Fright Night is a remake of the 1980s vampire movie (also called Fright Night) and I really want to review it on its own merits, which is hard to do because I have both seen and thoroughly enjoy the original. It's obvious where the remake was inspired by the original and where it decided it wanted to do its own thing. Really, every remake aspires to do that but few pull it off the way Fright Night does.
Jerry The Vampire has moved in next door to Charlie Brewster and his mom. Charlie's nerdy friend Evil Ed tries to warn Charlie of the danger but Charlie doesn't believe him. At first. When Jerry starts blatantly being a vampire, though, Charlie takes the situation seriously and tries to enlist the help of glitzy Vegas magician Peter Vincent who claims to be a vampire expert.
Parts of the movie go on a bit too long (the car chase, for instance) and there's a bit of useless "cool kids versus nerds" bullshit near the beginning that doesn't need to be there. ("Cool kids versus nerds" is, in my experience, not a thing that exists in real life. When I was in high school everyone just hung out with their friends and didn't care enough one way or the other about people they didn't hang out with to have conflict with them.)
Colin Farrell makes a very good Jerry The Vampire. I'd be hard pressed to decide whether I like him or Chris Sarandon better, honestly, because they both perfectly nail the thing that makes vampires so fascinating to me.
My brother was saying a few weeks ago that vampires are not scary and that's why Twilight is successful; people like the romance of vampires, nobody is scared of them. I don't feel that's entirely true. At least, I feel like it's a broad generalization.
I agree that vampires are not scary, but romantic vampires are boring, defanged pussies as far as I'm concerned. I fucking hate them. They're dull. I don't care about their damn feelings.
Vampires are only interesting if they're soulless monsters. They can be attractive and all that (movies have guaranteed that vampires will always be the sexy monsters), but the second you give them souls or romantic yearnings, everything that's interesting about them flies out the window and we're stuck in Defanged Pussyville.
That's actually the one thing about the movie Bram Stoker's Dracula I don't like; they got Gary fucking Oldman as Count fucking Dracula and they threw in all that "I have crossed oceans of time to find you" bullshit. Dracula was not in love with Mina, damn it! I just reread the book and there is no romance in it (in spite of all the marriage), especially not between Dracula and ... well, anybody. (Sure, there's sexual symbolism, but that's not romance; it's obvious Dracula wasn't in love with these women. He was just hungry.)
Anyway, sorry, sidebar. Back to the topic at hand.
Christopher Sarandon (who has a cameo in the new version, by the way, which made me applaud) was a fantastic choice for Jerry The Vampire back in the '80s because he was simultaneously repulsive and fascinating. You didn't necessarily want to be looking at him, but you couldn't stop. It's that thrall thing vampires do, it's how they seduce their victims. And Colin Farrell has that same effect in the new version of Fright Night. He pulls it off beautifully. (According to an article in Rue Morgue he was a big fan of the original and it took some convincing to get him to sign on for the remake. I'm glad he did it.)
The entire core cast was great, even though it did seem like David Tennant's Peter Vincent was really just his best Russell Brand impression. I'll accept it, though, because he was thoroughly entertaining.
So, while Fright Night did seem longer than it was, it was quite entertaining and well worth the twelve dollars. It had some problems, sure (the obvious CGI blood, the obvious "we're filmed in 3-D" shots, the line "Welcome to Fright Night ... for real" which made me roll my eyes so far I could see the part of my brain that thought it was corny) but I'll still probably want to own it when it comes out on video.
Especially if they package it with the original.
End of line.
-Sally
7 comments:
Nice Review! The tone may be all over the place, but it still has a lot of fun to it with blood, guts, and gore flying at you with good performances from the cast, especially Farrell who seems like he's just having a ball with this role. Check out my review when you can!
I almost couldn't believe Colin Farrell was in this film. It just seemed a strange choice to me. But then I thought back on what he's done and he's not afraid to take chances. And I think he's one of the more talented actors out there.
Glad to hear everyone is liking this movie so much. Everything I've read so far is positive.
Dan, your review was nice as well! If you haven't seen the original, I do recommend it. It's maybe a bit corny but Tom Holland's a great director and it singlemoviedly revived vampire movies (which were pretty much considered a dead art form in the '80s.)
Darley, Colin Farrell is freaking fantastic. I think the only other movie I've seen him in is In Bruges, but based on that and Fright Night I've decided I like the guy.
don't forget his very brief bit in the imaginarium of dr. parnasus.
proffy
Yeah, that too! And he's in Horrible Bosses, which I'd totally forgotten about until right now.
Why are her fucking pants off?
Hahaha!!! Oh, I'll *tell* you why...
P.S. I really hope you're Rebekah and not some random stranger who somehow knew about that conversation.
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