the poor working class girl whose mother is rumored to have murdered her father. Her best friend is the dark Ducky, Megan, the resident stoner kid who loves reading Fangoria magazine. These two are constantly butting heads against the “wolfpack” (I can’t get over how silly that group nickname is but it could possibly be a weird nod to An American Werefolf in London?). The wolfpack consists of four girls: Melissa, Debbie, Linda, and Tiffany.

The only common theme between the movie and the book is that there is indeed a prom and the prom queen nominees are indeed targeted. Other than that, the movie is wildly different. The three part series has set up that Shadyside is not just shady, it’s pretty messed up. Prom Queen is set up in 1988 so it’s right between Fear Street: 1978 and Fear Street:1994. There are even references made to the events in 1978 that pretty confirms that this all adds to the demented time line of the series.

Just like the three movies, Prom Queen does not skimp at the death scenes or blood levels at all. In fact, they seem to have more fun at making the deaths as creative and referential as possible. Since I am not a horror movie fan, I missed many of the references but I did catch The Shining One. There was a wide range of death scenes from comical to shock ( in one scene, the axe came from absolute nowhere, leaving no moment to hide behind a pillow!). The prom queen candidates drop off one by one in their own personalized bloody way.

The star of the whole movie is really Megan. She carries the movie as the outsider who is suddenly thrust into the center of the bloody circle. She stands alone not only in personality but also in style as she looks fantastic with slicked back hair and a suit during prom. It is also her loyalty and altruistic side that overshadows her “outsider” personality as she works to not only save Lori but also the rest of the school. She also has amazing talent with special effects.

It wouldn’t be a true R.L. Stine story if there wasn’t a twist to offset all of the detours and red herrings. Not everything is what they seem and not everyone is who they portray themselves to be. Once again, I did not predict the killer at all.

Note: There is a little end credit scene that hints at the sinister nature that embodies every inch of this town.

Prom Queen is a proper summer teen horror flick to chill the bones in the summer. Just like the book, the story behind the murders is so light and fluffy and does not add much to much to the Fear Street universe that is being set up in Netflix. It’s meant to just be vehicle to listen to some synth music while predicting which body part will be stabbed or which organs will fall out of the body.

Or maybe, that’s the horror right there? Are we as desensitized and blood to horror as the citizens of Shadyside? Is it all just another day to us all?

Prom Queen is an unapologetic homage to the slasher films of the eighties. The references to these films were not in the film but also represented within the alternative posters for the movie. Can you guess the movie the poster is referencing?