Bella Donna

Year: 2008

Director: Nelson McCormick

Cast: Brittany Snow, Idris Elba, Johnathon Schaech

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Not that any of us should be surprised, especially considering that it's a remake, but Prom Night has absolutely nothing to do with its titanically offbeat predecessors. It is only nominally a remake, so much so that not a single one of the franchise staples - Hamilton High, Brock Simpson, a score by Paul Zaza, secretly being Canadian - are present.

Literally the only thing it has in common with the rest of the movies is that it takes place at a prom, which isn't even true of all four (remember Prom Night IV? We just talked about it).

Enough complaining. Remake culture is what it is and nothing I can do will be able to change that. And some remakes were even *gulp* kinda good. Although I can knock one out of my good esteem right now.

When Cassidy and I sat down to watch the entire Prom Night series, we both vaguely remembered the remake as being a tolerable but forgettable affair. Not a stain on the underwear of humanity, but actually a halfway decent horror flick despite its PG-13 lack of gore.

And the ferociously bland supporting cast.

We were dead wrong.

Prom Night opens with Donna Keppel (Brittany Snow) coming home to find her father and little brother with their throats slashed by a maniac teacher (Johnathon Schaech) who has developed an obsession with her. She hears a noise in the other room and hides under the bed as the killer throws her mother on the floor, demanding to be told where she is. Her mother refuses to say and, glimpsing her daughter cowering feet away from her, stands her ground, only to be brutally murdered. Right in front of her daughter.

In five minutes Prom Night has already covered darker subject matter than the average war movie, and it is exceedingly unpleasant.

Unpleasant.

Get used to that. You're going to be hearing that word a lot tonight.

It's not exactly rainbows and puppy dogs down here.

I don't know why both Cassidy's and my memories were so cloudy on this account. Maybe we weren't old enough to understand the full impact of what we were seeing. Maybe our thought processes regarding movie watching have grown more sophisticated after our first year of college (Psych 101 does wonders, I'm telling you). But this scene, and every one that proceeded, was unmistakably vile and.... unpleasant.

Slashers very frequently depict scenes of pain and death (obviously), but never has a slasher movie been so mean-spirited or told a story that was just so very sad. It's not that the characters are developed more than the average movie or even that the deaths are more visceral. And it's definitely not intentional. But every single death in the movie is like a punch in the gut - one more reason to consider turning the film off.

It's not fun, like the cheesy gore pictures of the 80's. It's not a fable of evil the likes of Halloween. It's not even trying to glean some sort of feeling from the painful (and bloodless) deaths. It is inhuman and mechanical, without conscience, trying to replicate the tropes of the slasher genre and obeying the letter of the law without ever once comprehending the spirit.

Honestly and without exaggeration, if there is a single slasher movie that could be constructed by the forces of pure evil, it would be this one. Not one moment of this film is redeeming, from the wealth of terrible jump scares (the Abominable Mirror Scare is used at least three times along with a litany of other genre standards, notably the Backing Into a Friend and It's All a Dream) to the utterly stupid even for a horror movie slate of Meat to the completely inappropriate and grotesque main villain to the truly staggering number of characters sent to the killer's domain for no reason but to be gutted.

One by one we watch everything Donna loves get taken away from her.

Her family? Tortured and gored.

Her friends? Throats slit and bodies shoved into closets.

Her prom night? An utter nightmare of torment, blood, and latent pedophilia.

Her boyfriend? Stabbed in the throat as he lies in bed with her.

This movie is a conveyor belt of tortures for this poor girl who is sweetness embodied. And who could expect anything less from Brittany Snow?

I don't know why anybody would expect that we should want to see this film, and I can't even adequately explain to myself what magical quality this film possesses that makes it so utterly immoral and venomous, but I know bad juju when I see it and this movie needs a cleansing. And fast.

I don't care about recapping the rest of the plot, because I don't want anybody else to ever have to watch this movie ever again.

Killer: Richard Fenton (Johnathon Schaech)

Final Girl: Donna Keppel (Brittany Snow)

Best Kill: N/A. If you'd read even a single word in the preceding article, you'd know why.

Scariest Moment: Donna has to watch her mother die defending her, unable to help or cry out.

Sign of the Times: "I'll go request some JT." Also the size of the digital camera the girls bring to prom.

Weirdest Moment: The entire thing took place in Portland. Poor Cassidy.

Champion Dialogue: "If he were any dumber, I'd have to water him."

Body Count: 14, the highest in the series.

1. Mr. Keppel is stabbed to death.
2. Joey Keppel is stabbed to death.
3. Mrs. Keppel is stabbed to death.
4. Inmate has his throat slit.
5. Maria is stabbed to death.
6. Claire is stabbed to death.
7. Michael is stabbed to death.
8. Simms is strangled.
9. Howard's throat is slit.
10. Lisa's throat is slit
11. Detective Nash's throat is slit
12. Bobby's throat is slit.
13. Officer Hicks is stabbed to death.
14. Richard Fenton is shot seven times in the chest. 

TL;DR: Prom Night is a vile and grotesque creature, possessing a nearly unexplainable but overwhelming quality of being the most immoral and vile film I have ever seen.

