FRIGHT NIGHT - REVIEW


Good vampire movies are hard to come by these days so when a vamp flick remake comes along, it's near impossible to get interested.

Chances are, no pun intended, it'll suck.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself sitting there loving every bit of this ridiculously fun Fright Night remake. It wasn't meant to work, goshdarnit! And yet... it really does. Even the 3D adds a certain welcome trashiness to the whole thing making it a good old-fashioned slasher (with pointy fangs) the likes of which John Carpenter and Wes Craven probably wish they could still do.

What tends to often kill that type of movie is its whiny teen cast but here we're given a likeable bunch you actually don't necessarily want to see get munched on and/or torn to shreds. Anton Yelchin makes a decent weasely hero while Christopher Mintz-Plasse does his McLovin schtick with added (and welcome) paranoia. Fine support is also given by Imogen Poots and James Franco's bro Dave, who makes a fun high school jerk. And even though David Tennant tries really hard to steal the show, this is still Colin Farrell's movie. A genuinely great villain as the psychotic neighbour vamp, Farrell sells the serial killer vibe brilliantly and brings a charismatic threat to the targeted suburbia.

What really makes the film work, though, is its pace and overall style. There is a retro feel to the whole thing (think The Burbs?) but it's never overdone and director Craig Gillespie does really well to give the film the pace it needs to build up tension and also finds the time to make his film look great and play around with the gimmicky 3D effects at hand. Fright Night is a great concept with a good story and they make the most of it here: seemingly a teen vampire flick, it's actually a tongue-in-cheek serial killer slasher movie, a clever take on the vampire genre.

Fans of the original Fright Night might find certain changes to the story and new takes on the characters sacrilegious but if you're willing to take the film as it is, for what it is, you'll have a ball. Very entertaining and surprisingly well made.

Underrated.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT - REVIEW

Image
Finally free from the clutches of the iconic Original Series , Picard and co. finally got their own movie to play with and delivered this much better, much darker, much less gimmicky outing. This time, we're introduced to the Borgs, a race of soulless, zombie-like drones capable of assimilating people completely. A popular race of bad guys in the series, their Hellraiser -style S&M look certainly begged for a movie! First Contact opens with Picard having a nightmare about the time he almost became a Borg forever and little by little, as the current Borg threat increases, he starts to crack up, feeling a responsibility to sort that problem out himself as he still has a slight connection to them but also wanting a kind of revenge, closure if you will, for what they did to him the first time around. The plot sees the crew of the Enterprise witness the Earth get completely assimilated by the Borgs so they go back in time before Earth made its "first contact" with al
Read more

24: SEASON 1 - REVIEW

Image
I know, I'm like 100 years late. But I'm The "Retro" Critic! :P I remember catching a glimpse of this iconic show back in the day and actually finding it pretty entertaining. Sadly, I hadn't followed the thread from the very beginning so it felt like catching the season about halfway through would be a bit of a waste. I decided to wait until I could check it out on DVD. 10 years later... Well I finally made it, that's the main thing, right? So was it worth the wait? What do I make of this very first season? It's good. I thought it would be quite good and it was. Basically I'm rarely taken by a cop-themed series unless you've got a mad scientist in there ( Fringe ), evil twins ( Alias ) or... Columbo ( Columbo ). But 24 did a hell of a good job keeping me entertained throughout and making me care about MOST of what was going on. Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer is a hard one to dislike and is pretty much the glue holding the whole sho
Read more

THE ADDAMS FAMILY MUSICAL - REVIEW

Image
 Looks like every Broadway comedy musical these days is trying to be The Producers ... Mel Brooks' hugely successful show now being the basic template for shows based on movies (with the exception of the admittedly *ahem* unique Spiderman musical), after Dirty Rotten Scoundrels we're treated to Broadway's The Addams Family. An odd release but probably an inevitable one. Not based on any of the movies, the story actually follows up from past adaptations and sees a now grown-up Wednesday falling in love with a "normal" dude and having to face her unconventional family. It's essentially Addams Family Values with Wednesday taking on the Fester role. A good idea which should please both fans of the films and those looking to see something new. But what works for The Producers just doesn't work for everything. Nathan Lane as Gomez Addams? So much for the tall, suave, maniacal Gomez we all know and love! Don't get me wrong, I love Nathan Lane but list
Read more