Screenplay by Marti Noxon, story by Tom Holland, based on the 1985 film of the same name by Holland.
Running Time: 106 minutes (1h, 46 mins.)
Rated R (for bloody horror violence, and language including some sexual references).
Distributor: Disney (Dreamworks Pictures, released under the Touchstone Pictures banner).
(Note: I watched the film in 2D. A 3D version was not playing in the theatre I was in, which is actually good, since most of the movie had many scenes set during night.)
Fright Night, for those who didn't bother to read the credits on the top, is a remake of a similar film from the 1980's. This isn't just another film that wants to capitalize on the vampire craze. Oh, wait, actually it is. I honestly don't think that this movie would be remade if it wasn't for the Twilight movies, but the Twilight movies don't have traditional vampires like this movie did.
Anton Yelchin plays Charley Brewster, a high school student living the suburbs of Las Vegas, Nevada and dating the hottest chick in school, Amy Peterson (Imogen Poots). When his single mother (Toni Collette) introduces him to a new next door neighbor, Jerry (Colin Farrell), his former best friend, Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) quickly lets Charley know that he may be a vampire, due to other students disappearing day by day. Charley doesn't believe him at first, but when he witnesses one of his neighbors get bitten by Jerry, he gets the help of a Las Vegas magician and so-called vampire expert (David Tennant) in order to get rid of him.
I'll be honest: I haven't exactly seen the original film. Don't get me wrong, I've heard of it and seen a couple of scenes from it, but never the whole thing. However, after watching this version, I'm eager to see how this compares to the original, because this is actually pretty good. The main vampire, Jerry has that True Blood style: he's a vampire who's has a bad boy image to him, an image Colin Farrell knows all too well. He takes over the role originally played by Chris Sarandon (who has a cameo in this version, by the way) and he is awesome. In fact, this is one of his best performances since his Golden Globe-winning performance in In Bruges back in '08. He's very sly and darkly funny. I enjoyed Anton Yelchin's performance, especially in the scenes he has with Farrell. They got McLovin in here, too, but he's not in the film that much and what makes that unfortunate is we don't get to know much about his character. I was glad to see David Tennant (The tenth incarnation of Doctor Who) play Peter Vincent. What makes his performance so entertaining is that he had a lot of fun with it. Imogen Poots was okay, but I've seen her do better (Watch 28 Weeks Later on Netflix) and while Toni Collette is pretty good, they don't exactly use her character too much.
I like Craig Gillespie's direction in here and in certain scenes, it's amazing. One of the scenes that stand out is the one-shot sequence where Charley, his mom, Jane and his girlfriend Amy are all in the car driving away from Jerry. The camera moves all around the car and doesn't stop until Jerry attacks the car. Marti Noxon wrote the script for this and it's a pretty good one, too. The script has some references to many other vampire movies, like Dracula and of course, Twilight. She also co-wrote the screenplay for another Disney/Dreamworks film that came out earlier this year, I Am Number Four, which I also liked, but many other critics didn't. Plenty of blood and gore is shed is this film and some things fly out at you (which might be one of the effective things of 3D. I don't know, because as I said before, I only saw this in 2D.)
I liked this film. It's smartly written, pretty gory and a lot of fun to watch. I've seen a lot of non-Twilight vampire films that haven't really impressed me, and Fright Night is thankfully not one of them. This gets *** (3 stars).
(Note: I watched the film in 2D. A 3D version was not playing in the theatre I was in, which is actually good, since most of the movie had many scenes set during night.)
Fright Night, for those who didn't bother to read the credits on the top, is a remake of a similar film from the 1980's. This isn't just another film that wants to capitalize on the vampire craze. Oh, wait, actually it is. I honestly don't think that this movie would be remade if it wasn't for the Twilight movies, but the Twilight movies don't have traditional vampires like this movie did.
Anton Yelchin plays Charley Brewster, a high school student living the suburbs of Las Vegas, Nevada and dating the hottest chick in school, Amy Peterson (Imogen Poots). When his single mother (Toni Collette) introduces him to a new next door neighbor, Jerry (Colin Farrell), his former best friend, Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) quickly lets Charley know that he may be a vampire, due to other students disappearing day by day. Charley doesn't believe him at first, but when he witnesses one of his neighbors get bitten by Jerry, he gets the help of a Las Vegas magician and so-called vampire expert (David Tennant) in order to get rid of him.
I like Craig Gillespie's direction in here and in certain scenes, it's amazing. One of the scenes that stand out is the one-shot sequence where Charley, his mom, Jane and his girlfriend Amy are all in the car driving away from Jerry. The camera moves all around the car and doesn't stop until Jerry attacks the car. Marti Noxon wrote the script for this and it's a pretty good one, too. The script has some references to many other vampire movies, like Dracula and of course, Twilight. She also co-wrote the screenplay for another Disney/Dreamworks film that came out earlier this year, I Am Number Four, which I also liked, but many other critics didn't. Plenty of blood and gore is shed is this film and some things fly out at you (which might be one of the effective things of 3D. I don't know, because as I said before, I only saw this in 2D.)I liked this film. It's smartly written, pretty gory and a lot of fun to watch. I've seen a lot of non-Twilight vampire films that haven't really impressed me, and Fright Night is thankfully not one of them. This gets *** (3 stars).
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