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Colin Farrell with fiendishly red eyes watches over Anton Yelchin with an axe on this poster for Craig Gillespie's Fright Night
Fright Night is a remake of Tom Holland's (Child's Play (1988)) same-titled 1985 hit movie with Chris Sarandon as a sexy next door vampire.
In this updated 3D version, Colin Farrell is that neighbor, moving into a Las Vegas residential area next to a teenage boy, Charley, and his horny single mother. Charley's nerdy friend notices that kids start to disappear from school and suspects the vampire, but Charley brushes him off, and soon the nerd also vanishes. Charley now has to look after his own.
That is the central story-line of Fright Night. The title refers to a Vegas show that Charley encounters through his nerdy friend, wherein a goth idiot, Peter Vincent (played by Scotsman David Tennant (Jessica Jones (2915-19))), battles vampires. The cursing, despicable Vincent enters the story about midway through and suddenly becomes aligned with Charley, our hero, and we are then supposed to root for the annoying fool.
This is one of the issues with the movie's script by Marti Noxon (Just a Little Harmless Sex (1998)). Another one is that the hero loses his best friend, the nerd, early on in the film, because he is so focused on his new life of hanging with the cool kids. Though I like Anton Yelchin (Fierce People (2005)) who plays Charley and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad (2007)) who plays the nerd, they could not make this work for me. How could we really root for or begin to bite our nails for this mixed-up teenager?
The last script problem is that the third act is so long. I had lost interest by that point, and then it takes the evil vampires much too long to die. I was ready to end my Fright Night earlier.
Another main problem with Fright Night is that, despite excellent production values and good names involved, the film isn't scary, and it also isn't funny; no-one will go for it expecting an action movie, so the many action scenes in it feel out of place, unwanted and annoying.
Fright Night is directed by Craig Gillespie (Mr. Woodcock (2007)). The effects in horror films are pivotal, and again Fright Night let me down, with gratuitous CGI-blood-spurts. - Blood spurting is a comparatively easy thing to do on set, and CGI blood spurts almost always come out bad, - this film also has other terrible CGI effects. These effects don't create excitement like the effects of 1970s or 80s horror films, where they creative effects wizards came up with ingenious real life solutions to awe and scare us. Instead I now picture in my mind row after row of fat dudes in shorts and greasy glasses drinking enormous Cokes and 'creating' effects on their computer screens, when I am watching horror films like Fright Night. Needless to say this ruins the experience and is highly off-putting to boot. Furthermore, the theatrical 3D experience is lost after the film's release, - because who really has a 3D TV? - Who will spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to look like an imbecile in their own living rooms for the effect of imagining that you are getting stuff thrown at you? Fright Night is shallow and stupid, unscary and unfunny, a remake straight for the ever-growing 3D trashcan.
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Yelchin and Imogen Poots give an interview about the film here
Cost: 30 mil. $
Box office: 41 mil. $
= Big flop (returned 1.36 times its cost)
[Fright Night premiered 14 August (UK) and runs 106 minutes. Shooting took place from July - October 2010 in New Mexico and Las Vegas, Nevada. The film opened #6 to a 7.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it grossed 18.3 mil. $ (44.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 3.4 mil. $ (8.3 %) and the UK with 2.9 mil. $ (7.1 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to 2 notches over this one. An unrelated 'homage sequel' was made as Fright Night 2: New Blood (2013, video). Gillespie returned with Kid Cudi: No One Believes Me (2011, music video), Trooper (2013, TV movie) and theatrically with Million Dollar Arm (2014). Farrell returned in Total Recall (2012); Yelchin in with 2 voice performances and a TV-series prior to his theatrical return in Odd Thomas (2013). Fright Night is certified fresh at 72 % with a 6.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Fright Night?
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