It has been almost 30 years since Jamie Lee Curtis shrieked her way through the tacky magnificence of the original “Prom Night,” made at a time when the filleting of young girls was more of a cinematic novelty.

Ms. Curtis (who nowadays seems to prefer tasteful public disrobing to shrieking) would probably be insulted to learn from the press notes of this new film that it has been reimagined for a “more sophisticated audience.” (Because that’s just what you hope for in a slasher-movie audience: sophistication.) To that end, Ms. Curtis’s award-worthy screams have been replaced by Brittany Snow’s generic whimpers as Donna, sole survivor of a stalker who killed her family three years earlier and who has chosen the night of her senior prom to finish the job.

For a film about erotomania, “Prom Night” is a curiously flaccid affair, dampened by a risible villain (Johnathon Schaech) and a bloodless script that channels all its tension into the choosing of the prom king and queen. Demonstrating little except the uselessness of a restraining order against a loony-tunes admirer, the movie offers less gore than the average Band-Aid commercial and fewer scares than the elimination episodes of “Dancing With the Stars.” But then, maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough.

“Prom Night” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It has the usual scary teenage makeup and lesbian physical education teacher.