The ‘Prom Night’ not to remember

“Prom Night” has a listed running time of 85 minutes, and that’s really the only good thing there is to say about it. (It only feels like it goes on for hours and hours.) Otherwise this is as listless, mindless and utterly useless a piece of corporate brain-clog as one is likely to come across for quite some time.

A remake of the 1980 original in that it is called “Prom Night” and is about a killer stalking his way through a high school party, the story this time is that a few years back a teacher (Johnathon Schaech) killed the family of a student (Brittany Snow) he had become obsessed with. Having been locked up in a mental facility, he has dutifully escaped and returned to again stake a claim for his love.

The escaped psychopath in the original was actually a diversion and red herring. In the new “Prom Night,” screenwriter J.S. Cardone has made the assumed killer the actual killer. So there is no suspense, no wondering what comes next, there’s just a guy blandly killing people in a hotel -- a maid for her master key, a girl for her camera, a bellman for his uniform -- with no real bloodletting or decent gore effects. Even the prom itself is effectively thrown away as the killer never actually enters the party. The original at least had a severed head on the dance floor.

Director Nelson McCormick, making his feature debut, is a veteran of such television shows as “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and “Cold Case.” (This explains the familiar, forensic-like expository shots of the killer’s lair and accouterments when his initial crimes are being described.)

Without much to work with, McCormick gamely tries to milk tension out of the most banal of situations. At one point, a girl backs into a floor lamp (a lamp!) and McCormick tries to pump it up into a jump-scare moment. Desperate times really do call for desperate measures. There haven’t been this many shots of closets since the last IKEA catalog.

In the era of “The Hills,” “My Super Sweet 16” and “To Catch a Predator,” there probably is a freaky, scary movie to be mined from the commodification of glamour and society’s creepy obsession with youthful beauty. This is not that movie.

--

“Prom Night.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for violence and terror, some sexual material, underage drinking and language.” Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes. In general release.