Prom Night Review
Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 04.14.2008
My own prom night was more horrifying than this.
Directed by: Nelson McCormick
Starring: Brittany Snow as Donna Keppel Jonathan Schaech as Richard Fenton Dana Davis as Lisa Hines Jessica Stroup as Claire Haynes Scott Porter as Bobby Collins Pennie as Ronnie Heflin Kelly Blatz as Michael Brianne Davis as Crissy Lynn Jana Kramer as April Joshua Leonard as Bellhop Idris Elba as Detective Winn James Ransone as Detective Nash Kellan Lutz as Rick Leland Rachel Specter as Taylor
Running time: 88 min
Rated PG-13 for violence and terror, some sexual material, underage drinking, and language.
In 1980, a low-budget slasher film, starring a "scream queen" actress by the name of Jamie Lee Curtis, was made in Toronto, Ontario Canada. Despite its unsurprisingly poor reception among critics, it generated enough business that three horrendous sequels followed. The impact was enough that it became one of the more remembered films of the genre, along the lines of April Fool's Day, Black Christmas, and Slumber Party Massacre. Considering that two of those films (April Fool's Day and Black Christmas) have gotten atrocious remakes, it only makes sense that Prom Night would get the same treatment. But at least the former two have the luxury of staying true to the story and not sacrificing its slasher roots for a more family-friendly rating. Prom Night, as written by J.S. Cardone (the horrible The Covenant and the equally bad The Forsaken) and directed by newcomer Nelson McCormick, doesn't even have those, as it's a completely new story with a PG-13 rating. And, with no redeeming qualities from the new material being brought to the table, it's an ultimately another forgettable, pathetic attempt to cash in on an old franchise.
The film starts off with a decently effective sequence, as freshman Donna Keppel (Snow) comes home one night to find an obsessive science teacher, Richard Fenton (Schaech), has killed her father and brother, apparently in an attempt to woo her over. Clearly, Mr. Fenton’s romantic skills need a little work. She hides under the bed just in time to see him finish off her mother, a moment which is captured well, in a moment of creepiness, then left behind as if it had never happened. It’s one of the most frustrating points of the film that this one genuinely unsettling shot, which had so much potential behind it, is left to rot like Donna’s family is.
Three years later, Donna is living with her aunt and uncle, taking meds and undergoing therapy. Fenton has been sent to a psychiatric hospital, hopefully never to see the light of day. Of course, that would make too much sense, and so he manages to escape on—guess when—the night of Donna’s senior prom. She's almost ready to shake off the traumatic events of three years ago, and just wants to create a new "most unforgettable night" of her young life with her boyfriend Bobby (Porter). Of course, Mr. Fenton has some other plans. Thus begins the supposed fun, as he makes his way to the glamorous hotel in which the prom is being held, starting to carve his way through students and staff in his path to get to Donna. The hotel gets shut down and two detectives (Elba and Ransone) get called in to stop him, but can they before he gets to the target of his bloody obsession?
It's no exaggeration to say that Prom Night is, bar none, one of the dumbest slasher films ever given a major theatrical release. To start with, the basic premise is hackneyed and clichéd at this point, to the point that it's nearly impossible to avoid rolling one's eyes at it. Obsessed psychopath breaks out of psych ward on [Insert Holiday/Momentous Event Here] to chase down the beautiful girl of his dreams. We've seen it time and again, to the point that it's getting harder and harder to come up with creative twists on it. However, if Cardone had any real writing talent, he could have taken this re-imagining of the original and put it somewhere interesting. Instead, he somehow makes the teenagers here even less interesting then the teens of The Covenant were. There's not a character anywhere in this film that’s more than one-dimensional. Donna is the least complex, least engaging horror heroine to come along in quite some time, and with cookie-cutter heroines littering the genre these days, that's saying something. Brittany Snow, who was enjoyable in Hairspray as Michelle Pfeiffer's snobby rich girl daughter, does about what the role of Donna demands of her--cry and look scared. The rest of the cast is even blander and with less interest, with the exception of Dana Davis, who tries her best to make best friend Lisa likable. But again, it's hard to like characters that are just so stupid.
Schaech is only slightly more interesting than the rest of the cast, and that's because he's the killer. One of the biggest faults of the movie is that it gives everything away right from the start. This is acceptable in movies such as Halloween or Friday the 13th, where the villain is such an interesting one, but Richard the psycho science teacher doesn't manage that. He just lumbers through the movie with a dull look, robot-like, and kills his victims in a distinctly sanitized form. McCormick uses quick shots and cuts to avoid showing any real violence and avoids using a lot of blood...I suppose the idea is that blander you are, the less blood you leave when you die. This might work in a smarter slasher film, but here, it makes it glaringly obvious that even the cheap thrills are being denied. Meanwhile, though, there's plenty of time for ridiculous dialogue; one of the laughingly bad examples is when Detective Winn responds to someone commenting on Donna's attractiveness by saying "Let's hope she stays that way." Winn, by the way, is one of the flat-out inept, stupidest detectives in slasher history, as he makes dumb move after dumb move, and proves he can't even capture a killer without a gun in a hotel when he has the entire police force behind him. If the entire police subplot had been eliminated, the film could have spent time that was sorely needed building the characters and making us care about them before they got killed.
One of the final points as to how this film insults its audience's intelligence is the bone-jarringly moronic ways the victims die. One victim, being chased by Richard, ends up breaking a heel and falling down a flight of stairs. She rather lamely ends up stuck in an empty, unfinished part of the hotel and practically kills herself tripping over paint cans. Finally, she makes the brilliant move to run backwards and right toward the killer. It's comical enough to be a scene out of Scary Movie, but not a legitimately scary film, and it ends up leaving the audience laughing (as many did in the theater I saw it in).
The 411: Bland, stupid characters? Check. Retarded dialogue? Check. Complete lack of gore, scares, or suspense? Check. Nelson McCormick's re-imagining of Prom Night misfires on almost every possible level, thanks to a terrible script, sub par acting, and a homogenized, watered-down feel. Despite the film being a new story from the decent original, here's nothing remotely original in this "re-imagining," and it just serves to leave the viewer further disillusioned with the sad state of the horror genre.
