Netflix's ‘Scream Meets Stranger Things' Horror Franchise Doesn't Have A Single Bad Movie

Published Jun 6, 2026, 5:28 PM EDT

Even the rare horror series that avoids these fates, like the Evil Dead franchise, struggle to maintain a consistent tone across all its outings. While all the Evil Dead movies are well-liked by critics, 1993’s Army of Darkness feels nothing like 2013’s gritty, relentlessly bleak reboot Evil Dead. Surprisingly enough, one Netflix horror movie franchise, the Fear Street series, managed to avoid this fate by releasing four movies that, while not perfect, did consistently maintain the same style and tone while also offering superb scares and a compelling, cohesive story.

The Fear Street Movies Mix Nostalgia With Brutal Horror

Released on July 2, 2021, Fear Street Part One: 1994 saw Honeymoon director Leigh Janiak tell the story of a cursed low-income town where teens fell victim to senseless murder sprees by mysterious masked killers once a generation. Its sequel, Fear Street Part One: 1978, arrived only a week later on July 9 and explored the most recent massacre in the town of Shadyside, a summer camp slaying that left almost no survivors.

Then, in an extraordinarily ambitious move, the final movie in the trilogy, Fear Street Part One: 1666, first illustrated the town’s backstory, then jumped back to 1994 to wrap things up. Although the Fear Street series benefited from the popularity of Netflix’s earlier nostalgic teen mystery Stranger Things, sharing cast members such as Maya Hawke and Sadie Sink with the series, the movie trilogy was far from a carbon copy of that small-town sci-fi hit.

Unlike Stranger Things, the Fear Street trilogy truly did not mess around when it came to killing off lovable, sweet characters viewers were rooting for, with the first two movies killing off almost all their main characters. This brazen, unapologetic brutality was a bracing and welcome surprise, and Fear Street swiftly became one of the best horror trilogies ever both as a series of standalone movies, and thanks to its ambitious interconnected story and revolutionary release strategy.

Fear Street: Prom Queen Was Better Than Critics Claimed

Like any horror franchise, the Fear Street movies had a hard time living up to their first outing. While the Netflix horror anthology Slasher was as brutal and merciless as the trilogy, that show had the benefit of a smaller cult audience and less hype. In contrast, the four-year wait for 2025’s Fear Street: Prom Queen, along with the sprawling, ambitious plot of the original trilogy, resulted in sky-high expectations.

Admittedly, the self-contained slasher throwback Fear Street: Prom Queen was not as good as the original trilogy. However, critics claiming the movie was outright bad, especially in the era of Scream 7, were way off the mark. Although imperfect, director Matt Palmer’s movie still had a retro charm, some memorably nasty deaths, and a fast pace that ensured its plot never felt drawn-out.

With a campy supporting turn from Katherine Waterston and compelling performances from its leading ladies India Fowler and Fina Strazza, Fear Street: Prom Queen was a perfectly solid slasher that struggled primarily due to its links with the superior earlier trilogy. Thus, Netflix’s Fear Street series remains one of the horror genre’s greatest recent achievements.