My long-standing policy of avoiding horror films is somewhat in question with my viewing of Fright Night. I thought it looked to be more of a dark comedy than horror. It turns out there isn’t really a lot of comedy in there, but the film isn’t terribly scary either. A remake, it is the story of a suburban teenager, played by Anton Yelchin, who struggles to convince his loved ones that his new neighbor is a vampire, played by Colin Farrell. From there he must come up with a way to kill the neighbor, which proves to be a bit difficult.
The cast is made up of interesting actors who I wouldn’t expect to be in a film of this nature. But since the genre involved is ultimately ambiguous, the castings are as well. David Tennant’s performance ends up being the most memorable as he provides comic relief and emotion in the handful of scenes he is limited to. Many of the others are only asked to play dumb then be really scared. It gets a bit repetitive after a while. Vampire fans would likely enjoy the film as it embraces the accepted characteristics and methods of killing the bloodsuckers. Basically what I’m saying is that this isn’t Twilight.
The pacing of the script proves to be a bit slow and tipped overwhelmingly toward the second half in the action department. Moving one of the three successive large-scale fights into the early humdrum of building tension would go a long way. The resolution proves to be quite satisfying though, even if the true forms of the vampires are revealed to be comically large mouthed and with normal human bodies. Farrell looks very strange in his trendy clothes when his head grows all big and weird. Eliminating some of the sporadic gore could have made Fright Night a quality PG-13 effort, but the R excluded some of that appropriate audience. (7.4 out of 10)
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