LogFAQs > #958582612

2. Prom Night (2008) (Netflix)

This movie is pretty bad. Simple as that.

So last year, you may remember me feeling pretty good about the original Prom Night. I gave it a 6/10. It wasn't great by any means, but it was an above average horror that had a goofy idea, a mystery, and wanted to be more of a "WOW KIDS LOOK AT HOW COOL THE PROM IS!" kind of movie.

This movie is not any of that. This Prom Night has no mystery, mostly shows off the horrible stupid drama of prom, and takes itself entirely seriously. It doesn't even have that dumb Prom Night song! Missed opportunity! As such, it's just an inferior film in every way.

Basically, this movie is about a girl who has a teacher that is obsessed with her and kills her little brother, her mom, and her father, so they can be together...? And now she's living with her aunt and uncle. Now she's a senior going to the prom and he's escaped jail to take her away again!

Like the premise is just bad on its own. Killer who kills everyone in her family and those close to her to kidnap her. Yawn. Brittany Snow is the lead and she's usually fun to see act. Idris Elba of all people is the cop. And nobody here does a good job with anything. I'm going to spoil some shit, so if you for whatever reason don't want to be spoiled on the Prom Night remake, avert your eyes.

So they learn the killer has escaped, right? Well Idris Elba gets a report this teacher escaped from jail somehow? And then when he informs her aunt and uncle, they go "We can't go in and take her out of the prom! She's made so much progress overcoming her nightmares of when her family was brutally murdered!" Okay, if a psychopath whose literal only goal is to kill everyone and kidnap her escapes from jail, you just fucking take her and hide her where they can't get her. What the fuck? So instead they're doing this subtle man hunt to find this guy and letting these people do their prom.

And the prom drama, ooooooh god maybe if I were still a damn child I'd be into it, but as an adult this sucks. I doubt I'd be into it as a kid because who the hell had a prom this extravagant? I went to a really nice school but it wasn't even close. This stuff makes up so much of the story and GUESS WHAT? None of it matters because everyone involved dies!

Which brings me to another issue: Every friend this girl has is fucking dead now. So she lost her immediate family, all of her friends, her boyfriend, and Idris Elba is still the one who shoots him dead in the end. What the fuck this is the most downer ending ever. She's just a broken person sobbing at the end, broken more than before, and then they play some goofy dance song to play us out! This girl is scarred for life, please understand. Because ninja teacher managed to Assassin Creed everyone around, including trained officers.

The best I can offer this film is that parts are competent. There's a few clever things they do with this movie that I can almost appreciate for a genre of teen slasher that was vomited out around this time. But everything else sucks. It just does. It's not a good movie and nothing like the fun dumb time the original was. I just don't get why this film was made.

Rating: 3/10

Edit: Please enjoy the song from the original. It's glorious in how corny it is.

https://youtu.be/y3V5vbfTPsc

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