Review of Prom Night (2011) by Jenna G — 26 Feb 2011

Prom Night is a tired, limp and clichéd horror movie in a tired, limp and clichéd genre that died before the nineties had even begun. A story of a vicious serial killer stalking and butchering teenagers has been duplicated so often that they have all become far too similar to one another. Prom Night is no different, what you will see in Prom Night is what you will see in any other slasher movie.

While I spent my prom night (or ball as we call it in Britain) debating whether I should tell a girl I like her, Donna Keppel (Brittany Snow) and her friends spent their prom night being chased by a psychotic former teacher who developed and unhealthy obsession with Donna and killed her family a few years ago. He has escaped from jail and begun to hunt her down.

Before Prom Night had even started it gained some positive plaudits from me, finally someone had the common sense to remake something that was rubbish in the first place but, and here is shocker(!) they mucked it all up. The original Prom Night is a bad film; the remake of Prom Night is a terrible film that punishes the audience for 88 long minutes. Every single horror cliché in the book is used in Prom Night as the same old techniques are used in very similar movies over and over and over and over again. This is what makes slasher movies so tediously boring as it's just of case of seeing the samething a million times before. Prom Night is loathsome film that is lazy, dull and unoriginal where the same stupid teenagers do the same stupid things repeatedly as they are picked off one by one. You spent half your time rolling your eyes the repetitive, annoying over used false scares, that don't even work anyway, and at the stupid decisions taken by the even stupider then normal teenagers as you howl with laughter at every recognize plot point that has already been massively over used. One character, won't say who, goes upstairs to get something when the fire alarm is ringing and at that exact moment I thought I've had enough of this but I stuck to this right to the crap conclusion.

Prom Night is a 15 rated horror movie (or PG-13 in America) so there is a complete lack of gore. However this can a positive thing as it allows the director to create an unnerving atmosphere that raises the suspense levels. However you are more likely to find more gravity in space then a chilling unnerving atmosphere in this bland and laughable horror remake (hang on, have I said this before?) As there is no atmosphere and no gore there is no shock factor to Prom Night that makes it such a tame and dismal 'horror' movie. There is nothing to jump or even get scared over about Prom Night; you can watch this the night before your prom night and when the film ends you would still are incredibly excited about tomorrow. No suspense, no gore, no scares, nothing, so what exactly is the point of this film? Prom Night is really a case of the director looking upon the scene and going 'yeah that will do.'It really is no surprise that Prom Night was not screened to critics.

Oddly enough the characters are not as hateable as they normally are in slasher movies, maybe, like me you took pity on them due to their stupidity. The killer is incompletely forgettable he is not in the slightest bit scary; there is no menace, no sense of evil. The death scenes are mundane, boring and devoid of any gore whatsoever so there is nothing to shock us. The age rating for Prom Night doomed it before it was even shown in cinemas. The performances are not terrible but Idris Elba is the only real stand out, the poor plot and script just gives the actors nothing to work with, they are actors not miracle workers.

Prom Night is dire horror movie that does nothing to improve the current state slasher genre and raises even more questions about the horrific state of the horror genre. Get some good looking people, some pop music and you will a successful formula that will result in the film becoming a financial success no matter how badly made, boring and rubbish it really is and to be honest I'm not sure what I did to deserve such an agonising 88 minutes.

1/5.