The new Fear Street trailer is a good reminder that the series should have had more sequels by now

All the way back in 2021, Netflix seemed like it was finally making good on its promise to change the way we watch movies. It had already found the (increasingly less successful) binge model for TV, and the experimental Fear Street franchise was supposed to be a shot at giving movies a similarly relentless release pattern. Netflix’s first trilogy in the series released with one new movie a week for three weeks, and each of the entries was met with fairly warm reception. Then the series disappeared. Now, four years later, we’ve finally gotten the trailer for movie number four.

Fear Street: Prom Queen looks like a lot of fun. The movie follows the student body of Shadyside High, who are all getting ready for prom. Everyone expects prom queen to be a race between the school’s most popular girls, but the race gets a shake up when students start vanishing without a trace. And if the trailer’s any indication, Prom Queen is following in the series’ legacy, with plenty of gory kills, a few likable characters, and a lot of teenage slasher mayhem — a slightly bloodier remix of the R.L. Stine books the series is based on.

The cast of Prom Queen is also pretty impressive feature Ariana Greenblatt (Borderlands), Katherine Waterston (Inherent Vice), Lili Taylor (The Conjuring), Chris Klein (Election), Ella Rubin (Anora), India Fowler (The Agency), and Suzanna Son (Red Rocket).

Despite how fun it all looks, however, none of this answers the question of why we haven’t seen this franchise in so long. Film production takes a very long time, but given Netflix track record of frequent releases, and the fact that Fear Street really seemed to resonate with horror fans, it was awfully surprising that they didn’t have a plan to get more movies out quicker.

Perhaps some of the tardiness has to do with the fact that Fear Street: Prom Queen comes from an entirely different creative team than the first three movies. The first set of films were all directed by Leigh Janiak, and written by Janiak and a few different writers. Prom Queen, on the other hand, is directed and co-written by Matt Palmer, whose only previous movie is Netflix’s very solid thriller Calibre. It’s not clear why Janiak isn’t involved this time around, but Fear Street does seem like a great franchise for Netflix to give newer directors more experience.

Whatever the case is, it’s great to have a new Fear Street movie on the horizon. And if Netflix decided to release a new entry every year — that were all about as good as the originals — we certainly wouldn’t complain. Fear Street: Prom Queen is set for release on Netflix on May 23.