Title	Prom Night (PG)
Credit	Screen Gems, Sony Pictures, Alliance Films
Media	Movie
Genre	Thriller, Horror, Slasher
Year	2008
Character Type	1 Yandere

Donna Keppel’s senior prom was supposed to be an amazing night. But everything soon turned awry when her ex-teacher escaped from prison.

SPOILERS AND PERSONAL OPINION

Prom Night is a 90 min long slasher film released in 2008. Although the film involves a killer running around stabbing almost everyone he sees, the violence and gore depicted were rather mild, enabling the film to keep to a PG rating. The story focuses on our main character Donna Keppel, whose prom night made a turn for the worse after her ex-teacher Richard Fenton escaped from prison and came after her.

The movie starts with Donna returning home to find her younger brother dead. Her father was also killed, and her mother was murdered right in front of her own eyes. The perpetrator was none other than Richard Fenton, her ex-biology teacher who had became obsessed with her and wanted to take her with him. The police came in time before he could succeed, and put him behind the bars.

Three years later, Donna still suffered from trauma due to the gruesome incident. Nevertheless, she tried her best to cope with it. With her supportive aunt, uncle, boyfriend, and friends, she was able to recover slowly.

The day of the prom night arrived. Donna attended the prom with her boyfriend and friends. Unbeknownst to her, Richard Fenton had already escaped from prison and infiltrated Pacific Grand Hotel, the prom venue. The police was soon notified of his disappearance and was immediately dispatched to protect Donna and capture Richard. They stationed themselves in the hotel and scanned for any suspicious activities. However, by the time they discovered Richard’s presence, it was too late. Richard had began stealthily killing anyone who stood in his way to reach Donna. The situation was so dire that the prom had to be cancelled abruptly and the attendees were forced to evacuate. During the event, Richard killed several of Donna’s friends, but Donna managed to escape unscathed. She retreated back to her home with her boyfriend accompanying her, feeling highly unsettled by the turn of events.

At home, she tried to go back to sleep, but soon found her boyfriend dead on the bed, with his throat freshly slit. Richard had managed to break into her home despite it having several policemen stationed outside. Before he can cause further harm, a police arrived, promptly shooting Richard dead. The movie ends.

Prom Night is one of the first thriller movie I watched when I was a teenager. Maybe my yando antenna was already tingling then, which explained why I was able to remember this movie from so long ago. I remember enjoying the movie with my friends. Rewatching it again as an adult, I must say, this movie is poorly done.

Our main character is a typical pretty blonde girl. She wasn’t memorable to me even though she was the lead. If anything, she took a backseat throughout the show. Her friend Lisa showed more personality than her, and Lisa was also the only character I remembered (except for Richard of course).

The thriller wasn’t as thrilling as I hoped, and Richard was a simple character with a simple role. He just kills people for the tiniest of reason, never mind that the murders could alarm people and thwart his Donna Kidnapping Scheme (because we know, the main reason he kills people is to fulfil his slasher role). Because of how predictable everything went, there was not much suspense or thriller. The only time things got a little tense was during the hide and seek scene between Lisa and Fenton. As if to make up for it, tons of pointless, irrelevant jump scares were added haphazardly into the show, which made the movie even worse than it already was.

Not much plot went on. It is really about this obsessed man going around killing people, and that’s it. It should be obvious that our yandere here is Richard Fenton, so I shall not attempt to hide it. It is not a spoiler. As the movie focuses heavily on its slasher theme, the yandere aspect is mainly used as a pretext for Fenton’s violence and not much else. As such, there was no backstory on how Fenton’s obsession and love for Donna had developed, and nothing much was known about him other than how he kept going around killing people in the name of love.

You must also not use too much brain cells when watching the movie, or you would have an even harder time enjoying it. Nothing made sense about how Fenton can slip by and commit so many murders so easily. During his murders, the loud screams by his victims all went unheard in a busy hotel. His clothes were never strained with a single drop of blood despite stabbing and slashing the victims at extremely close proximity. No blood trails were left behind after dragging the dead victims around. Best of all, Richard could magically appear anywhere and spook his victims, shifting and floating about everywhere undetected like a wizard. Heck, I would think I am watching a magical or supernatural movie with all this irrational, unscientific things going on.

Sad to say, rewatching it again wasn’t a good experience. I have forgotten, but I probably had fun the first time because I was watching the show with my friends and we could diss it together. The yandere content was quite little, very underdeveloped, and not worth sitting through 90 mins of mindless slasher and random jump scares. There is not many yandere movies out here, so it is really quite unfortunate that this movie was not well done and I cannot recommend it to you.

CHARACTER SPOILERS