The Quad

Issue date: 4/14/08 Section: Entertainment

Spring and love are in the air. Graduation is in sight. What better way to commemorate the past four years of high school than the prom. As a rite of passage for most teenagers, prom night is not to be missed, unless of course you are considering to see the movie.

After watching her mother be murdered three years earlier, Donna Keppel (Brittany Snow) just wants to have one night of teenage normalcy. But on the night of her senior prom, sadistic killer Richard Fenton, (Johnathon Schaech) who killed her family, escapes from a mental institution to terrorize Donna further as he picks off her friends in an attempt to get closer to her. This plot seems standard for most slasher flicks, but "Prom Night" (2008) doesn't have any redeeming qualities that other slasher flicks have.

While the quality of slasher flicks has been declining since their conception, the genre can be fun, entertaining and even inspired. With the basic groundwork for the run of the mill slasher flick, Director Nelson McCormick and writer J.S. Cardone should have been able to make a better movie.

It is supposed to be a slasher flick, yet most of the slashing takes place offscreen. As far as violence and gore go, "Prom Night" is one of the most disappointing movies I have ever seen. Violence and gore do not make a movie scary; no, these elements make movies entertaining. After being put through the torture of watching these characters celebrate their prom, I would have liked to see them get the horrific deaths they deserved. However, in order to achieve a PG-13 rating in an attempt to make more money, the film is devoid of any sort of massacre we have grown accustomed to.

Perhaps it is due to the lack of other classic slasher flick qualities that "Prom Night" does not have the gruesome deaths. In the horror genre, there are certain activities that teenagers should take part in to be deserving of their deaths, such as drinking, doing drugs and having sex. It goes without saying that if a character does any of the above mentioned, he/she will most likely miss the final scene. Yet, there is no sex, no drug use and only one sip of an alcoholic drink. In the way the movie unfolds, one can say that "Prom Night" is an unconventional slasher flick, but did the filmmakers ever consider that the conventions work in not boring the audience?

Up and coming starlet Snow has absolutely no screen presence. Her performance was flat and she lacks the ability to show any emotion.

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