So, here we are with another pointless, 80s horror remake right? Well, not really. For this Prom Night may take the title and basic prom goes to hell premise of the 1980 slasher starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Neilson (shot in Toronto too), but it’s not a remake or re-imaging or whatever you’d like to think. Which is actually fine, because while I do remember watching the 1980 Prom Night, damned if I could remember its contents because I had to look at the synopsis on IMDb. Overall, this “remake” represents a fine tradition in the Prom Night series, because the three sequels to the original actually ended up having very little to do with each other.
On this Prom Night, high school senior Donna Keppel (Brittany Snow, who ironically once plotted death against John Tucker), her studly boyfriend (Scott Porter), and four of their friends (Kelly Blatz, Jessica Stroup, Collins Pennie and Dana Davis), are attending their formal at a posh hotel where adult situations may occur. What Donna doesn’t know is that coincidentally, three days earlier, the teacher (Jonathon Schaech) that was obsessed with her to the point of getting himself fired and then killing Donna’s family, has escaped from the Looney bin. And guess what? He’s still murderously obsessed with her.
This is one of those efforts that can best be summed up as effective, or at least a number of teeney-boppers in the audience thought so. Seeing as how they are the core constituency for the film and how the movie itself was rated PG-13, I guess that’s mission accomplished. Fickle viewers, however, will note the exaggerated use of various motifs and how relatively bloodless the whole affair is considering there’s a knife-wielding psycho afoot. In the meantime, classmates and hotel staff keep disappearing and all anyone can do is send more people to see where they are.
There are a couple of things that I did appreciate about Prom Night and the biggest one is that they don’t dumb down the cop. Idris Elba plays Detective Winn, who as far as horror movie police officers go is actually pretty on his game. There’s no stupid decision-making that winds up getting a lot of people killed unnecessarily, there’s none of that whole denial phase where the cop refuses to believe that there’s a danger and he’s capable of rational thinking and able to follow up on obvious clues. Plus, Elba is teamed James Ransone, which constitutes something of a Wire reunion, for fans of that underappreciated show.
Another thing I liked is that Schaech doesn’t play a typical, scenery chewing psychopath, but is rather low-key so that the character convincingly passes as normal when he has to. Schaech does a lot of acting with his eyes; cold, hard and just a little bit deranged. It’s an effective act, but it does give Schaech the appearance of being on autopilot sometimes. The kids though are, unfortunately, the weakest link. There are only so many times you can see the same, old, model-perfect teens sitting around and gripe about how “this stage of their life is over,” and “how they’ll never see each other again,” and “how they hope their BFF and not the mean girl gets the Prom Queen crown.”
Now I don’t want to give a false impression, because Prom Night is still middle of the road horror filmmaking, but I will pay it with the compliment of saying that it’s better than any Prom Night that’s come before. Granted that’s like being named the best at organizing push pins into colour-coordinated piles, but there you have it. I can’t wait to see what the same team’s got in store for the Stepfather remake, although I’d bet fair money that Stabler from Law & Order: SVU can out-crazy Locke from Lost or at least meet him on even ground.
