Prom Night

(2008)**

Three years ago Donna watched as her family was slaughtered by Richard Fenton, a deranged schoolteacher who became obsessed with her. Fenton is caught, arrested and put away for life. Meanwhile Donna starts a new life for herself. Three years later we find her living with her aunt and uncle and when we first see her she is preparing for her prom, the most magical night of a young woman’s life (rolling eyes). We’re soon introduced to her friends, who all resemble cast members from 90210, no fatties here! For a few minutes we learn who hates who and all the other high school nonsense that seems so important at the time but is meaningless the day after you graduate. It’s not long before we get to prom night, a ridiculously posh affair rivaling the red carpet celebrations of the Oscars (yes, there’s literally a red carpet). The prom takes place at the ‘Pacific Grand Hotel’, a luxurious 5-star hotel and of course all the kids have a suite of rooms that only Donald Trump could afford. My prom took place at the crappy Biltmore Hotel in Providence,

Prom Night takes place in the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angelis,

The girls in Prom Night look like this,

My prom date looked like this,

Sigh. By the way, during all of this exposition we see Fenton escape from prison, no doubt heading to Donna’s prom for some Michael Myers-type fun. Once the prom is in full swing Donna’s friends keep finding reasons to leave the dance floor to go back to their suite, where Fenton promptly disposes of them in very boring ways. This is the kind of film where someone goes up to a mirrored medicine cabinet, opens it, takes something out, closes it and, Oh My God, the killer is now sharing the mirror! The rest of the film concerns Fenton stalking Donna, who seems to make all the wrong decisions.

God, this was so bad, and another sad reminder that teenagers will pay money to see cheap crap like this (I’m talking to you teenage JPX of yesteryear!). There are zero scares beyond the cat jumping out of the cupboard variety (I’ve had several cats and not once have any of my cats jumped from a cabinet in attack mode while screeching). The deaths are paint my number slash, slash and the ending is underwhelming and sudden. Prom Night is a cookie-cutter slasher devoid of thrills and offers absolutely nothing original to the genre (yes I see know it’s a remake but the original wasn’t original either).