Since I have no real attachment to the 1980 original, much preferring the sequels and their vengeful prom queen villainess Mary Lou, I can't claim much more than indifference when I learnt that Prom Night was going to be another in a long line of genre flicks to be remade with the modern day, teenage crowd in mind. That's right, it's another PG-13 horror flick but how does it compare to all the other re-duxes littering the cinema landscape?

Teenaged Donna (Brittany Snow) returns home from a movie night with her best friend and to what looks like an empty house. The television is on, things look normal, but nobody answers her calls. Which might be because dad's laying dead on the couch, her brother's been killed on his bed, and there's a psycho on the premises. While hiding under the bed, Donna sees her mother die in front of her eyes by a murderer who's looking for her and proclaims, "She belongs to me".

Flash-forward to three years later and Donna is still plagued by nightmares and seeing a therapist. She's now living with her Aunt and Uncle, has tried to get back to a normal high school life, and is just about to celebrate the prom. However, unbeknownst to her, the man who killed her family (who was one of her teachers that got obsessed with her) has just, conveniently, escaped from prison.

The rest of Prom Night consists of Donna and her friends trading bland dialogue, our nutter staring longing at Donna while occasionally stabbing various employees at the hotel the prom is taking place in as well as anyone who happens to get in the way, and the detective (Idris Elba) who arrested him prior trying, and pretty much failing, to stop it all from happening again.

What we have here is fairly standard stalk 'n' slash stuff but it somehow manages to be pretty watchable. As our killer, Johnathon Schaeach does a moderately convincing job and while most of the deaths consist of him shanking people in the stomach there is one well-staged throat slit on hand.

Despite the fact it's apparently a redo, Prom Night really only takes the original's title and setting into consideration. Gone are the disco dancing, promiscuous sex, masked killer (who had a bit more variety in his kills, including axing someone making out in the back of a van), and Jamie Lee Curtis. In its place, scripter J.S. Cardone has delivered a pretty basic horror-thriller that offers nothing new and probably doesn't contain enough bloodshed for the hardcore horror crowd - which is quite apparent where, upon watching the unrated version even, things felt incredibly tame. There are also a few logic gaps, watered-down fake scares, and nothing in the way of suspense - knowing who the killer is right away doesn't help that matter.

Taking all these things into consideration, I still didn't mind my time with the movie. Director Nelson McCormick keeps things moving at a pretty decent clip and the young cast does alright with generally clichéd characters. Snow makes for a mousy "heroine" and is the weakest thing here and fans of the original are sure to prefer that one, but I've definitely seen a lot worse than what's on display here.

Writer Cardone has tread the teen horror path before with teen warlock flick The Covenant and teen bloodsuckers in 2001's The Forsaken. He also did a few movies for Full Moon earlier in his career with Shadowzone and Crash and Burn. Unfortunately, he's set to re-team with McCormick as they set out to remake 1986's The Stepfather - something I'm incredibly more upset about than their work here. (Chris Hartley, 12/10/08)

Directed By: Nelson McCormick.
Written By: J.S. Cardone.

Starring: Brittany Snow, Scott Porter, Jessica Stroup, Dana Davis.