“Prom Night,” starring Jamie Lee Curtis, was hilarious, frightening, and original and took place on the night of the senior prom. “Prom Night,” the recent remake starring Brittany Snow, also takes place on the night of prom. And there, the similarities stop.
Maybe this is because the producers of the movie felt that few people remember the ’80s slasher flick that helped pave the way for ironic and self-referential horror movies like “Scream” or “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” Or maybe, as shown by the rest of the film, they just didn’t care. The latter seems more likely.
“Prom Night” starts off by showing us Donna Keppel, (played by Snow) as she comes home to find her family being massacred by her former teacher who had become dangerously obsessed with her.
It then jumps forward three years to the night of her senior prom. Up until this point the movie had been mildly frightening. But it takes a turn for the stupid when the killer escapes from prison and starts to pick off poor Donna’s friends and family members yet again.
At this point, the killer becomes so impossibly clever, the cops become so impossibly stupid, and Snow becomes so impossibly annoying, that you’re just begging for the movie to come to some conclusion.
“Prom Night”What: A remake of the cult ’80s slasher flick that should never have been made Who: Brittany Snow, Scott Porter Where: Regal Valley River Center Stadium 15 and Gateway Cinemark 17 Rating: 1 out of 5 |
Any conclusion at all would work, because you’re so disconnected to this indistinguishable cast of vaguely attractive but oddly adult-looking plastic surgery patients that you don’t really care who survives.
But of course, there are no surprises there either, as the friends get picked off by being incredibly stupid, and the killer gets away by being amazingly quick. But this brings up perhaps the central problem in the entire film, and it is full of problems: Why do none of these students or cops recognize the killer as he walks around the grand hotel where the prom is taking place? This was their teacher only three years ago; their teacher who went crazy and slaughtered the entire family of one of their classmates. But since he shaved the beard he wore when he was a teacher, apparently no one can recognize him. It’s absolutely baffling, and completely unaddressed in the film.
The hotel where it was filmed was pretty. As was Snow, at times. Those are the two nice things you can say about this travesty of a film.
It is not impossible to make a good remake of a slasher film, as Rob Zombie’s 2007 “Halloween” remake showed us. But apparently it takes a little more effort than the people behind this film were willing to put in.
[email protected]