Prompt (2025) | Review
- Casey Kelderman
- Dec 13
- 4 min read
The year is 1973. A 22 year old, 2nd generation filmmaker by the name of Charles Band has just produced and directed his first feature length film, Last Foxtrot in Burbank, an erotic parody of the Marlon Brando lead film Last Tango in Paris. This long considered “lost” debut feature is most notable for being edited by a young John Carpenter, who would of course go on to carve his own legacy with classics such as Halloween (1978) and The Thing (1982). The reason I bring this debut feature up when talking about Band’s latest, Prompt, is to say that Charles Band’s sensibilities as a director, even more-so as a producer, have not changed in over 50 years.
Band’s career has always been as a producer a decade ahead of his time. Take for example, his early collaboration with Carpenter in Last Foxtrot in Burbank. Just 5 years after the release of Carpenter’s original Halloween film, Band through his Wizard Video label would go on to produce a video game based on the 1978 film for the Atari 2600. Notable for being one of the first movies adapted to a video game format, something that has become a norm in the decades to come. Fast forward to 1989 and the release of Band’s most notable film, Puppet Master, straight to video on his newly established Full Moon Entertainment label under Paramount Pictures. This model would be a trendsetter for establishments such as mom and pop video stores and nationwide companies like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. Can you see the trend that is happening here? Band is always a decade early, and a dollar short of what the big Hollywood studios would go on to profit from such as video games, video rentals, and even streaming.
The biggest talking point in the film industry in the 2020’s has been the incorporation of artificial intelligence to the filmmaking process. Unions have gone on strike over the use of AI to replace actors, critics have lambasted the use of AI generated images in film, all while studioheads have praised the use of AI as the “future of the industry”. All this to say, this review won’t be a takedown or an approval of how AI has been, and will be, used in the filmmaking process. It’s a tool like anything else, but no matter how advanced the technology becomes nothing can replace the human condition. Now, what does all of this have to do with Charles Band’s latest film in his filmography, aka Full Moon No. 413, Prompt.
Taylor is an AI advertising consultant who works with clients to create AI generated advertising, including Full Moon itself for its Fortune Teller device (available now at fullmoonhorror.com)! Taylor uses her AI expertise to explore her craziest sexual fantasies, okay they’re not too crazy as they’re mostly just women making out in showers or a hot tub. During these artificial fantasy explorations, a mysterious man simply known as Computer Man appears before Taylor sparking her sexual and emotional desires to discover how this mystery man has infiltrated her AI programming.
Prompt is written by J.P. Talbot (an obvious pseudonym for someone in Full Moon’s rogues gallery of screenwriters), and produced and directed by Charles Band. Taylor is played by adult film actress Lilly Bell, who has an on screen presence not too dissimilar to that of late-90’s Full Moon staple, Jacqueline Lovell. Like Lovell, Bell is that classic blonde bombshell unafraid to give it all, and show it all, on screen. Bell has a number mAIsterbation scenes, and even a softcore scene with fellow adult film star Elliot Woods, where her history in adult film is put to task. All of that aside, Bell is more than comfortable in front of the camera and more than held her own as the lead in this AI-rotic thriller.
One thing that always stands out to me when it comes to modern Full Moon Features amongst the plethora of low budget indie horror flicks is just how well everything is shot and looks on camera. The films never look low budget, and Band always knows how to work with his cast to get the most from them. There are only a handful of human actors in the film, with really only Bell and Woods sharing screentime together, a highlight of the film for sure.
All of the AI generated prompts from the character of Taylor are actual sexually explicit generative AI. Each one has humanistic features (two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth) but all still have that uncanny valley quality. Especially when it comes to the nudity and placement of certain body parts. That being said, it never felt exploitative in a bad way, more-so it fit the narrative of the story. Speaking of narrative. There isn’t much in the way of an actual story, but there are nuggets of an idea where it’s clear Band is trying to say SOMETHING about AI, whether or not it succeeds in saying anything can be up to audience interpretation.
Prompt is one of those movies that I am unsure will find an audience outside of Full Moon completists – heck even Full Moon completists might skip this one because of the lack of tiny terrors or big concepts – but I am not sure if that is fair. It’s a movie that deserves a look, even out of pure curiosity. While most of the runtime is spent watching softcore porn scenes that push the line of even being softcore (looking at you AI generated boner), underneath that is the underlying message of AI, what’s real and what is fantasy, and where will AI fall into our everyday lives, even behind closed doors. As stated before, Charles Band has always been a decade ahead of the film industry as a whole, and could he be ahead of the curve when it comes to the use of AI in film? I guess only time will tell.