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Prom Night
This horror film was one that I was hoping would be good but wasn't counting on being good because it has a PG-13 rating, and PG-13 horror films aren't generally all that great. However, it exceeded my expectations greatly by having some very good suspense that was more then the simple obviously set up jump scenes, and the fact that it had to be somewhat tame with the violence and language, it didn't hurt the film.
The story is a pretty typical one. An insane killer escapes from a maximum security insane asylum and returns to stalk and kill the object of his affection. In this case it is a highschool teacher who is returning to stalk a highschool senior (now) who he is obsessed with. Four years earlier he had killed her whole family while trying to track her down, including, unknown to him, her mother in front of her. So the creepy insane guy works better in this film as once in a while you hear about some teacher becoming obsessed with a student. It is obviously set around the prom which is an extravogent mess, but actually plays out decently well as a prom. Fortunately they took the prom setting out of a highschool gym or anything like that and put it into a nicer location that neither the stalker or stalkie were familiar with.
The strongest part of the film were the pseudo jump sequences. Only once or twice did it get sucked into the very typical jump sequence where they draw out the suspense and then as the music cresendos the killer jumps out and kills the victim. There were a couple of times were it did happen, but for the most part they kept the music set up to a minimum. They did a good job of varying the length on the deaths, and not showing the deaths of all the seemingly important characters who we'd gotten to know. That is another thing in the suspense that impressed me, they were willing to kill off some of the main characters in the film, people who didn't completely feel like side characters, and they kept on character like that alive, but not the one that you'd expect to have be alive.
The acting in the film was decent. There were a lot of younger actors and acresses, and they didn't do a great job all of the time, but the lead actress, Brittany Snow, does a solid job in the role. She does a good job acting scared, and mainly she just has to act like a normal teen would act. Yeah, she isn't technically a teen anymore, but she isn't all that far removed, and she does a good job at acting very teen like. The rest of the teens are pretty teen like as well, they don't always do a good job with the acting scared, or having to act in a more serious role, but for the prom scenes they are generally not to shabby.
Overall this is a good example of where horror should start to progress back towards. It doesn't set up its jumps like so many horror movies, and it uses suspense correctly instead of believing that only gore is horror. More films along this line wouldn't be bad, it has a solid classic horror feel to it.
Overall Grade: B
Acting: C+
Story: C+
Audio/Visual: B+
This horror film was one that I was hoping would be good but wasn't counting on being good because it has a PG-13 rating, and PG-13 horror films aren't generally all that great. However, it exceeded my expectations greatly by having some very good suspense that was more then the simple obviously set up jump scenes, and the fact that it had to be somewhat tame with the violence and language, it didn't hurt the film.
The story is a pretty typical one. An insane killer escapes from a maximum security insane asylum and returns to stalk and kill the object of his affection. In this case it is a highschool teacher who is returning to stalk a highschool senior (now) who he is obsessed with. Four years earlier he had killed her whole family while trying to track her down, including, unknown to him, her mother in front of her. So the creepy insane guy works better in this film as once in a while you hear about some teacher becoming obsessed with a student. It is obviously set around the prom which is an extravogent mess, but actually plays out decently well as a prom. Fortunately they took the prom setting out of a highschool gym or anything like that and put it into a nicer location that neither the stalker or stalkie were familiar with.
The strongest part of the film were the pseudo jump sequences. Only once or twice did it get sucked into the very typical jump sequence where they draw out the suspense and then as the music cresendos the killer jumps out and kills the victim. There were a couple of times were it did happen, but for the most part they kept the music set up to a minimum. They did a good job of varying the length on the deaths, and not showing the deaths of all the seemingly important characters who we'd gotten to know. That is another thing in the suspense that impressed me, they were willing to kill off some of the main characters in the film, people who didn't completely feel like side characters, and they kept on character like that alive, but not the one that you'd expect to have be alive.
The acting in the film was decent. There were a lot of younger actors and acresses, and they didn't do a great job all of the time, but the lead actress, Brittany Snow, does a solid job in the role. She does a good job acting scared, and mainly she just has to act like a normal teen would act. Yeah, she isn't technically a teen anymore, but she isn't all that far removed, and she does a good job at acting very teen like. The rest of the teens are pretty teen like as well, they don't always do a good job with the acting scared, or having to act in a more serious role, but for the prom scenes they are generally not to shabby.
Overall this is a good example of where horror should start to progress back towards. It doesn't set up its jumps like so many horror movies, and it uses suspense correctly instead of believing that only gore is horror. More films along this line wouldn't be bad, it has a solid classic horror feel to it.
Overall Grade: B
Acting: C+
Story: C+
Audio/Visual: B+