A tad late, but I got round to seeing the remake of Fright Night the other day. As a fan of Colin Farrell (and most actors called Colin at that), The Doctor himself David Tennant and all things supernatural, it had the makings of not necessarily a good film, but a Simon-friendly one at any rate.
Vampires are hard to deal with on film. Twilight made them too powerful and changed too much of the mythology. The Underworld lot should just be ignored. The recent Dracula movies lacked the fear vampires should invoke. Even in Buffy the majority were cannon-fodder, too easy to kill.
Fright Night takes the whole vampire mythology and does it well. Very well indeed. Holy water hurts them. Crosses repel them. Garlic probably does what it does best (smell bad and taste fantastic in a bolognaise). And they can’t come in unless you invite them. That is until there’s no house to invite them into…
Our protagonists are lukewarm and could have been played by better actors, Tennant is playing a very silly role indeed, whilst Colin Farrell walks around smouldering, because we all know that’s what vampires do. Until it all kicks off and then it turns out this is a vampire who’s pissed and has the tools to deal some real damage. You can fight him, but someone’s going to get hurt along the way…
As a film, Fright Night won’t appeal to most. In fact, I have a nagging suspicion it will appeal to very few. A certain house-mate was unimpressed. But if you’ve been longing for a vampire movie where the mythology’s there, and vampires are actually pretty kick-ass without being stupidly powerful, or made of sponges and emotions, then give Fright Night a crack.
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