Donna Keppel is going to need a lot of therapy. Three years ago a marginally obsessed teacher wiped out her family. The nightmares of hiding under the bed as he hacked up her mother haven't exactly faded.

And now, disturbed as ever, he's back in town. Conveniently having chosen the weekend of her prom to fly the coop, he uses a cunning disguise (a peaked cap) to infiltrate the bash and pick off her friends.

Hailed as a psychological thriller like 'Silence Of The Lambs' and 'Se7en' by director Nelson McCormick, the slick and soulless 'Prom Night' belies his TV background instead. "There's an architecture to creating scares," he reveals in one of the documentaries, seemingly unaware that he's just, rightfully, called his film debut an endless parade of cliches.

Relying on the same techniques that bored Hitchcock 50 years ago ? sudden movements in front of the camera, slow panning shots of empty rooms, wobbly point of view angles ? his remake of an obscure '80s Canadian horror is all teenagers screaming, cupboard doors opening and ? for someone supposedly based on Ted Bundy ? a pretty inept killer.

"Metaphorically, proms are about the death of innocence, the death of youth," McCormick rambles elsewhere. His overly sanitised PG-rated film, about as thrilling as a trip to the dry cleaners, marks the death of suspense.