Let me get it all out of the way first: Hayden Panettiere (Heroes) and Nikki Reed (Twilight, but don’t hold it against her. The girl can act and write) are set to star in Downer’s Grove. Bret Easton Ellis has written the script based on the novel by Michael Hornburg and Prom Night’s Nelson McCormick will direct. The story follows Panettiere as a high school senior in a Chicago suburban school where every year a senior is murdered. Naturally, Panettiere thinks she will be the next victim.
Here’s the deal: What a self righteous bitch. Not Panettiere, of course, but the character she will be playing. Why should she think she’ll be next? Granted the previous deaths could happen in a pattern (they’re all bizarre deaths), but what pattern could it be that it would not make the character seem like a stuck up bitch? It happened to the most popular? The blond girl? The smartest? And if there is no pattern and it just happens at random, why would you try to run from that? Trying to avoid something random happening inevitably leads to something random killing you. I’m all for thrillers and horror films, but come on, you have to make them smart. Don’t let it be the same old popular blond running away from something. Challenge us, make us think. Turn the rules on their heads. Make her be truly terrified and not for some inane reason, like she’s third in her class and had English second period… which all the other victims were too! Or, failing that, make her get naked.
I’m a simple man like that.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
