Prom Night (2008) Review

Written by: Cerone   

Despite many warnings about this film, I was actually expecting to enjoy it. For some reason, I always seem to enjoy slashers that have a decent budget behind them. I thought Valentine was rather decent, hell i even enjoyed Urban Legend 2.

Prom Night however is just plain bad. It's barley even a horror movie. Its like an episode of the OC that just happens to have a serial killer as a side story. This is probably what the creators of this film were going for when they created it, and sadly it seemed to work, as this somehow managed to get quite a few people in the seats.

I will admit to have not having seen the original, although from what i've heard, this follows only the basic plot line, and is more of a reimagining to the plot if anything.  The basic plotline as the title suggests takes place on prom night, which also happens to be the same night a deranged stalker breaks out of his asylum. Clearly originality is not what the film is going for.

The killer in this film wears no mask, and isn't concealed in any way. He basically shows his face through the entire movie, taking away any tension what so ever. All he seems to do is wait in the room, until these stupid nameless teens walk right up to him. The killings are all pretty tame, not even offering us good gore. There mostly stabbings with a rather tiny knife the killer always seems to have, some deaths even take place off screen (thats PG-13 for you) Isn't this suppose to be a horror movie?

The acting in this film is even more dissapointing than the killer. Some of the teens do a good enough job, but i have no idea who could even think that Brittany Snow could carry a horror movie. This girl oozes so much cheese with every line she says, that it's impossible to take her seriously, never mind even care if she gets away from the killer or not, which being a film full of cliches she obviously does. It is also one of the most anti-climatic and predictable endings in horror movie history, although i don't really want to apply the word horror to this peice of garbage.

The only real reason i gave this film a three was because of the budget. Everything looked nice,  and the hotel was nicely put together. The directing was pretty competent to, and you can't really blame the director for not building any tension, if the script never gives him the chance. If this had been a low budget film it could of easily been looking at a one score.

Unlike me, when people tell you how bad this film is, you really should listen. Trust me when i say you will live to regret it.