{"id":446,"date":"2008-04-10T14:42:34","date_gmt":"2008-04-10T04:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/04\/10\/review-prom-night-2008\/"},"modified":"2008-04-11T07:47:42","modified_gmt":"2008-04-10T21:47:42","slug":"review-prom-night-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/04\/10\/review-prom-night-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Prom Night (2008)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw the new Prom Night<\/em> remake with Chris Barnes at a preview last night, which is odd as this is Australia and it doesn’t open in its home country until tomorrow. What did we do to deserve such treatment? My full review is on the Horrorscope<\/strong> website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prom Night (US-2008; dir. Nelson McCormick)<\/span><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Robert Hood<\/span><\/p>\n

This modern slasher-horror film opens with a deceptively clever scene that mingles \u201cteenage\u201d protagonist Donna\u2019s memories of the murder of her parents with her fears regarding the killer. Now, three years later, on the eve of her end-of-school prom night, Donna is once again having nightmares about the psychotic ex-teacher with a murderous obsession for her. Inevitably, of course, despite re-assurances to the contrary, the killer escapes from prison and comes for Donna as the coming-of-age ritual begins\u2026<\/p>\n

I find the whole prom night schtick, at least as depicted in American movies, far more bizarre than most of what happens in your average fantasy film, dark or otherwise. I\u2019m sure many Americans find it equally as strange. Basically it appears to involve rich kids being celebrity bitches or assholes [aka arseholes] and strutting about in $2000 gear while agonising over their about-to-be truncated future, investigating the meaning of skin disorders or having sex. Still, it\u2019s at base an end-of-childhood fantasy and this new remake of the 1980s slasher film Prom Night<\/span> starts off treating it as such. This approach is fine if we must<\/span> have another film about 20-something actors and actresses pretending to be teenagers, because the film also starts off with a couple of decent scenes that suggest that it might have A Theme (to do with maturation, loss and coping with fear-induced anxiety) \u2013 and the two aspects have the potential to complement each other. After all, the writers even include the double-edged, prom-night slasher statement: \u201cYou\u2019ll remember this night for the rest of your life!\u201d Alas, however, the film only starts<\/span> with these things. Somehow the vaguely intelligent thematic stuff gets forgotten, or at least muddled, along the way.<\/p>\n

Frankly it\u2019s easier to talk about the less-than-admirable things this remake doesn\u2019t<\/span> do than it is to talk about the admirable things it does<\/span> do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the full review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw the new Prom Night remake with Chris Barnes at a preview last night, which is odd as this is Australia and it doesn’t open in its home country until tomorrow. What did we do to deserve such treatment? … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,26,14,66],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roberthood.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}