Prom Night an expensive cliche collection
Our Rating: 2 Stars
I have no qualms with spoiling the heck out of this movie for those who may read this, because there’s not much to spoil provided you’ve ever seen a horror movie before. There are no big words, it’s a remake of an ‘80s horror flick, and everyone the main character loves will die.
The basic plot of this flick is simple: obsessed teacher escapes a mental hospital and proceeds to ruin the world of Brittany Snow’s character, Donna, on her prom night. Crazy Teach is in a mental hospital because three years earlier he killed Donna’s entire family while she was out at the movies. Now Donna’s living with her aunt and uncle, played by people we’ll probably never see in another movie ever again, and she’s seeing a therapist of some sort regularly.
The first 30 minutes of the movie are dripping in goofy, foreshadowing nudge-your-neighbor dialogue.
“It’ll be a night to remember,” says Donna’s counselor. You bet it will be!
“We’ll be together forever” says Donna’s boyfriend, Bobby. More for like the next four hours! Yuk-yuk-yuk.
The beginning is also spent trying to play up how “important” and “special” prom night is for these kids, but all it really does is point out how short-sighted these soon-to-be-dead kids are. I’m not anti-prom, really, because I went to mine, but all prom really is is a super expensive Friday night party someone would probably be having anyway. Music + people you like = party. Expensive DJ + everyone in your school attending and being broke for weeks after = prom.
But back to the goofy kids.
The main group of prom-goers the movie focuses on is made up of three couples: Lisa and Ronnie, representatives for the African-American audience to identify with, Claire and Michael, the reps for those involved in relationships that suck, and Donna and Bobby, the target and the guy in the way.
Crazy Teach takes out Claire and Michael when they get separated after a fight over Claire moving away to college. Claire returns to the room to get some Midol (I couldn’t make this up!), and Crazy Teach takes her into the bathroom and stabs her. Michael, drunk and cocky, comes up looking for her and Crazy Teach jumps out of a closet and stabs Michael.
Next it’s Lisa and Ronnie’s turn to go up to the room. On the way up, Lisa sees Crazy Teach, but can’t remember where she recognizes him from. At this point, you start to think that it was a poor choice to get a huge suite, because it gives Crazy Teach so many places to hide. While “L-Ron,” as I call them, is messing around on the bed, Lisa remembers who the guy is.
Then, she runs out of the room and Ronnie flashes a ring at the camera, indicating he was just about to propose to her. This detail actually adds some emotional weight to the coming events.
Crazy Teach kills Lisa, the prom queen who never gets crowned due to her deadness, when she’s running around in an area being renovated trying to get to Donna to tell her that Crazy Teach is in the building.
The scene of the two of them running around the under-construction area of the hotel reminded me of “Die Hard,” but without machine guns or Bruce Willis.
Collins Pennie, as Ronnie, is one of the most convincing actors in the movie.
He genuinely looks worried when he’s running around in the parking lot looking for his girlfriend, and when he finds out what’s happened and gives up, you really feel sorry for him.
Because of Ronnie, Lisa’s death was the only death I didn’t laugh at or hope wouldn’t happen.
But back to the suck.
Word gets out that Crazy Teach is there, the prom is evacuated, and Donna and Bobby go back to her aunt and uncle’s house. It is here that Crazy Teach kills every cop assigned to the house, as well as Bobby. Being crazy must make you more agile than the average human, because Crazy Teach was everywhere in that yard at once. But he gets shot by the gruff-voiced detective, and all ends well.
But is it really? I’m honestly surprised that Donna didn’t either off herself or go with Crazy Teach after he killed her boyfriend, because he destroyed everything she ever loved. The movie closes with a goofy song and a montage of all the people in the movie still alive doing prom things, as if it were a happy ending. What did Donna get out of this to warrant “happy ending treatment?” A clean slate for college?
“Yay, no boyfriend or high school friends to hold me back at Brown next year.”
The movie relies on “oldest trick in the book” style gimmicks to produce its few scary moments.
The trusty “open the medicine cabinet, take an anxiety pill, close it with the killer appearing in the mirror right behind” trick is used multiple times.
One of the more infuriating devices the film uses is the old “it was only a dream” sequence multiple times. Instead of creating suspense, it just makes you angry.
They only do it twice, but man, is it annoying.
But I must admit it was nice to see a dumb horror movie after all of the “Saw” and “Hostel” style movies that have come out recently. It was nice to have my fellow viewers yell about a guy in a closet instead of wincing at the sight of a toe being snipped off.
Either way, don’t see this movie, or do see it in two weeks when there’s nobody there so that you and your friends can yell funny things at the screen MST3K style.
