Nothing is sacred in movie business

The Video Guy

By Elliott Smith | • Published August 28, 2008

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In Hollywood, it's hard to leave well enough alone. When there's money to be made, nothing is sacred -- that's why you're seeing dead actors pop up in commercials, remakes galore and actors mining the same territory again and again.

Of course, there are times when revisiting the familiar works out for the best. Despite what some crusty critics say, there have been some good remakes. But most of the time, you wind up wondering why they would mess with a good thing.

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Look, I'm not going to tell you that the original "Prom Night" was some kind of masterwork. It came out during that curious period in American history when we were interested in serial killers terrorizing our cultural touchstones.

But compared with the execrable PROM NIGHT (PG-13, zero stars) remake, that movie was "Psycho."

Bereft of scares, stripped of logic and saddled with high-school level acting, this movie is a textbook example of what is wrong with the horror genre today. Prepackaged and market-tested to the nth degree in an attempt to appeal to everyone, it winds up satisfying no one but maybe 13-year-old girls who want to be inept detectives.

Here's just one example of how poorly executed this film is: The movie is called "Prom Night" yet the final 25 minutes of it doesn't take place at a prom! Why not call it "At Home Night?"

Our heroine is Donna (Brittany Snow), a high school senior still recovering from the murder of her family three years earlier by a deranged teacher. She's made it to prom while the teacher is in a mental hospital "2,300 miles away." Things are slowly returning to normal.

However, our obsessed instructor (Jonathan Schaech) has escaped just in time for the big night. He has in his favor the worst police department in the country. Despite the concern about his escape, at no time do the police make an effort to, you know, do actual police work.

Donna's friends start getting picked off in the most polite way possible -- mostly off screen and with little evidence of the crime -- so viewers don't get too scared.