Prom Night (2008)

All right, Prom Night, the 1980 horror film starring Canadian Leslie Nielson (of Police Squad fame) and Jamie Lee Curtis (star of the original Halloween), was a pretty good B-movie. The story involved the guilt of four teens who, as pre-teens, were involved in the death of another kid (bullying mixed with negligence mixed with being stupid kids), who at their high school prom end up getting purnished... WITH MURDER!!!

The new Prom Night was, ummm… pretty much the worst 88 minutes I’ve spent this month. Honestly, I should have just slept in (I’ve been watching these movies early in the morning before the rest of my family gets up), or perhaps done some cleaning, or maybe even having finally gotten around to figuring out how to play Puerto Rico.

But for all of you, I decided to give the movie a good look.So here goes the premise – a couple years back a creepy high school teacher got obsessed with one of his female students and one night he murdered her family. Now, just as she’s getting ready for her prom night, you-know-who has escaped from the insane asylum and his heading her way. Inevitably, lots of her friends get killed.

Honestly, the closest modern horror film I’ve seen with the same premise is the 1997 film I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was actually based on a YA (Young Adult) novel of the same name.

Here were my problems with this new film:

1) The kids who spend the film dying haven’t actually done anything wrong. Usually in these types of film they use drugs, steal, are rude to adults or are busy having sex with each other. These kids are all pretty decent kids, and thus their dying seems jarring and wrong. Also there is a sub-plot involving a girl who is mean to the main character's best friend (they are both running for Prom Queen) and in the end – evil girl loses the election. That’s pretty much it, she lives while all the nice kids get killed.

2) The deaths are all PG rated stabbings – not very creative and when the bodies are found afterwards, although there is blood on their clothes there aren’t actually and tears or slices in the material, meaning that the killer must have had a magic knife.

3) The best actors in the film, who played two cops hoping to save the main character, were played by Idris Elba and James Ransone – both actors from the superb HBO series The Wire, and a constant reminder that I should get around to watching that series for a third time.

4) The back story, in which a high school teacher falls for one of his students and ends up dangerously, murderously obsessed with her, would clearly have made a better (and significantly creepier) movie than this film.

5) Finally, while watching the behind the scenes feature (and yes, I’ve watched them for all these movies. It’s all for you, my dear readers) the director expresses that the film is in fact not a reimagining, or even a remake, but instead an entirely new story which happens to share the same title.

Or in other words, a total waste of my time.