Movies I Liked: Fright Night
I thought since I’ve blogged a bit about movies I can’t stand, I’d do a blog about a movie that I thought didn’t completely suck. Though I’m not a fan of the entertainment industry’s obsession with remaking and destroying the formative stories from my childhood, I do have to admit, Fright Night was a good movie. Despite the story being transparent and cheesy to the point of inciting a bout of Mystery Science Theater 3000-esque commentary, I was still caught up in the movie.
It has a retro feel to its newness that I really appreciated from the beginning. In an era where horror movies are:
1. More concerned with gore and shock value than actual acting and storytelling
2. Formulaic to the point of banality
3. All trying to recreate or outdo something that’s already been done
Fright Night is a refreshing beacon in the crap storm of badly acted blood and gore fests that pass themselves off as horror movies today. Even if it does meet most of the criteria in the above list.
Colin Farrell plays an excellent Jerry the Vampire. The scene where he is hovering at the threshold of Charley’s house trying to get the boy to let him in inspired creepy chills in me that made me think, “Tom Cruise wasn’t this good of a vampire. And neither, for that matter, was that weepy Emo kid who played Edward.” I would say that Farrell’s portrayal of a vampire would rank at the top. Underneath Gary Oldman as Dracula and just above Keifer Sutherland as David (in Lost Boys).
I thought David Tennant did a great job as Peter Vincent. As a matter of fact all the non-vampire characters (i.e. the teenage heroes and the local vampire fodder) are portrayed with just enough lightheartedness to take the edge off the horror. Which (in my opinion) is a mark of all great Horror-Comedies.
Don’t get me wrong though, this movie does come with heavy helpings of both blood and cheese. But then again, it IS a vampire movie. Since childhood it has been my understanding of popular vampire lore that blood and cheese are vampires’ two favorite things. Definitely a good movie to dig your fan fangs into.
Posted on January 31, 2012, in Author, Movies, writing and tagged Colin Farrell, Comedy, Dracula, Edward, Fright Night, Horror, Lost Boys, Tom Cruise, Vampire. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Universal Shift 
Fright Night was honestly one of the better movies that came out in 2011, not to mention it’s one of the best remakes in quite a while because they did it right. I’m totally cool with remakes as long as they take the same approach Fright Night did in the sense that they took the general idea of the original and totally made their own movie out of it. Great stuff, glad to see someone else appreciated it.
Thanks for your thoughts! I was surprised by how good it was. I didn’t expect it to grab me like it did. Not that I was expecting to be gouging my eyes out half way through (like I was, with say, Midnight In Paris) but neither was I expecting to think as highly of it as I did. Because I’m certainly not a fan of the rash of remakes lately.