Sunday 31 May 2009

The Thin White Dude's Reviews - Prom Night

This is a film that I watch and makes me question myself as to why I watch films. Having not seen many horror movies this year, besides The Orphanage, a movie that is of a far greater standard than this monstrous menagerie of a mess, I am very disappointed in having to have to have witnessed this film. This is essentially me and my necessity to review movies at this moment. It always gets like this at the end of the year, whenever I am trying to see as many films as is possible to end out the year before the Oscars. Speaking of Oscars though, this certainly won’t be in the running, though I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out for the Razzies, what with all the critical acclaim it has been getting in that respect. Well, I guess for a change I will follow suit like the rest of our good film critics and deliver the acclaim (or lack of) that this film truly deserves. Alright, here goes, plot is that it is the last day of high school and a girl is having her Prom Night (ba-boom), only a spanner is thrown in the works when the mad psychopath who murdered her family before her eyes has escaped from the lunatic asylum that has been keeping him away from her, and he will do anything and stop at nothing to get to her. Yes, it is exactly like every other horror movie. To be perfectly honest, I think film studies students should watch as an example of horror movie cliché. I mean it is so predictable and substandard that you are able to actually name other movies that have done the exact same thing that is happening in the present scene. Then, now this is brilliant, I looked at special features Making Of on the DVD, and they are actually taking it seriously. The truly terrifying thing about this movie is that they believe that they are making a horror film that will absolutely scare the living daylights out of the people (and yes, that was a purposeful film reference). Honest to God, and I don’t believe in religion, saying that, this is almost enough to turn me back towards the faith, my first sigh was uttered about five minutes into the film. Before this, it was at least tolerable, for while it was cliché, it seemed to be doing it well, but then we are shown that it is that old substandard anachronistic cliché of pretending to the audience something happened when it didn’t and then it has the nerve to ask us to care about these characters. Characters I say, oh, I’m sorry, these may as well be the cardboard cut outs of Ashley Tisdale and that other guy who’s her incest brother in the High School Musical movies that always distract any time I go to the Strand Cinema. There is no characters who are genuinely likeable and able to sympathise, they are all genuinely boring characters. Then, they come off with that grot about Prom Night being the death of youth and that their life is about to come to an end. Oh my God, you sad people, yes, your life is going to come to end because now you’re turning twenty and that’s now the new mature age and you can no longer go off and skank with each other because you are pregnant with your fifth child. Anyway, these characters are effectively stereotypes of every other horror/teen movie. It’s funny how they are trying to kind of head towards the teen market with this movie. There’s your jocks who are really stupid, good lookers who are all arguing, stuck up rich kids giving off about this that and what not and this is the extent to any character development that is given throughout the movie. Also, now I’ll watch what I say here, why is it that in these movies, there are no bi-racial couples? I mean, the white teens are going out with each other and the black kids are going out with each other. It’s like the producers have said we want ethnic diversity, let’s through in a black couple, but it’s like the New Right-proto-fascists are trying to say that only black people can get off with each other because they are inferior in class, as shown by the shunning of the Barbie doll rich kids. Also, the black couple are the only one’s who get anywhere near getting off with each other, so it’s almost subconsciously suggestive that black people are dirty and promiscuous. You even have your hard-boiled cop who’s like, why are they letting that sucker free, I dealt this case for fifteen years and I don’t like it a damn bit. Hello Halloween ring a bell. They even have a scene near the end whenever the lead (female too) is inside a see-through closet. At least they acknowledge what I would like to hope is blatant ripping off of Halloween. There is a scene midway through where the lunatic is smashing through a wooden door slowly with a fire extinguisher. Oh, I’m sorry for the accusations, it clearly can’t be ripping off of The Shining because Jack Torrance used an axe and not a fire extinguisher. They are even staying in a hotel for goodness sake. Also, the killer of this film is terrible. In the Making Of they said he is scarier because he isn’t just some guy in a mask. Of course he isn’t wearing a mask, he the creepy thin guy of horror movies. They even acknowledge him as being more creepy than other villains. To bring back to the predictability, you can guess where he is coming from virtually every time something happens. Close mirror, ah, good Lord, he is there. Scream Anne, scream for your life! It is so bad that when you expect the guy to pop out, they even in one scene show you him slowly coming out (ba-boom) and attacking. There really is not point in me going on too much longer, because this film doesn’t deserve it. This was a film which left me in genuine discomfort throughout, and is a predictable by the book horror which is a terrible, dirty, bloodless, terror-less, proto-fascist piece of propaganda bilge mad all the more terrible by the fact that everyone involved took it very seriously.

The Thin White Dude’s Prognosis – 0.3/10

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