Slashed to Pieces

Prom Night Probes New Depths of Lame
 by Morgan P Salvo



 
 My  first reaction leaving the theatre besides ramming my head into the wall was to consult my thesaurus for new ways to say horrible, terrible and awful – words I’ve been using a lot lately to describe movies. Wretched and abominable seem to work.
The only thing similar to this remake from the original is the fact it takes place on prom night. The predecessor-flick was pretty bad to begin with but the remake makes it look like Citizen Kane. In the original, four students were stalked and victimized by a knife-wielding ski-mask wearing psycho because they were responsible for the accidental death of a child. This time around a non-masked stalker escapes from a mental institution to wreak havoc on all in his path because he has an unhealthy infatuation with Donna (Brittany Snow), an ex-student of his before he was put away.
The list of stupid things in this movie is so appalling it almost warrants not even writing about. Prom Night’s plotline is insidious. It’s all been done before and better. Rated PG even with an extremely high body count means there is no gore, no blood, no slash…and this is a SLASHER MOVIE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
This movie is so generic, stagnant, boring, tiresome, static, tedious, insulting and preposterously abysmal that it simply resembles a bad Lifetime TV movie. There are countless lame-ass scaredy-cat tactics. How many times have you seen the medicine cabinet mirror scene? You know the one—where someone goes to the mirror, looks at themselves, opens the mirror to get some form of prescription drug out of the cabinet, closes it and BAM! a figure is standing behind them. Apparently Director Nelson McCormack (responsible for only TV shows so far) thinks we haven’t seen this technique enough— he uses it three FREAKING TIMES!!
One of the most dim-witted things that stood out was that one of the cops was about twelve. A little young to be in the force last time I checked. Prom Night had me zoning out so many times all I could focus on was the fact that actress Brittany Snow has a little tiny scar on her forehead. She should skip the acting and go straight to porn.

The order of scenes was put together all wrong, but even when I was re-editing them in my head I concluded there would be no saving the lackluster quality of the scenes. They needed strength, like in the remake of Black X-mas or Rob Zombie’s Halloween. Good or bad those movies had power. Prom Night needed some pizzazz to beef it up--- faster pace, action scenes, someone who could act, and blood--- gallons of blood shooting everywhere! Not just tiny blood spots dabbed on one of the slaughtered chick’s prom-gown.

Replacing a potentially slick slasher flick is a sub-standard teeny-bopper movie where the killing/suspense is done with a lot of intended malevolence but no substance. This movie doesn’t falter once; it manages to fail on every level. Prom Night is a no-brainer, time-wasting, dreadful, miserable, deplorable piece of excrement. On the other hand Thesaurus is cool.

Prom Night
Starring: Brittany Snow, Dana Davis, Jonathan Schaech
Directed by: Nelson McCormack
 zero stars