Movie Review: "Prom Night" (2008)

DISCLAIMER: This review may contain spoilers.

Did the filmmakers of this "Prom Night" remake actually watch the original 1980 film? Based on what I've seen here, I'm going with probably not. Apparently, all they learned from it is that it has something to do with a high school prom and there's a killer stalking a group of kids.

The original "Prom Night", which starred scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, was set around an accidental murder which a group of kids were involved in. Fast forward years later when the kids are older and are now in high school, there's a big prom coming up and somebody is picking off each of these kids one by one.

Apparently, somebody was watching from a distance when the murder took place and now he wants to make these kids pay for what they did. We never knew who the killer was or his motivation behind doing this, not until the very end of the movie. And man, what a twist that was.

The 2008 remake does everything wrong from the very beginning. In the original, the killer was the brother of Jamie Lee Curtis' character, she's heartbroken to discover this in the film's climax. In the remake, it's some one dimensional crazy high school teacher (Mr. Fenton) who is sexually obsessed with Donna, one of his students and the film's dumb heroine.

The movie begins with Donna coming home to discover that her family has been slaughtered by Fenton and he's waiting for her. Congratulations, "Prom Night" of 2008, you just made your first big mistake by showing us who the killer is within the film's first few minutes... BIG MISTAKE!

One of the great things about the original, as I said above, is that we never found out who this guy was until the end of the movie. There was a sense of mystery that ate away at everybody watching the film. That sense of mystery is nowhere to be found here, there is simply nothing to look forward to except for the closing credits.

When there's so many things wrong about your film's villain, that's saying a lot about your movie's credibility. Forget incorporating some mystery element into the plot, this fool is a mystery in of himself.

I guess the biggest question is why is Fenton obsessed with Donna? We never find this out. He's just... obsessed... because that's what the script needs him to be.

Also, he seems to have some type of psychic powers because he somehow always knows when someone is going to be at a certain place at a certain time. For instance, there is a scene when Lisa (one of Donna's friends) and her boyfriend go to their hotel room to have intercourse.

How does he know that she was going to be there? Moments later, Lisa finds a clue that Fenton is somewhere in the hotel and comes running out of her lovemaking session to warn Donna. Fenton is waiting outside the hotel room to kill her next.

So was Fenton going to wait there all night? What if she never came out at all? What if she never found the clue? Is he just going to stand there all night and play Nostradamus?

Are the filmmakers absolutely certain that this is indeed a high school prom that these kids are going to? It looks more like the Grammy Awards. Seriously, a high school prom being this extravagant? I don't buy this horse feces for one second.

The screenwriter of this "Prom Night" remake obviously has never been to or actually seen a high school prom ever in his life. I mean it's pretty much common sense how a high school prom is supposed to look and where it is supposed to take place. Otherwise, I have to ask... How on Earth did they cough up the money to fund such an expensive-looking prom? Did half of the teaching staff receive pink slips?

Another thing, pay close attention to the scene where the kids first arrive outside the hotel where the prom is taking place. There's at least fifty random people standing on the sidelines out there who are: 1) Not going to the prom; 2) Do not work for the hotel. So why are they there? Did they get all dressed up to watch the stupid kids walk through the front door before they die?

• In an early scene, Donna opens the mirror cabinet in her bathroom, closes it, then her mom is suddenly waiting right behind her with a towel for... no reason whatsoever... when she could have easily waited by the bathroom door which is just to the LEFT of the mirror/sink which Donna was standing in front of. I don't get it, is this like something her mom does just for fun? You know, scare her every once in a while. Probably not, I didn't see either of them laughing afterwards. I guess the screenwriter needed a cheap excuse to scare the audience.
• Detective Nash drives Donna and her boyfriend home, he greets her family and we are given a close up of Nash shaking Donna's father's hand -- ummmm why!?
• The Prom Scene -- Wait a second, that's what the filmmakers consider as.... "dancing"!?
• Lisa runs down a staircase, the killer is in pursuit, she breaks the heel on one of her shoes and falls down the stairs. Then Lisa gets up and runs from the killer while wearing the other shoe. Was this girl trying to find an excuse to slow herself down so the killer could catch up to her?
• There's a fire alarm going off, everyone is ordered to evacuate and all that our female heroine can think about is: "I left my shawl upstairs, I've got to go get it"!?
• The two idiot detectives soon decide it's time to evacuate the building. Great idea. Hey, how about locking everyone in the goddam prom room so that the bad guy doesn't sneak out with the crowd (which is what he eventually did).
• So the detectives try to comfort Donna's family by saying there's no reason to believe that Fenton will come to their house to get Donna. Umm, why? Why wouldn't Fenton come there next? He's got a pretty big reason to come there... IDIOTS.

• Remedies? Could such a thing exist for a movie like "Prom Night"? While I wouldn't consider myself to be a full-blown expert on the topic of remedies (hence I didn't go to medical school), I'm pretty sure that if you crap out a turd, it will stink and nothing is going to change that. Again, not a full-blown expert on this subject, I just know that you can't polish a turd.