To celebrate Halloween Live for Films is having a horror movie review each night in the 31 Days of Horror. You can see last years 31 days here. You can be involved by sending me your review of a horror film – new, old, good, bad, depressing, funny, disgusting, psychological. As long as it can be classed as a horror then you can send it over to me at phil@liveforfilms.com
Click here to see all the reviews for 2011′s 31 Days of Horror.
Today Jackie of Rogue Shark reviews the new version of Fright Night.
You could be forgiven for thinking that you’ve stepped into a time warp at the cinema of late, with remakes of 80s movies popping up all over the place. This is not unusual when you think about it. Each generation has what it considers to be its own classic movies, Hollywood likes to pick through these and remake or reboot a few knowing they will have a guaranteed audience, nostalgic for the films of their youth. It just so happens it’s time to pick over the cannon of 80s movies, after all it’s hard for Hollywood to come up with new ideas so why not look to the past?! I have no doubt that in 5 or 6 years time it will be the kids of the 90s who will witness some of their own beloved movies being cherry picked for a remake.
Nostalgia is a powerful weapon in any medium, we all enjoy talking about the things that meant so much to us when we were young. We love to look back with the obligatory rose tinted specs and say the things that we did, read, or saw were the absolute best, it’s human nature. Hollywood is quite canny really, why wait around for a new idea when you can bring an old one back to life with a few minor changes.
And so we come to Fright Night a remake of the “not too bad” 80s movie of the same name. The original had a certain charm about it with its 80s idea of sexy, v-neck sweater wearing vamp, young horror movie fan and its dried up Van Helsingesque ex-actor and now late night Horror show presenter. The premise is a simple yet clever one, young horror fan Charley Brewster discovers his new neighbour is a vampire, tries to convince family and friends of this, no one believes him so he has to sort the problem alone. Having viewed it recently it does seem a little dated (as 80s movies often do) with it’s cheesey lines, synthesiser soundtrack, rubbery bat effects and homoerotic undertones. But for all that it must have had something as the new Fright Night does not stray too far from the characters and plot ideas of the original. Director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) and writer Marti Noxon (Buffy) have not changed much at all, although one noticable difference is the lack of homoerotic element. It’s rather interesting to see that they kept the names of all the characters from the original movie.
Colin Farrell takes on the vamp role as the heartless, predatory Jerry Dandridge previously played by Chris Sarandon (who incidentally gets a nod with a small cameo) and does a fine job. He has that whole sexy, dangerous thing going on so one would imagine it wasn’t too much of a stretch for him. (Incidentally, please do look out for a scene where Farrell comes out from under a car, and tell me he doesn’t look like John Travolta!). The setting is relocated to a tiny suburb in the Nevada desert providing an ideal place for a vampire to live and a decent excuse as to why he “works” at night. The Charlie Brewster role goes to Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) who does a better job than his predecessor, with a more fleshed out character. British actress Imogen Poots is Charlie’s girlfriend Amy and Toni Collette is thankfully a bit more realistic as Charlie’s Mum Jane Brewster. Tennant is excellent as the Russell Brandesque Peter Vincent, no longer a has been actor, Peter is given a modern twist as a flamboyant Las Vegas magician. Although his flamboyant nature is shown to be a bit of a sham in a clever “de-robing” scene. The surprise here is Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Charlie’s geeky and rejected old friend Ed. He is sweetly pathetic in his vain attempts to get Charlie to see the truth about his neighbour, and is on the money with his description, “He’s not brooding, or lovesick, he’s the fucking shark from Jaws.” Highlighting a major difference in the movies as Chris Sarandon’s Jerry is most definitely lovesick for Charlie’s girlfriend Amy who is the double for his old love. Farrell’s Jerry is merely a soulless killing machine and is all the more dangerous for it.
The whole thing moves along at a pace and the horror elements are actually quite scary. What lets the movie down is the 3D element. Given the choice I will always go for the 2D version of a movie, unfortunately this time there was no choice and so I had to don the old uncomfortable 3D specs. As you can imagine, as a vampire movie Fright Night is already pretty dimly lit, with the addition of 3D specs it was virtually impossible to see what was going on in certain scenes. Personally I find it very difficult to focus on action scenes in 3D, something about the movement makes it all a big blur, so the spurting blood sequences were wasted on me and were quite frankly surplus to requirements. Having seen a few 3D movies now it’s become clear that the only thing 3D is good for is scenes where objects float around slowly, as proven in Fright Night with an effective section involving burning embers. But I ask you, is it worth the pain of wearing the glasses and the constant adjusting for one good scene? I think not. I can quite confidently say that Fright Night would be a better movie without it.
Fright Night highlights a couple of current problems with the movie industry, its lacklustre attempt to find new and exciting projects and its relentless yet futile promotion of 3D. Still, for all that its a pretty decent evenings entertainment and a lot of fun, just see it in 2D if you can.
