Prom Night (Spoilers)

One of my resolutions for 2008 was that I was going to avoid bad looking pg-13 horror movies. I did pretty well for the few months of the year, but seeing as how my theater is playing this garbage and the entire staff decided to watch it, I felt like I needed to watch it as well. So, I still haven't paid to watch a bad pg-13 horror movie. I think that counts for something, right? Right?

A few years ago a teacher, Richard Fenten(Jonathon Schaech), became obsessed with a student, Donna Keppel(Brittany Snow), and he killed her family before he was arrested. A few years later Donna is still having nightmares about the night she watched her mom get stabbed to death. She is still in the same town (I know, DUMB AS HELL) but she is living with her aunt and Uncle and is a senior in high school about to go to prom. Detective Winn(Idris Elba) was the detective who worked the case and all of a sudden he receives a fax that Fenten broke out of the psych ward three days ago. Yes, it takes 3 days to get word to the one place Fenten is assuredly going to! Winn believes Fenten is heading to Donna enough to warn her aunt and uncle, but not enough pull Donna away from her Prom, does that make sense to you, me neither! Prom is not prom. Prom is a red carpet Hollywood Premiere event. Apparently no one even remotely close to average looking goes to the school. Fenten, of course, gets a suite at the Hotel where Prom is happening and he even gets it on the same floor as Donna. The killing begins; the screaming begins; the scares, well they never begin.

Prom Night may be the dumbest movie to ever be made. The characters make dumb decisions, the detective is the dumbest detective to ever have a badge and the screenplay is beyond dumb. After Donna is saved from Fenten at the prom they send her home! They don't send her to a hotel or the police station or some place where Fenten might not find her, noooo, they send her home with like 3 cops patrolling the area. So is it any surprise that Fenten shows up to kill her?? I mean how did these cops survive this long making decisions that will surely lead to more deaths. "Hmmm, a psycho killer is assuredly going after one person, we should just send her home with a tiny police escort. No big deal. I mean the guy did just BREAK OUT OF PRISON! He can't be that smart or dangerous, right?" Look, I understand applying logic to horror movies is an exercise in futility to begin with, but Prom Nightlooked at logic and kicked it in the nuts before shooting it in the back of the head. Watching from a distance at prom, Detective Winn loses track of Donna a dozen or so times which just gets laughable at many moments.

When Fenten moves in to kill people, not only do they bust out the ridiculous shaky cam, he actually moves like the zombies from 28 days later. However, there are 2 silver lining moments to be had. First, Schaech is one creepy ass psychopath. Wow, he plays that well. Secondly, after he is killed, he doesn't rise to be killed a second time. Yes, the biggest praise I have is that the killer actually died the first time. I say it is a good thing because if he had come back the movie would have been longer by at least 5 seconds and at that point I might have been forced to kill myself to end the pain. Prom Night is the kind of movie you can't help but scream at because you want the characters to stop being so dumb until at some point you just stop caring and pray to God he kills them all. I am not the type of person to say that all remakes need to stop, and to be honest the original is not a very good movie either, but bad movies need to stop. I know this is going to make money because stupid people are drawn to stupid movies where characters end up alone and screaming as they bump into a lamp thinking it could be a killer, but that will not stop me from ridiculing those types of people. If you enjoy Prom Night because it is cheesy and you find enjoyment out of that fine, but if you enjoy Prom Night because you actually think it is a good movie, well, you are contributing to America being considered the dumbest country on the planet; Nay, dumbest country in the galaxy!

Final Grade:F