Oh Donna
When Donna (Brittany Snow) returns home from a night out with her friends she walks in on her family being brutally murdered by Richard Fenton (Johnathon Schaech) a teacher who is obsessed with her. Three years later and with Fenton locked up hundreds of miles away Donna is just starting to get her life back on track with prom night coming up. But it is going to be a night she will never forget as Fenton has escaped and is returning home with Detective Winn (Idris Elba) on his tail.
So whilst "Prom Night" shares the same title as a slasher movie from 1980 it isn't a remake of that movie. I added of that movie because "Prom Night" is just a bog standard slasher movie where a psycho killer comes to town and with one teenager in particular on their mind brutally kills plenty whilst a not too clever detective tries to hunt him down. It is an old storyline which seems to have been written by piecing together ideas from other horror movies most noticeably the original "Halloween" with the psycho killer returning to town with Donna on his mind.
Now I have no objection to someone taking elements of older horror movies and trying to update them for a more modern audience as I can appreciate how someone might not be blown a way by say the original "Halloween" when watched now because of its look. What I do object to is when someone takes the simplest story idea known to man and completely misses the mark which is what has happened here. I can see what the idea was, make a slasher movie with the look and cast appeal of say "One Tree Hill" but the end result is devoid of the essentials from a character that we can get behind to horror, gore and violence; basically it lacks frights of any variety.
As such the less I say about the acting the better as the cast appear to have been chosen for their teen appeal look rather than for their acting skills which when it comes to the young actresses seem to consist of scowl and pout. In fairness to the actresses the characters throughout are poorly written but even so it becomes a vacant slog to watch "Prom Night". The closest it gets to okay is in the casting of Johnathon Schaech as at least he has a nasty, psycho look on his face but again it is a poorly written character with director McCormick mainly shooting him in the shadows to make him look sinister.
What this all boils down to is that "Prom Night" somehow took the simplest of horror movie storylines and managed to mess it up making it a less than rewarding horror movie. I honestly don't think even a new generation will find "Prom Night" that entertaining as it just fails when it comes to delivering horror.
