Movies for Substance Abusers: Prom Night

Welcome back to Movies for Substance Abusers. In this week’s post, we’ll discuss Prom Night. Why did a group of twenty-somethings decide to attend a screening of a PG-13 slasher movie that looked absolutely awful? Some questions are better left unanswered.

Movie: Prom Night

When: Friday, 10:10 pm

Substances Abused: A few beers, a 40oz. of something called Silver Thunder.

Wow, what a useless piece of shit this movie was. I mean, I knew it was going to be bad, but I was hoping it would at least be amusing. The plot is pretty simple. A teacher is obsessed with a student, kills her family, goes to jail and then escapes on prom night. The killer is played by Jonathan Schaech, a criminal also guilty of stealing Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows. Lately Jonathan’s career is doing swimingly between this, Road House 2: Last Call and the brilliantly titled 8mm 2 (seriously, who knew they made a sequel to 8mm?). The killer gets a room at the same hotel as the kids, and starts killing people left and right. There are no twists or plot developments beyond this. The kids, including the protagonist played by Brittany Snow, made me long for the in-depth character development in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

The theater was surprising quiet for a late night screening of a shitty horror movie. Some of us were talking during the boring parts, and the people behind us threatened to call an usher. By the end of the movie, everyone was talking, including the jerks behind us. People were shouting at the screen, making fun of the ridiculously stupid dialogue and the lack of anything particularly scary. I didn’t realize until after I’d bought my ticket that this movie was only PG-13. They would pull away every time someone got stabbed, there was no nudity, and when they did show blood it looked less like someone had been stabbed and more like someone had spilled a single ketchup packet on the victim. We tried to dull our bloodlust with alcohol, taking a swig of booze every time someone said the word “prom,” but it was no use. This movie sucked on every level. Stay away. I would guess that either Road House 2 or 8mm 2 is a better bet.

Grade: D-