Prom Night (2008)

Director: Nelson McCormick (The Stepfather & lots of T.V.)
Written by: J.S. Cardone (The Stepfather, The Covenant)
Starring: Brittany Snow (John Tucker Must Die, The Pacifier); Scott Porter (Lots of T.V.); Jessica Stroup (Vampire Bats, School for Scoundrels); Idris Elba (Obsession)& Johnathan Schaech (best known for That Thing You Do! but was amazing in Doom Generation...good movie, see it).

IMDB User Rating: 3.6 out of 10 stars (which is generous).

Favorite line: (as the fire alarms are going off in the hotel) "I need to go back and get my mother's shawl." Dead or not, sweetie...fuck that shawl.

Favorite Scene: Michael goes looking for his girlfriend, looks in the closet, killer's in there with a ball cap on and his head down...looks up, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, and pounces. It's the best scene in the film...unfortunately, it's the best scene in the film.


You know how when you're surfing through channels, and you see a remake of a movie you really like, but you know it's not gonna be nearly as good as the original, and you tell yourself not to watch it...but then you watch it anyway, and totally regret it? Yeah. That's Prom Night.

This movie never should've been made. I'm sure it was a vehicle designed to slingshot a bunch of careers into super-stardom, but the rubber band broke, and this piece of shit landed flat on its face. It breaks a ton of slasher movie rules, including gratuitous gore. There is an oddly obvious lack of gore throughout this entire flick...and not just gore, blood as well. Don't get me wrong...lots of violence, but the killer in this movie (Johnathan Schaech) is a throat-slasher, so there should be arterial spray EVERYWHERE, and yet...there isn't. Perhaps the latest trend of gearing horror movies to teens while keeping them relatively clean so mommy & daddy won't get upset has gone awry. I'm sorry...I grew up with The Evil Dead, The Babysitter, Army of Darkness & the Holy Trinity: Freddy, Jason & Michael Myers...our parents knew these movies were bullshit, so they flew under the radar...nothing bad was gonna come out of slasher films...until Tipper Gore fucked everything up.

If you didn't see the original, or you can't just guess the premise (actually, anything you guess would probably be better than the actual plot), it's Donna's prom, and it's supposed to be "the night of her life". Right, except that three years earlier, a psycho stalker teacher of hers murdered her entire family (in the opening scene, she discovers all of them and watches her mom get sliced and diced)...not only would that not put me in the mood for over-priced prom tickets and itchy tuxedos with god knows what in the crotch, it probably would have made me leave the damn town altogether. Donna (Brittany Snow) has recurring nightmares about watching her mom get brutally murdered (no blood spray, though...evidently mom had clogged arteries), and is aggressively seeking therapy to try to help her through the rough patches...which is pretty reasonable...but at the end of the session, after sharing her feelings of dread over these recurring nightmares in which she replays her mother's murder over and over and over, her therapist asks her about her prom dress. This makes her perk up, and they have a little mini conversation about prom...ALMOST LIKE SHE'S NOT THERE FOR THERAPY AT ALL!!

And let's talk about the opening scene for just a second more, shall we? When Donna gets home and starts looking for her family (who's mostly dead), she does what we would all do--she starts calling out while walking from room to room. I mean she's making a TON of noise. So's the killer. So when she hears the killer in her parents' room interrogating her mother by asking over and over, "Where the hell is she? I know she's here!", she runs to her own room and ducks under the bed. The killer and mom end up right next to the bed (how else would she witness her mom's death?), and if he would have just turned his little head to the right, he would have found what he was looking for. But then we wouldn't have 90 minutes of torture, now would we? My point is this: Donna was making a lot of noise...a lot of it. How the killer didn't hear her is beyond me...and it only gets worse.

