Prom Night (2008)

I read a recent review of 'Prom Night' (2008) that called it, "the training bra of slasher movies." And it's true -- this is the kind of scare-flick that's safe viewing for your little sister, a PG-13-ified hack-a-thon that the babysitter might use to keep even the youngest of charges in check. Despite an ad campaign that promised otherwise, 'Prom Night' is not scary, suspenseful, gruesome or at all unsettling, it almost doesn't deserve to be called "horror." It's sort of like if the Disney Channel launched their own wanna-be slasher franchise, complete with comely teen stars, cheesy made-for-cable lighting and a plot so derivative it makes the original 'Prom Night' (1980) look positively ingenious by comparison.

Amazingly, this "reimaging" takes all of the worst elements of its predecessor and discards what little good stuff there was. If the original 'Prom Night' wasn't a great slasher flick, at least it was tons of fun, mixing bitchy high school girls, bad disco dancing, a classic revenge plot, and a killer in a creepy ski mask running around dark halls with an ax. (That it also starred Jamie Lee Curtis was just icing on the cake.) 'Prom Night' 2008-style drops almost all of those elements, and instead brings to the fore what was by far the weakest aspect of the original, which was a by-the-numbers police procedural plot about a escaped serial killer who didn't even factor into the final reveal. So instead of a campy, funny horror thrill ride, 'Prom Night' plays like a really bad episode of 'Without a Trace' crossed with 'Gossip Girl.'

The plot is standard-issue. Brittany Snow ('Hairspray') stars as Donna Keppel, a high school senior recovering from the traumatic murder of her parents at the hands of deranged psycho Richard Fenton (Johnathon Schaech). Now its two years later, and on the eve of her school prom, Donna is finally starting to piece her life back together, thanks to her hunky boyfriend (Scott Porter) and a supportive group of best pals (including 'Heroes' Dana Davis and Jessica Stroup). Unfortunately, Richard has other ideas and soon crashes the party, picking off her friends one by one until the local police detective (James Ransone) gets wind of the killer's plot, leading to a showdown back at the house where Donna's parents were first murdered.

'Prom Night' is utterly dull, because its villain is utterly dull. Who thought it was a good idea to replace a guy in a ski mask with the dude best known for having been married to Christina Applegate? Schaech is not a particularly charismatic actor anyway, but he's given such a murky backstory that there is surely little he could have done to save such an unthreatening and underwritten role. The original 'Prom Night' managed to eke out a bit of tension in its last half thanks to its creepy, faceless killer, but the remake shows so much of Schaech from the first frame that there is no mystery. It's sort of like a Friday the 13th flick where Jason not only doesn't wear a hockey mask, but looks like Hart Bochner.

Also poorly written is the Donna character and her cookie-cutter friends. Snow has been accomplished in other films, but here all she is required to do is squint her eyes to hold back tears, pout a lot, and scream. Davis and Stroup are also stuck with such nondescript victim roles (the only interest to be had is counting the minutes until they die), and even their death scenes are unimaginative and bland. Worse, 'Prom Night' is a ruthlessly overlit film, so even the endless scenes of teenagers walking down dark hotel corridors have absolutely no mood or suspense -- the film is far, far too glossy and whitewashed to generate any atmosphere at all. Add to that some of the most incomprehensibly dumb characters ever to grace a slasher flick (Donna's adoptive parents are a particular hoot, acting like complete idiots only because the plot requires it), and in 'Prom Night' you have a movie that gives an already disreputable genre a bad name.

If there is anything to recommend 'Prom Night' on Blu-ray, it's that at least Sony has provided fans with a never-before-seen unrated cut of the film. The PG-13 version that I saw theatrically was a mess thanks to horrible editing, with such choppy murder sequences that it was painfully obvious that the film had been butchered to appease the MPAA. Certainly, this "gorier" version of 'Prom Night' is still largely bloodless, but at least the kill scenes now possess some sense of construction and clarity, so it's no longer like watching a slasher flick edited in a blender. Unfortunately, that's about all this new 'Prom Night' has to offer, so if you want a fun little slasher flick to whittle away a Saturday night, quite frankly you'd be better off just going and renting the original on DVD instead.