Prom Night

The 2008 production of slasher film Prom Night is a film starts out with a young fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl named Donna Keppel being dropped off at home by her close friends mother after going to the movie theatre. As Donna takes her coat off and begins to look for her family, she realizes no one is responding to her, so she slowly moves through the house to find her brother dead on his bedroom floor and a man chases her mother into the dead boys' room and kills

her because she will not reveal Donna's real location. As Donna witnesses her mothers murder from under her brothers bed she sees the murderer, her former high school teacher, Richard Fenton. Fenton was a teacher of Donna's who became obsessed with her and was then fire by the school once this news came to light. But that didn't stop him, he continued to stalk Donna until her family placed a restraining order on him, which made him freak out and eventually kill her family to find her so they could be together. After her family was killed, Donna was able to ID Fenton as the killer and sent him away, but there was a catch. While the police officers were certain that Richard Fenton would be killed for his crime, Fenton was instead sent to a maximum security hospital for being deemed insane.

Incredibly, after all that Donna went through, three years later she still has nightmares and goes to therapy, but she is able to live a somewhat normal life. She's got her friends, Claire and Lisa, her boyfriend Bobby, as well as her aunt and uncle standing right by her side as she gets ready to attend her senior prom. Life couldn't be better for her right now, she's attending her senior prom with her boyfriend and they along with her friends, have paid for a suite at the hotel where the prom is happening. But slowly as the night goes on, everything does downhill, Richard Fenton kills another inmate at his facility and escapes 3 days before prom and then kills a man by the name of Howard K. Ramsey in order to steal his car, clothing, and identity to check into the same hotel, on the same floor right down the hall from Donna and her friends. As the movie progresses, first Fenton kills a hotel maid named Maria to get a master key, then Claire, followed by Claire is her boyfriend Michael, then kills another hotel staff member, Simms, who's looking for Maria, and his last murder in the hotel is Lisa, before the police realize he's in the building and pull the fire alarm to evacuate.

After the hotel is evacuated and Donna is found, she and Bobby are taken back to her aunt and uncles home to watched over by patrol officers while the manhunt continues back at the hotel. Detective Winn, who arrested Fenton the first time is searching the suite and realizes that Richard Fenton walked right past him disquised as the hotel staff member Simms, and calls over to Detective Nash at the house to be on the lookout. But by the time that Winn arrives at Donna's home, Detective Nash is dead, so Winn enters the home to find Fenton. In the meantime, Donna wakes up from a nightmare, is comforted by Bobby, and goes to use the bathroom but by the time she comes back and lays down next to Bobby and begins to thank his for everything he's done, she realizes somethings not right as Bobby isn't responding and she then figures out Bobby was murdered. She hides in her closet when she believes Fenton is coming down the hall, once she sees it is Detective Winn and attempts to leave the closet, Fenton grabs her from behind and covers her mouth to keep her from screaming. As Fenton is holding Donna hostage in the closet, Winn goes running to Donna's aunt and uncles room after hearing her aunt scream, only to find Officer Hicks dead outside of their bedroom window. While Winn is distracted, Donna manages to escape Fenton's grasp and fight him off until Winn returns and shoots Fenton seven times in the chest. Leaving Fenton dead and Donna broken up inside over the loss of her friends and lover.

It took a little bit to find a piece of the movie that really stood out to me in terms of gender, but I didn't want to choose something obvious. What I came up with started as order but turned into something bigger, whether or not the murder happened on camera. A first I didn't really think anything of it when I saw her father already dead on the floor in front of the couch and her brother dead on his bedroom floor, and Donna had to watch her mother die. But then it became a trend, for the most part. All of the females that died in the movie, died on camera, whereas out of the ten men killed in this film, only four died on camera, the other six men were shown to the audience after they were killed. Also, another observation I made was that when some of women were killed, it was drawn out and they were running around screaming, but the men, it was just a shocked look on their face followed by them being killed. An example of this is Lisa versus Michael. While Lisa ran down the steps and struggled with Fenton multiple times on the construction floor and almost escaped by hiding until Fenton was out of sight, she eventually came out of hiding and was caught and killed by Fenton. But Michael was caught off guard by Richard Fenton, because he thought Fenton was his girlfriend Claire, who had already been killed without Michael's knowledge, was basically just stabbed, there wasn't much to it.

Other than these two aspects, they only other gender related aspect I saw in this movie, was how controlling and careless Michael was made out to be. He and Claire begin to argue at prom and it's because he doesn't want Claire to leave for college. Which is understandable in the sense that he will miss her, but then Claire goes to Donna with PMS issues and Donna attempts to help her and leaves Claire in the suite alone for a bit, where she eventually dies. Before Michael heads up to the suite he talks to Donna and Bobby about Claire and makes a comment that she would never be able to breakup with him, make the insinuation that he is a person that Claire could never live without. Whereas the other two boys are seen as loving boyfriends to Lisa and Donna, Michael is made out to be in a nothing but problematic relationship with Claire. Personally, I don't think there was much overdramatic, obvious gender being represented in this film, and it made it better.

While some say this isn't as good as the 1980 production of Prom Night, I would encourage you to check it out. To read more information about this movie and what it entails check it out here.