Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil

Father Colin

**I wish someone would have delivered me from this snoozefest.** I wasn't expecting a lot from this, but it still managed to disappoint me a little bit. Slasher flicks are known for being very simple and unpretentious movies that mostly offer entertainment and gruesome kills, which "Prom Night IV" mostly fails to provide. In "Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil", two young couples decide to go on a romantic double date, after skipping their prom, for which they head up to a big secluded house that belongs to one of the boys in the group. There, they are chased by an insane former priest, Father Jonas, who has recently escaped from where he was being kept for 30 years. My biggest problem with "Prom Night IV" is that the butchery takes a long time to happen and this is a mistake in a slasher flick. Let's see, for the first ten minutes (or so), we see Father Jonas, the bad guy. He really is an interesting character, with his intense gaze and his over-the-top demeanor. Later, we are introduced to the young characters, who, clearly, are going to be stalked by the aforementioned killer. During the second half an hour, the youngsters go into the house for their romantic getaway, where we see them getting intimate and, eventually, realizing that someone is lurking around. The kills are excessively delayed and end up happening after more than 50 minutes have passed and that's just a lot of time. So, the way I see it, "Prom Night IV" is not even that fun, which is something that a slasher flick should always be. They can be stupid, but the carnage should begin early. The only potentially interesting aspect of this movie was never fully developed and it was barely even displayed during the first minutes. At some point, Father Jonas, the killer, begins to mumble something, like, 'Don't touch him, not there, he's too young...', which clearly idicates that Jonas was abused as a child. It is also heavily implied that Father Jonas was a homosexual, considering that he kisses two men before attacking them. I can only assume that the priest was dealing with an inner conflict, since homosexuality is heavily disapproved by the Catholic church, which eventually resulted in a state of self-hatred and aversion towards sex, as a result of the abuse that he presumably endured as a child. Too bad this was only merely even hinted. At some point, another character explains that Father Jonas was evil because he was possessed, so, in the end, it is not exactly clear if he was deranged due to his traumas or if he was, in fact possessed. Perhaps both things? I don't think the writers even bothered with all these issues, to be honest. Father Jonas actually appears to look exactly the same age throughout the course of... 30 years! If we go by the idea that he was possessed, this could explain why he never aged (either that or he uses a very effective anti-aging treatment). Though I personally found it a little bit slow, "Prom Night IV" is not really a mess. The truth is that this movie has a good production value and plot-wise, it actually ticks all the boxes of a slasher flick. As for the acting, it is pretty decent for the most part. Nicole de Boer and Joy Tanner are very likeable, especially the latter one, who plays an irreverent catholic school girl (who looked like she was in her twenties, but that's okay). Then, of course, we have the kills. The body count is perhaps a little bit too modest for a slasher and the kills are just plain, but they're there. In the end, "Prom Night IV" is just one of those movies that don't really stay with you in any way, but it would be unfair to label them as "unwatchable"