A night you won't want to remember

In "Prom Night," Brittany Snow plays a teen who is confronted by a sadistic killer. (SUZANNE TENNER)

If you're a striving young actress in Hollywood, there are probably worse assignments than "Prom Night." Maybe whatever Hayden Christensen is up to at the moment. But do you think running around a hotel while some has-been hottie (sorry, Johnathon Schaech) tries to stab you and the other ladies in the cast with a hunting knife is going to get you fame? You'd be better off hoping Audrina comes down with something nasty so you can take her spot on "The Hills."

When Jamie Lee Curtis ran from a killer in 1980's "Prom Night," she was 22 and had a unique gift for belting out fear. She was the Beverly Sills of slasher flicks. That "Prom Night" was dumb, but it wasn't insulting in the way this remake is. No one seems to know what to do in this movie - unless it involves waiting for the studio's check to clear. (Even the ordinarily irresistible Idris Elba goes by-the-book in a thankless detective part.) There's no suspense or perversity. You don't care who lives or who dies - just please make it soon.

The Curtis version didn't make you feel cynical. You didn't want her knifed. You needed her to live - if only so she could go on to take that part in "Perfect" as the spandexy aerobics instructor who makes John Travolta sweat.

Twenty-eight years later things are only sort of different. Misogyny in the movies hasn't changed, just the way some starlets (courtesy, perhaps, of their agents or managers) succumb to it. Brittany Snow has Curtis's old part, and she's round and generic where Curtis was angular and womanly. Snow is also 22, yet she seems 14. Like most actors under 30, Snow and her costars, Jessica Stroup and Dana Davis, are nubile without ever being sexy. This seems like a career strategy meant to guard against the premature aging that Hollywood sexism causes. But it's hardly a way to become the next Bette Davis. Oh, who am I kidding? If Bette Davis were around now, she'd kill for a part in "Prom Night 2."

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.