Movies
Five High School Dance Horror Movies to Stream This Week
High school is hell, and navigating it is terrifying in and of itself, so it’s no surprise that it’s a frequent setting in horror. Even less surprising is how it transforms major milestones of the high school experience, like school dances, into a lethal horror nightmare.
This week brings the arrival of Netflix’s Fear Street: Prom Night, a standalone installment that aims to slaughter the competition of hopeful prom queen candidates. It’s far from the only horror movie to explore the social pressures and teen angst that come with formal events; how many adaptations of Carrie are there now?
While spring tends to be peak prom season, this week’s streaming picks are dedicated to high school dance set horror movies that transform the setting into slaying grounds.
As usual, here’s where you can stream them this week.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II – AMC+, Fandango at Home, Fawesome, Hoopla, Peacock, Prime Video, Roku Channel, Shudder
In director Bruce Pittman’s wild cult sequel, initially conceived as a standalone horror movie, high school mean girl and prom queen Mary Lou Maloney (Lisa Schrage) accidentally burns to death shortly after getting her prom queen crown and returns 30 years later to seek revenge on the men responsible: Principal Billy (Michael Ironside) and Father Cooper (Richard Monette). But a ghost with a vengeance on her mind needs a victim. Enter virginal teen Vicki (Wendy Lyon). Hello Mary Lou dials up the absurdity and weirdness of teen hormones, featuring a horny mean girl ghost and outlandish scare tactics- including a memorable carousel horse of nightmares.
Idle Hands – Pluto TV
For most high school set horror, or horror comedies in this case, a school dance is an event filled with pressure for the hormonal teens in attendance. But even more important, it’s an event filled with a sea of unsuspecting victims, with the potential for maximum catastrophe. So, it’s no surprise that this riff on the phrase, “idle hands are the Devil’s playthings,” which sees stoner teen Anton lose control of his possessed, murderous right hand, would culminate in the big Halloween school dance. The dance becomes the battlefield between Anton and his evil hand as he fights to protect his neighbor-turned-dream girl, Molly.
The Loved Ones – Pluto TV
Subverting the big dance spectacles of typical high school horror, Sean Byrne’s debut examines what prom is like for those who don’t get prom dates. In this case, when socially awkward Lola gets rejected by Brent as her date, she and her father decide to create their own dance at home. The only problem is that Lola doesn’t take no for an answer. Crowned queen of her own dance, she decides the best way to a man’s heart is to carve her way into it. Sometimes a more intimate setting makes for a much more terrifying feature, and Lola’s twisted prom can be the scariest of them all. With Sean Byrne’s Dangerous Animals arriving next month, now’s the time to revisit this gem.
The Prowler – Fandango at Home, Night Flight+, Peacock, Pluto TV, Prime Video, Shudder
It’s not the plot that makes this slasher worthwhile, but the particularly gnarly deaths and practical effects. The love-sick killer here dons a World War II combat uniform and uses a bayonet as his weapon of choice, spurned to kill in vengeance thanks to a Dear John letter. The killer chooses the night of a graduation dance to embark on a grisly murder spree, with director Joseph Zito doing an incredible job highlighting Tom Savini’s breathtaking special makeup effects work. It was their work on The Prowler that led to Zito and Savini getting the job on Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, the fourth installment of a franchise built around its kill count. It’s easy to see why; The Prowler revels in its visceral deaths, and very few in the genre manage to be as realistic and bloody as the ones Savini created here.
Tragedy Girls – AMC+, Fawesome, Hulu, Kanopy, Peacock, Pluto TV, Prime Video, Shudder
High school seniors McKayla and Sadie are social media-obsessed BFFs who deftly balance dance committee, cheerleading, and serial killing aspirations with ease. Being the overachievers that they are, they’re not just content to pick off victims one by one; they want to really make a name for themselves by staging a large-scale massacre. When you’re a high school senior, the easy choice is prom. For most, prom would be the night of hopes and dreams of romance coming to fruition. But for McKalya and Sadie, it’s a harrowing test of friendship, mayhem, and bloodshed.
The creators of internet icons that go on to inspire collaborative online fiction tend not to have much control over their creations once they leave the proverbial nest. From Victor Surge’s Slender Man to the anonymous user who first posted that Backrooms image with the accompanying text, once the internet hive mind takes over, artists are usually forced to sit back and watch as their stories take on a life of their own.
