Running Time: 1 hour, 46 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Craig Gillespie
Quick Impressions:
I’ve never seen the original Fright Night. I’m very surprised we didn’t think of showing an edited version to my stepson back when he was five and going through a monster movie phase, but somehow I managed to go through life knowing only the title of Fright Night and nothing about the movie’s plot at all.
I will say, though, that the remake (scripted by Marti Noxon of Buffy fame) must be faithful to the original at least in spirit because I felt like I was watching an 80s teen comedy the entire time—and that’s not a bad thing. Fright Night was a lot of fun. Sadly, the amount of gore means that my eight-year-old stepson definitely cannot watch it. (It is rated R, after all.) Too bad! He would have liked it. And I’m not trying to insult the movie by suggesting that. On the contrary, I mean that the characters are engaging and the story does not rely very heavily on cheesy special effects. (It uses some, but, in my opinion, succeeds in spite of them.)
The Good:
Setting the story in Las Vegas was a brilliant idea. I thought that choice made a lot of sense and made the story considerably more plausible than it would have been otherwise.
And I actually liked the use of 3D in this movie. Instead of being gimmicky and having random stuff jump out at the audience (though there were a few moments of that), the 3D was used to add depth to the scene. I actually loved the way they did the main title, and I liked to look down on the neighborhood from above. It was like an evil version of Mr. Rogers. (You know, the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.)
The entire cast was great—from an acting point of view. (From an attracting teenagers to your movie point of view, I’m not sure it was so great, but more on that later.) The characters were interesting, some more than others. Nobody in this film gave a bad performance, and some of them were really fantastic.
I particularly liked David Tennant as Peter Vincent, not only the funniest person in the movie but also the most interesting by far. You’d think the vampire next door would be interesting, and Colin Farrell does a fantastic job of portraying him with a brooding, taunting intensity, but I actually think the gory special effects make his character fail to realize his full skin-crawling potential.
Another character I loved was Charlie’s girlfriend, Amy, played by Imogen Poots. She seemed set up to be shallow, but then she didn’t turn out to be, perhaps the one shocking element of the entire movie.
Best Joke:
Peter Vincent delivers a line more amusing than it should be as he follows Charlie through the hole in the floor. Vincent was the movie’s strongest character, most interesting because of his slowly-revealed backstory. He was both the most haunted and the most amusing. If the entire film would have found the balance mastered by that character, it would have been better for it.
Best Action Sequence:
The chase scene on the highway is riveting and rewarding, mainly because Charlie’s mother and girlfriend finally see that he isn’t crazy. Also enhancing a scene inside a car with 3D is not a bad idea.
Best Scene:
Two scenes left an impression. The moment when Peter Vincent’s blood drips onto the floor of the vampire’s lair and seemingly sets something else in motion appealed to my hunger for creepiness. Another (somewhat) chilling moment comes when Jerry the vampire finishes his date while Charlie looks on through a crack in the door. And well, to be fair, Ed’s amusingly narrated exploration of Adam’s house works pretty well, too.
Best Surprise:
As I’ve said, the biggest surprise in the movie for me was that Amy turned out to be a realistic and complex character who actually cared deeply about Charlie. I liked her. More teenagers in movies like this should have girlfriends like that.
Also (as someone who’s never seen the original and had no idea what was coming), I was immensely relieved that the entire movie wasn’t set in and around Charlie’s house as he continued to have an increasingly conspicuous breakdown while spying on the guy next door. So many movies follow that formula, and the scenario was beginning to grate on my nerves when it finally ended, fortunately much sooner than I expected.
Best Scene Visually:
I’ve already said that I liked the main title scene during the opening credits, but I really liked it, so I’m going to mention it again here.
The Performances:
Colin Farrell makes a really good vampire, and I don’t feel ashamed of saying that I find it very possible that he really is a vampire. Farrell conveys intensity very well. He manages that in every role, so this was really good casting. He does seem delightfully creepy as he lurks around Charlie’s kitchen door, angling for an invitation. I wish he hadn’t abandoned subtle creep mode and launched into movie monster make-up mode so quickly, but then again, we had to get out of that house somehow.
David Tennant is the best part of the movie as Peter Vincent, the character with the most depth and the most pizazz. Tennant is the one thing about the movie that sparkles, the one character who leaps off the screen and sticks with you for a while after you leave the theater.
I find Anton Yelchin easy to like. (I’m not convinced that most teenagers like him, but I do.) He’s a talented actor and thanks to his build, he’ll probably be able to play teenager longer than Ralph Macchio. He was great as Charlie, a sympathetic if flawed protagonist.
Christopher Mintz-Plasse gives a very similar performance in every movie, which seems to be making him into a huge superstar, so far be it from me to offer criticism. I loved him as McLovin in Superbad, and he’s just what you’d expect as Charlie’s resentful, neglected, vampire-hunting, former-best-friend, Ed.
Toni Collette is great, too, as Charlie’s single mom, a realtor who has the fortunate quirk of keeping lots and lots and lots and lots of signs on hand at all times. Collette doesn’t have a huge part, but she makes the most of every line and moment.
I loved Imogen Poots as Charlie’s popular girlfriend Amy. The character is wonderful (increasingly so), and Poots is lovely and convincing. (It’s only just dawning on me now that Marti Noxon may have a penchant for writing about amazingly sympathetic girlfriends trapped in astonishingly horrible situations. As I was watching the movie, I didn’t realize that she’d written the screenplay.) Initially, I thought Amy might be shallow and awful, but she proved me wrong, and Poots played her well.
