Editorials
The Early Aughts ‘Prom Night’ Remake Skewers The Original Slasher Formula For The Worse
Are 2000s horror remakes as bad as their Rotten Tomatoes scores suggest? Dark Castle Entertainment’s unfairly maligned Thir13en Ghosts sits at a 9%; Platinum Dunes’ fantastic Friday the 13th reboot is drowning under the puke-green threshold at 25%. Tomatometer critics of the aughts held a grudge against horror in general, especially horror remakes.
It’s a phenomenon I don’t shy away from discussing here in the column, but let’s be honest, some releases of the period deserved their beatdowns.
Nelson McCormick’s Prom Night (2008) is the kind of no-good horror remake that fuels biases against the practice. A 9% critics’ score is generous, based on who you ask (me). Maybe you’re thinking, it can’t possibly be worse than some of the remake swill that I’ve already analyzed here on Bloody Disgusting … right? Don’t get me wrong, it’s no April Fool’s Day. But it’s also an insult to Paul Lynch’s Canuxploitation original from 1980, in that it doesn’t even deign to be a slasher.
Title recognition gets fans through the door, but disappointment sets in early once audiences realize there’s no mystery to solve or backbone to brag about.
The Approach
Schlock peddler J. S. Cardone scripts an updated Prom Night that doesn’t care to indulge much of what makes William Gray’s initial blueprint, and therefore Paul Lynch’s source, a cult classic. It’s silly in a braindead Nu-Horror way, communicating all the wrong lessons learned from past horror creators. Cardone ditches whodunit suspense in the opener, and doubles down only a few scenes later. You know, from the beginning, who the killer is. Bodies start mounting WAY quicker (not around the hour-plus mark), but more action somehow produces a lethargic drag of a stalker picture.
Brittany Snow stars as Donna Keppel, an Oregonian teen who watches her mother get murdered in front of her eyes. The killer, teacher Richard Fenton (Johnathon Schaech), professes his hot-for-student love for Donna and swears they’ll never be separated. Fast-forward three years, and Donna is gearing up for every budding young adult’s dream: senior prom. Kids hoist kegs through multi-story windows; everyone arrives at a swanky hotel for a red carpet entrance. Donna, her nice-guy boyfriend Bobby (Scott Porter), besties Claire (Jessica Stroup) and Lisa (Dana Davis), football star Ronnie (Collins Pennie), and Claire’s drunk gnat of a boyfriend, Michael (Kelly Blatz), are ready to kiss this chapter of their lives goodbye.
But, wait for it, they’re not alone.
Guess who shows up. Richard! Before anyone can even obnoxiously shout-dance to “Sweet Caroline,” there’s a shot of a now clean-shaven Richard on the premises. For some reason, Cardone and McCormick think there’s value in having their villain be in plain sight for the entire movie. Detective Winn (Idris Elba) isn’t very good at protecting Donna, along with his partner, Detective Nash—a baby-faced James Ransone (RIP). It’s such an odd choice; a monumental risk that doesn’t pay off even for a second.
Does It Work?
It’s not just one decision that crashes Prom Night; blame is everywhere. However, the familiarization of Richard Fenton from square one cuts any slasher intrigue off at the knees. Goodbye, red herrings. Be gone, investigation tension. Richard waltzes to the check-in desk, Ronnie accidentally points the psycho to their floor, and he immediately snags a master key by killing a maid. There’s no struggle for Richard; he’s gifted his way back into Donna’s life. From here, it’s just a not-so-bloody waiting game as Donna’s friends venture one-by-one to the room for various reasons, and are killed by Richard in PG-13 approved stab attacks—big freakin’ yawn.
Frankly, McCormick approaches Prom Night (2008) more like a Fatal Attraction, evoking thrillers about obsession, danger, and lust. It’s a piss-poor slasher film because it doesn’t pay the subgenre any mind. Lynch has way more fun decapitating cafeteria bullies with mighty unibrows, keeping his glittery masked axe murderer in the shadows, where McCormick presumes there’s more to fear when staring down Schaech’s cold, fixated eyes. He’s wrong, unfortunately, because in revealing Richard, all expectations are now evident. Richard will knife innocents to death, Richard will encounter Donna, and either one of them will die—but let’s be honest, in a PG-13 theatrical Screen Gems package? We’re just waiting for Donna to exorcise her demon (the dead way).