One exception to this rule is horror artist and creature designer Trevor Henderson. Back in 2018, Henderson introduced the world to an enigmatic figure named Siren Head and gave the online horror community their last great mascot. However, while the immensely popular creature made several unofficial (and sometimes unwanted) appearances in games, videos, and plenty of fan-art, Henderson miraculously managed to keep creative control over his monster even as it became a worldwide sensation.
With the success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms film encouraging Hollywood to scour the internet for more online horror properties with an existing fanbase that might be enticed to show up to theaters, it makes sense that both Trevor and his digital offspring would be next in line for a big screen adaptation.
However, while Siren Head became a massive hit among the younger crowd who were in search of an online horror icon to call their own, much like my generation did with Slender Man, there are plenty of genre fans who aren’t familiar with the story behind this peculiar creature. That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me as I dive into the origins of a beloved internet monster with more cinematic potential than you might initially believe.
Trevor Henderson’s Viral Horror Universe
To understand Siren Head, you first have to understand Trevor Henderson’s spooky body of work. A Canadian artist with a passion for coming up with online cryptids, Trevor went by the moniker of Slimyswampghost and would occasionally post photorealistic artwork on both Twitter and Tumblr as part of the internet tradition of sharing “cursed images” on social media. These found-footage-influenced digital paintings would often be accompanied by brief snippets of text contextualizing them within the artist’s larger universe of bizarre entities.
In August of 2018, Trevor posted several creepy creations that would end up becoming fan-favorites (from the 1930s-animation-inspired Creepy Cat to my personal favorite, Long Horse), though none of these could compete with the popularity of Siren Head. A tall, slender figure that camouflaged itself among telephone poles on isolated roadsides, this humanoid monster was inspired by the mysterious number stations phenomenon (real-life cryptic radio broadcasts that repeat coded numbers ad infinitum).
In his original post, Trevor included the following text alongside the picture:
She was on vacation with her husband, and they were scoping out graveyards on the way, as you do, when she saw it. Rising out of the old cemetery, big as an old (macabre) telephone pole. Was this some kind of bizarre art piece the authorities hadn’t gotten wise to yet? Even as she stepped out of the car, the megaphones on its “head” screeched to life. “NINE. EIGHTEEN. ONE. CHILD. SEVENTEEN. REMOVE. VILE“. A buzzing, doubled voice screamed random words at her. At this point, it jerked into motion, striding down the hill towards her.
And just like that, a new horror icon was born.
However, the creature didn’t become an overnight sensation like some other popular internet legends. It was only about six months later that Modus Interactive contacted Trevor asking for permission to include the monster in his contribution to that year’s Haunted PS1 Halloween Game Jam. The ensuing free-to-play title was a moderate hit, but Siren Head would lay dormant for a while after its release as Trevor continued to focus on other projects.
How Siren Head Went Viral
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and short-form video content took over the internet. In April of 2020, Tiktokker and VFX artist Alex Howard created an eerily believable video of Siren Head towering over a cityscape, with this viral hit catapulting the character to mainstream recognition as genre fans raced to find out more about the enigmatic creature.
Suddenly, Siren Head was everywhere. Memes, toys, short film adaptations and even more videogame appearances led to the character occupying the same place that Slender Man had once held in popular culture. The only difference was that fans continued to refer to Henderson for more “official” lore about the monster, with the artist encouraging fan-made work but continuing to expand the mythology surrounding the character (which has since been revealed to be the physical manifestation of an Eldritch entity that preys on humankind).
Henderson even went so far as to discourage the character’s inclusion in the SCP Archives, as this would give Siren Head a Creative Commons license and allow bad actors to take advantage of the creature’s popularity. Not only that, but giving fans too much creative control over the monster would have inevitably lead to what some genre enthusiasts, such as Kane Parsons, refer to as “lore creep”: the overaccumulation of fictional information regarding a horror property that ultimately makes the story less scary.
While we’re past the peak of Siren Head’s online popularity, the character still holds a special place in genre fans’ hearts as an icon representing a particular moment in internet history. That’s why even horror titans like Junji Ito have expressed their love for the monster, and also why it makes sense for Hollywood to finally get off their butts and get around to adapting the creature to the big screen – especially since the monster’s success has led to Henderson developing a career in the horror genre (with several freaky projects ranging from Young Adult Horror novels to Bloody FM’s own Mayfair Watchers Society Podcast).
With the cinematic dream-team of both Zach Cregger and Brian Duffield joining forces in order to steer Trevor’s ideas towards box office gold, I think it’s safe to say that Siren Head is about to get the big-screen adaptation the fans deserve, and I know I’ll be there on opening night!
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