Low points: There's a scene in the salon where Donna, Claire (Jessica Stroup) and Lisa (Dana Davis...who looks a lot like Gabrielle Union) are talking about how their boyfriends are expecting to get laid, and eluding to how that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. These girls are in high school, for crying out loud...and who the fuck talks like that in front of their hairdresser? Maybe I don't get it 'cuz I'm not a girl.
For some reason, there's a red carpet (complete with barricades and paparazzi) at this school's prom, and rumor has it, the head of the prom committee (that bitch Crissy Lynn) went over budget by $100,000. Now, unless DJ Tyler cost $99,000, I'd be doing some embezzlement investigations. There's an odd absence of chaperons at this prom, as well...maybe that's changed in the last 22 years, as well...but at my prom, the teachers were totally getting off on separating us from our dates on the dance floor. The DJ is a total jizzbag (just like every movie DJ...except Superstar DJ Keoki in Party Monster...Wilmer Valderrama did an awesome job. And how come movie DJs are douchebags? Remember Usher in She's All That? Enough said). The killer escapes the mental hospital they put him in, and Donna's aunt and uncle (they're raising her now) opt NOT TO TELL HER. "It'll ruin her big night, she'll be crushed if we go in there in front of all her friends", her uncle says. Sure...better to be stalked and killed than risk embarrassment in front of a bunch of poser rich kids...good decision making skills there, unc. The gore is non existent, so's the nudity...breaking two major slasher movie rules. And when there is a little bit of blood, it's shadowed and predictable. I watched the credits, there are five makeup artists in this film...but evidently no makeup budget...the jugular wounds look like split hot dogs. There are a dozen visual effects editors...but extremely limited visual effects. Where'd the budget go? Catering? The cops are stupid and inept (how come horror movie cops aren't as smart as Barney Fife?), the acting is sophomoric, and the killer breaks through a hotel door...really? All hotel doors are fire doors, therefore steel enforced. There are a lot of stereotypical teenage moments, which would probably piss me off if I were a teen, but they make me laugh...like the prom queen hopeful losing her mind because a fire alarms prevents them from announcing the king and queen. Perhaps most offensive to the horror movie maven, there are no less than three or four really cheap "BOO" moments (as you continue to read my blog, you'll understand how much I HATE cheap boo moments).

High points: Johnathan Schaech. He's AMAZING as a creepy prick (I'll say it again, see Doom Generation...just don't eat beforehand). Schaech can do more with a look than the rest of the cast could with acting lessons and a possession by Marlon Brando...the guy is under rated. There's a good slow-mo scene where Schaech just overpowers some kid...I guess that's where the FX budget went. There's a strobe effect on Schaech toward the end that makes him look even scarier than he already does. Plus, there's a pretty decent cover of Time of the Season, but the credit font was so shitty that I can't tell you who did it. But that's about it...the rest of the movie sucks...in fact, if it weren't for Johnathan Schaech, it would be unwatchable.

And speaking of suck, let's talk about the ending, shall we? The cops finally decide to clear out the hotel (they gotta make sure the killer's really in there), and in the process, they look for Donna, who's nowhere to be seen, because she went looking for Lisa...who is dead. At one point, Lisa's boyfriend tells a cop he's gotta go back and look for her, to which the cop answers, "I can't let you go in there...but keep looking, she's gotta be out here somewhere." Here's the problem with that: he and Lisa are the only two black kids in school, and Lisa's wearing an electric blue dress with her titties hanging halfway out. My point is...she would stick out. The cops finally find Donna, and get her and her boyfriend Bobby, in the back of a squad car. "Oh, cool" you think, "they're gonna take them to the police station". WRONG. They take them to Donna's HOUSE! Over confident these cops are, me thinks. Of course the killer escapes the hotel...by dressing in the concierge's uniform, which fits like a glove, even though the concierge is four inches shorter than he, and at least 25lbs heavier.

Snaps to Donna's house, where a bunch of cops are posted inside and out...meanwhile Detective Winn (Idris Elba) is trying to call Donna's land line instead of using his cop radio. Finally he wises up, realizing that the killer's already there, and the phone line is cut (who the fuck still has a land line? Only when it's convenient, apparently). Donna and Bobby are sound asleep, when Donna gets up to take her Xanax, looks out the window, sees Detective Nash in his car...goes to the bathroom, takes her medicine, closes the medicine cabinet door HOLYSHITTHERE'STHEKILLER!!!! Boom! She wakes up...haha...gotcha on another cheap boo moment. She gets up, looks out the window, sees Detective Nash in his car...goes to the bathroom, takes her medicine, closes the medicine cabinet door...nothing. Goes back to bed, thanks Bobby for staying, he doesn't answer...she rolls over and oh shit...Bobby's throat is slit. But amazingly enough, the white sheets aren't completely soaked in blood...'cuz they blew their FX wad on that slo-mo scene, remember? No money for blood, sorry fellas. There's a few struggles, Schaech gets bit, kick in the face a few times, and just as he's about to stab Donna and put all of us out of our misery, Detective Winn shoots him like, six times. But no blood (not initially, but there's a little stain when he falls forward).

Run end credits over a bunch of grinding dance floor prom footage.

Cheap ass movie. Even though Johnathan Schaech delivers, it's totally not worth your time...wanna see him fuck some shit up? See Doom Generation. Wanna see him sing and sulk over his new-found fame and basically tell Tom Hanks to go fuck himself? See That Thing You Do! But under no circumstances should you waste your valuable time on this movie.

Enough said...I'm out. Next up, a lesbian vampire movie...keep your fingers crossed.

Here's the trailer for this crapfest: Prom Night