It begs the age-old remake question—what value does your remake bring to the original’s concept? There’s nothing reminiscent of Gray’s oddball of a revenge massacre that, itself, calls back to dynamite Canadian slashers like My Bloody Valentine and Black Christmas. The concept of setting your horror tale during prom has been retread a billion times, to the point where there’s no uniqueness to revamping Prom Night if you’re not going to abide by its premise. The nostalgia backfires monumentally, inviting plot comparisons that would never be in the film’s favor.
The Result
Prom Night (2008), frankly, stinks. We’re held hostage inside a generic Hollywoodized school dance, complete with a corny DJ on a balcony stage, lifeless outlines of hallway stereotypes (sup, Kellan Lutz), and the gooniest affinity for prom night’s milestone afterglow. Cardone’s screenplay is incorrigibly sappy: if he can’t write any scares into the film, he’ll at least attempt lazy emotional pops before characters meet Richard’s blade. Bobby’s constant reassurances that he and Donna will survive their long-distance college relationship, Ronnie pulling an engagement ring from his pocket, or Lisa’s insistence that everyone will stay friends. It’s all rigid stereotypes crammed into tuxedos and a parade of meaningless deaths.
There’s more personality in Jamie Lee Curtis’ epic Saturday Night Fever-y dance number for 1980’s Prom Night than there is in the entirety of 2008’s Prom Night. Scenes play out like stock footage of “fun party dance floor” or “pretty teens prom night,” running through the same droll mechanics as Detective Winn scampers around, trying not to alarm anyone about Richard’s likely presence at the hotel. Cue Donna’s Uncle Jack (Linden Ashby) tearily reasoning with Aunt Karen (Jessalyn Gilsig) about why he didn’t pull his niece from the probably doomed event, because he didn’t want to ruin her therapeutic progress (Chun-Li and Mulan actress Ming-Na Wen plays Donna’s doc for a hot second).
Reason after reason keeps Donna in peril purely for the movie’s entertainment, which there is none to speak of—and then it keeps going. This movie is like being dragged across concrete at 2 miles an hour, and being told, in excruciating detail, about every bump and point you’re about to encounter because no one here believes in anticipation.
I can’t comprehend how someone could watch Prom Night (1980) and be inspired to regurgitate something so uninspiringly vanilla. You watch a movie with disco mania, car explosions, and scintillation … and the best you can do is a jealous serial killer deleting cute pics of Donna and the creatively named “Bobby Jones” on a digital camera? Prom Night (2008) doesn’t deserve its Bloc Party needle drop. Nor Brittany Snow, stuck with dialogue that makes me want to stab my eardrums with a shimmery tiara. It probably wouldn’t even take a half-assed argument to convince me Prom Night (2008) is AI-generated, it’s so tropey and algorithmic. Are we sure this isn’t a VH1 made-for-television horror movie? (I can’t even namecheck MTV since My Super Psycho Sweet 16 has more moxie and terror.)
The Lesson
The in-your-face lesson? Make a good damn movie. The deeper lesson, in terms of remake potential? Display even the most basic understanding of what makes the original you’re referencing tick. We just had this conversation in my The Strangers examination last month. McCormick and Cardone can’t luck themselves into even the slightest tingle of fear. I’m at a loss—My Bloody Valentine 3D was able to drop a bombshell reveal despite being based on a film that, itself, contains a nasty and memorable twist. You’ve got no excuse, Prom Night—you didn’t even try.
So what did we learn?
- Turns out slashers based on human killers aren’t all that fun when the bad guy is unmasked in the first scene.
- Not all 2000s horror remakes are underappreciated or unfairly criticized.
- Remakes by name invite unavoidable comparisons you’d better be ready to answer for.
- The Canuxploitation to PG-13 Americanized remake pipeline ain’t that impressive.
Woof! Maybe I’m just the jaded kid from a small suburban town who fled and never looked back, but Prom Night is some of the hokiest, most cringe-worthy prom-o-ganda I’ve endured in quite some time. It’s got a “Hello, fellow kids!” energy, like a teen flick written by a, well, senior citizen.
Congratulations to those who might feel the warm nostalgia of high school sweethearts beating the odds, or friend groups never losing touch, but for the rest of us? It’s not even the butter-knife-edge horror that possesses; it’s the diet Hallmark vibes that had me wincing the hardest.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
You must be logged in to post a comment.