Sunday 23 October 2011

Prom Night

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Year:1980
Country of origin:Canada
Director:Paul Lynch
Genre:Slasher
Starring:Leslie Nielsen, Jamie Lee Curtis
Rating:2/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081383/
Tagline:If you're not back by midnight... you won't be coming home.
Favourite line:None worth mentioning

Jesus, this takes a LONG TIME to get going.
The opening scenes are reasonably effective, as a group of children play in an abandoned school, taunting one of their number in a cruel fashion until she eventually falls out of a window and dies(!).
As you do.
The children that witnessed the accident swear a pact never to tell anybody what has happened.
Flash forward six years, even though the individuals look around fifteen years older, and they are all still friends.
As Prom Night approaches, mysterious phone calls are received, and on the night itself, the people who were present the day the young girl died are picked off one by one.
I think you can probably guess the rest.
Whilst some of the death scenes are handled reasonably effectively, the content in between is painfully slow and quite off putting. Even some of the suspense scenes, with PoV shots, are too drawn out. It's clear the director was going for the 'Halloween' feel, and just went OTT, rendering the audience numb with boredom rather than fright.
Indeed, this is not in any way scary even once.
The bastard child of 'Carrie', 'Halloween' and 'I Know what You Did Last Summer', this should have been a lot better.
Also worth mentioning are the God awful 70's funk disco scenes, which are frankly headache inducing.
There's a remake in the offing apparently.
God help us all.

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