The two popular guys Charlie hangs around with occupied my thoughts a great deal of the time. Right away, I recognized Reid Ewing, who plays Hayley’s boyfriend Dylan on TV’s Modern Family. But that other kid with him…Finally, during their last scene in the movie, I realized, Oh! That’s what it is! He just looks like James Franco. So I guess he’s nobody. But as it turns out, he is somebody. He’s James Franco’s brother, Dave Franco. Those guys both did a good job and were a pleasure to watch.
(And while I’m only the subject of famous people and their siblings, Peter Vincent’s companion, Ginger, whom I dismissed as a Sofia Vergara clone, is actually Sofia Vergara’s sister, Sandra. I feel kind of guilty about that now because she actually gave a lovely performance, but I was bothered by how much she looked and sounded like Sofia Vergara. But, after all, she can’t help being her sister, and she was very funny as the fiery Ginger.)
And Emily Montague had one very nice moment as the neighbor across the street, Doris.
The Negatives:
One point of the plot that I did not understand: Why on earth was that vampire so determined to go out of his way to destroy Charlie in such an over-the-top and theatrical manner? Why would he have been scared of Charlie at all or even considered him a real threat? By attacking Charlie and his family, Jerry only lent credence to the teen’s otherwise ludicrously unbelievable stories. Any rational authority figure (the police, the government, the principal, the neighborhood association) would have assumed that Charlie was on drugs or having some kind of mental breakdown (maybe the onset of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia). Everybody would have just assumed Charlie was lying or wrong about Jerry. And Jerry seemed to know that. Why didn’t he just kill Charlie in the middle of the night?
Or better yet, why didn’t he just leave him alone and let him stew in his own paranoia, trapped in his house, a prisoner of his fear? Granted, in order for the movie to retain my interest, Charlie had to get out of that house. But I don’t think the script really provided an adequate motivation for Jerry to force him out. Maybe some retooling was needed there.
Also, I know the movie is going for humor more than horror, and that’s a good thing because it’s not scary at all.
Let me repeat. It is not scary.
At all.
This movie never scared me once, and this is coming from someone who closed her eyes for the entire duration of one of the previews because the opening scene seemed so disturbing. That said, I will admit that it would have scared my eight-year-old stepson. A lot. And that is why children are not allowed to see movies that are rated R.
But the thing is, nothing that surprising happens. Nothing makes you jump. The gory scenes are gross (and would come back as nightmares to frighten a child), but they’re not scary. They’re more like yucky. And despite the potential of the situation, there’s not much psychological terror or suspense because the film owns up to the fact that Colin Farrell is a vampire so early on. We get absolute confirmation so painfully soon. Hints would definitely have been scarier. Granted, that wouldn’t have been as funny, but here’s the thing…
The movie is not that funny, either. More of the humor is situational than anything else. The situation is absurd. Some of the dialogue is funny—but not enough of it to make you laugh out loud or want to quote the movie for weeks and annoy everyone around you. I will say that David Tennant has some great lines and makes the most of them. He’s definitely both the most humorous and most haunted character. He really seems like someone who’s in a horror movie. The rest of them appear to be either in a teen comedy or a relationship drama starring Toni Collette.
I think problem is, if the film were scarier, the absurdity of some moments might seem much funnier. And vice-versa. But that’s a difficult balance to strike. Scream does it. Scream is both funny and scary (at least the first time you see it). Fright Night is scarier if you’re a kid, and funnier if you’re an adult. And by that I mean only children will be afraid, and you have to be a grown-up to reap the full benefits of the humor. And that’s not a recipe for the most memorable film of the summer.
I can also understand why the film’s not doing so well at the Box Office. Who exactly is the target audience? Fans of the original Fright Night, Dr. Who fans, possibly Buffy fans, Colin Farrell fans, maybe even some Anton Yelchin fans because of Star Trek and all his little off-beat dramas—all of these people are likely to be in their thirties and not particularly inclined to pay 3D prices to see what’s marketed as a teen thriller.
Most teens can’t see it either because it’s rated R, but that’s just as well because they probably don’t want to see it. Christopher Mintz-Plasse has a lot of young fans, but he’s not even in most of the previews, and besides, he’s been a high school student without aging for so long that I’m starting to believe that he’s a vampire!
Plus, when you release a movie like this at the end of August, you just make it seem not good enough to get a better release date, and that keeps people away, too! The bottom line is, you don’t cringe and groan and think, What? That makes no sense! as the action unfolds on screen. Fright Night is not a bad movie. It’s very far from being a bad movie. The catch is, though, it’s not a particularly good movie, either. It’s fun to watch, but not really that memorable (though I would not be surprised if in time it proves to be accommodatingly re-watchable at home on DVD).
Overall:
I liked Fright Night. The story is strong and compelling (although the concept of living next door to a vampire was probably a tad bit more absurdly shocking back in 1985). The performances are great. The script is solid. And the 3D looks good, too.
I say, go. Just don’t expect more than the movie can deliver. It’s a well-made movie but not the most exciting you’ll see this summer. I wish it had been a little less gory with a more kid-friendly rating because I know that my stepson would have loved watching a more PG-range version. When it comes out on DVD, though, I will probably buy it because I’ll bet it’s one of those movies you can re-watch again and again without getting sick of it.