Rating: 1/10

Word Count: 1028

Reviews In This Series

Prom Night (Lynch, 1980)

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (Pittman, 1987)

Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (Oliver/Simpson, 1990)

Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil (Borris, 1992)

Prom Night (McCormick, 2008)

Penultimate Destination

Year: 2009
Director: David R. Ellis
Cast: Bobby Campo, Nick Zano, Krista Allen
Run Time: 1 hour 22 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

As part of a continuing sibling bonding series with my super cool sister, late last night we watched the fourth entry in what is easily the most high concept and low class slasher franchise there is.

This is a film that is so hard up for audience that it has to pretend that it's something else. "The" Final Destination. I've said it before and I'll say it again: your franchise has really gone down the tubes when you stop numbering them.

In this case however, the title (accidentally) conveys additional meaning about the nature of the film. This film is so poorly made and so divorced from the rest of the series that it acts as somewhat of a palate cleanser preparing one for the rigors of Final Destination 5 (the only FD movie to receive a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes).

Director David R. Ellis returns to helm his second entry in the series (after Final Destination 2, which was actually quite good), and whatever creative spark he once had has obviously long been stamped out. The director's workmanlike attitude behind the camera betrays his years of experience as a stuntman.

The rest of the movie doesn't feel much better. The dialogue sounds more like a spec script that the writers pumped full of cliches to frame the story thinking "we'll fill that in with actual human-sounding dialogue later" and then eventually having it slip their minds. The gore wouldn't feel out of place in a SyFy original movie, and the actors' characterizations are as inert as their inevitably lifeless corpses.

I doubt that I can find room in my heart to call this a "redeeming quality," but there's one part where the filmmakers didn't skimp. The Final Destination gets a lot of mileage out of being unashamedly devoted to showing naked flesh. Especially common is shirtless men, which is rather unusual for a slasher movie (which these films like to pretend they aren't but it's an inescapable part of their DNA).

There seems to be little regard paid to the actual demographics of the film (teen boys who want to see blood and guts and boobs and butts). Although there is a lengthy topless sex scene full of mammaries bouncing all over the place, the film would much rather lovingly stroke the sculpted abs of its male characters, even while they're in the process of getting their insides sucked out by a pool filter.

Side note: Watching this movie in 2010 is 100% responsible for my love of baseball shirts.

Just to drive the point in (and amuse myself), I'm going to scatter shirtless shots throughout the rest of this article to *ahem* exemplify how they are utilized in the film.

Fun Fact: This film was the first Final Destination film to actually be shot in the US (the rest were filmed in Canada). Perhaps this is why the rest of the film feels so overwhelmingly low budget. I've already mentioned the embarrassing gore effects, which are clearly some sort of Walmart brand CGI, but there's also the matter of casting.

Most FD films have some at least marginally famous actor hiding in the wings: An Ali Larter, a Seann William Scott, a Tony Todd. Heck, Devon Sawa was famous for like 45 seconds in the 90's. This movie features not a single person you've seen in any other film in your life, I guarantee it. In that way, it is reminiscent of some of the worst of the worst slasher movies of the 80's, full of nameless actors buried away by time. However, this is 2009. A brief moment of silence for the fizzling careers of these poor young men and women.

Oh no, it seems like I've forgotten to recap the plot at all. Let me rectify that: Race track. Moving on.

Mmmmm, race track.

I've been pretty harsh on this film, but there is some charm buried underneath the crust of bird droppings and dried blood. One scene in particular stands out that plays with our expectations based on years of watching these films. A woman in a beauty parlor is surrounded by a truly astounding array of broken machinery, slippery puddles, shoddy wiring, and the like. It seems like death is setting up an absurdly complex Rube Goldberg death trap, but after a few false alarms, the death is actually quite simple and abrupt. This isn't exactly groundbreaking, but it is the one time that the film feels playful and alive.

Another fun thing about the movie is that you can play the Heavyhanded Symbolism Game. I prefer the point-and-shout method, but it can be made into a drinking game if one is so inclined. Look for references to:

• The number 180 (the flight number from the original movie)
• McKinley (the high school/town from FD3)
• Clear Rivers (Ali Larter's character from the first two films)
• Lucky charms being instrumental in death
• Any reference to death, the devil, or fate (Destiny Towing, Salon Dante, race car 666, the coffee shop "Death by Caffeine.")

This is where the movie feels most at home in its franchise, as all these movies are chock full of foreshadowing and callbacks, kind of like an episode of Arrested Development except with less wit and more intestines.

Unfortunately, this film is so eager to hearken back to the old days that it forgets about the present. Side characters are lovingly given one character trait and no name (credits titles include "Mechanic," "Racist," "Racist's Wife," and, my personal favorite, "MILF."), and the film is egregiously short. In an already truncated 82 minute running time, a good six minutes of that are dedicated to the credits.

It's a surprise that a sequel ever got made for this heap of garbage, but if these are the dues we must pay to get a Final Destination film that 61% of critics actually liked, I will gladly pay them.

Body Count: 11 (The most of any film in the series, but it feels like much much less)
TL;DR: The film is cheap, tawdry, and goreless. It also lacks a sense of fun and acts more like a moving walkway by which you can access the next film in the franchise.
Rating: 4/10
Should I spend money on this DVD? There is a movie pack available of the first four FD films, which is totally worth it. But there is a special circle of Hell designated for individuals who bought this DVD standalone.
Word Count: 1101

Reviews In This Series

The Final Destination (Ellis, 2009)

Final Destination 5 (Quale, 2011)