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I am only giving this movie five points because it contains a fair amount of footage of L.A. circa 1983. It also features some of the most awkward dialogue ever penned for the screen, especially the exchanges involving adults. I mean, Frederic Forrest must have been so annoyed with his agent once he started shooting his dreadful scenes. It also would have been nice for at least one of the Valley girls to talk like a real Valley girl--I can understand not being able to find an established young actress who could do a spot-on Valley girl accent, but if you're going to cast a bunch of nobodies with limited acting ability, why not just drive over the Valley and take your pick? That's plain old lazy. And--here comes the spoiler--the Julie Richman character's sudden change of heart about Randy makes no sense, given how hot and heavy they were, and the climactic prom scene is just too silly for words.

This is hands down one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life, and I've seen a boatload of lousy movies. Both the dialog and plotting are hackneyed beyond description--not one original idea or twist, and not a single exchange that feels genuine. It's the kind of childishly obvious genre rehash in which you can tell who's going to be killed just by the relative one-dimensionality of their characters. Matthew Fox, who clearly dropped his body fat to zero for this film, will one day look back and regret all those months he went without a decent meal, because a) the movie is terrible, and b) his portrayal of a psychotic killer is ultimately a study in cliché. Ed Burns furrows his brow convincingly enough, but his easygoing charm has nowhere to go here. Likewise John McGinley, whose neurotic fatalism seems plucked from an entirely different and more lighthearted police procedural being filmed down the street. And then there's Tyler Perry, who expends so much energy in a futile attempt to project faux masculinity and criminological gravitas that he apparently has nothing left for tangential stuff like changing his facial expression once in a while. Perry can thank his lucky stars he's already a Hollywood fixture, because If this were his first movie, he'd never get another offer--truly, he's that bad.