Saturday, April 12, 2008

Movie Review: Prom Night

By Shawn Parikh

Prom Night

Donna's senior prom is supposed to be the best night of her life. After surviving a horrible tragedy, she has finally moved on and is enjoying her last year of high school. Surrounded by her best friends, she should be safe from the horrors of her past. But when the night turns deadly, there is only one person who could be responsible--a man she thought was gone forever. Now, Donna and her friends must find a way to escape the sadistic rampage of an obsessed killer, and survive a night "to die for."

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on Prom Night

Prom Night is easy to figure out: A high school teacher who was obsessed with one of his students, Donna, killed her family in search for her. Three years later, he escapes from prison and is ready to get her back on the most important night in the young lass’s life: prom night. So this prom group of 6 kids keeps finding ways to end up in their hotel suite alone at different moments of the movie, and thus, get slashed one by one.

The problem with Prom Night is the PG-13 rating to target all the teeny boppers. Maybe I am too desensitized to gore in horror movies, but I feel that a good slasher movie should have copious amounts of blood. Or maybe the fact that the movie has such a predictable and simple premise, some gore and guts would have kept it more interesting.

Every time someone was murdered, the stabbing was offscreen, so you never saw a nice blood splatter. It was kept too clean. Also, the movie had about two good scares, but the rest were quite silly and repetitive of the lead girl bumping into something like a lamp.

Another problem was how long it took for these kids to die. There was so much walking around the room, suspense building, looking in the wrong corners, etc. You got tired of waiting for these teens to die, especially since you barely felt for anything for the slasher’s victims. Besides Donna, and barely one of her friends, Lisa, no story was built around the other characters making them quite dispensable and dull.

Hoping her corsage doesn't get bloody.

The weak script sprinkles in a few high school, prom night clichés such as jokes about losing their virginity and a mean girl arch nemesis that all the girls hate. However, this just is formulaic and really has no value to anything.

Jonathan Schaech plays the crazed teacher, who is creepy in the beginning with his scraggly looks. However, they clean him up and he wears a baseball cap making him very non-menacing. Since the plot is so easy to follow,and you don’t see blood, you don’t feel threatened by him since you know what is going to happen. He pretty much sleeps through this role, which isn’t his fault, but the character and script itself.

Brittany Snow as Donna pretty much always plays the sweet girl next door, and again, she has no problem with this part. She is the only teen we really want to see get attacked, but it takes sooo long for her to get put in danger.

Sadly, I did not know this movie was a remake of a 1980 Jamie Lee Curtis flick until after seeing the movie. As with most remakes, the 1980 movie is probably better. I don’t imagine it could be worse, but who knows?

The best part of the movie was a chilling preview for a movie titled Quarantine that has a documentary/Blair Witch-esque feel to it. Looks pretty frightening, so here it is for all you horror fans:

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