What ought to have been one of the most memorable nights in one’s life can, as Donna (Brittany Snow) finds out, unexpectedly turn out to be the most horrific. In ‘Prom Night’, a psychopath killer, Richard (Jonathan Schaech), who is obsessed with her, breaks out of jail and comes after her.
The writer has taken the premise of an old film of the same name and made a total hash of it. He probably thought it would be a cool idea to gather a bunch of college kids in a hotel, and then have then bumped off one by one while their batch mates are dancing and having a lot of fun. In the absence of a plot, everyone runs around in circles, clueless. If they had any sense in their heads, the cops in the film would simply have made a few calls to the girl or her friends, and calmly informed her/them of the situation.
Schaech neither looks nor behaves like a psychopath. He’s a case study of contradictions; when he murders someone, he’s loud and messy, but when there’s someone in the room, he drags bodies and cleans up the place as silently as an ant. I wonder if Schaech, the writer, or the director ever read a book of criminal psychology or visited a lunatic asylum.
Snow has a cry-baby expression throughout, even in the face of danger. The rest of the ‘actors’, including the guys dressed up as cops who come in holding guns, look like they are rehearsing for a college-day drama.
The whole thing appears like a shoddily created work by rank amateurs. The cameraman looks like he has never watched a good suspense film in his entire life. The editor too needs to be packed off to film school. Looking at the kind of images that they’ve put together, one gets the feeling that the duo would first need at least a few years of unlearning before they can start relearning things. It would be a good idea for the director to join them too.
Nelson McCormick takes immense pleasure in splashing blood all over the place. He has somehow managed to drag a concept without a proper story into a full-length slasher film. The fellow has a weird sense of humor too. The end-credits are pumped up with exciting music, just when you’re getting ready to run to the washbasin to puke after an hour and a half of choking on a bloody carnage.
