Fright Night.
Finally. A supernatural movie in which the vampires are supposed to
scare you, not dazzle you with their sparkling skin. Admittedly, whilst the trailer for Fright Night looked really great, I thought the actual movie was going to be really bad. The still adverts made it look like it was going to a be a typical teen horror movie where a crazy psycho, in this case, a vampire, moves in next door, but nobody believes the teenagers because the neighbour is just so god-damn charming. Surprisingly, Fright Night was nothing like that. Though I suppose I should've known that it was going to be really good, I mean,
David Tennant is in it.
Frankly the puns on the adverts are just tragic and they were a massive factor in my preconceptions of this film.
For those of you who haven't seen the 1985 original, Fright Night is basically about a teenager called Charlie and what happens after a seemingly charming vampire, Jerry - yes, Jerry the vampire - moves in next door. Charlie's classmates start mysteriously disappearing from school and so Charlie is forced into investigating these disappearances by his ex-best friend, Ed Lee (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). He soon discovers that Ed was right and Jerry is a vampire and worried that Jerry may have set his sights on his own mother, Charlie seeks help from the 'vampire slayer', Peter Vincent (David Tennant). It's not long before Jerry realises that Charlie knows his secret and let's just say, he wasn't very happy about this. That's a very brief synopsis because there are so many unexpected twists and turns and I don't want to ruin the plot.
After watching Fright Night, I'm certain that I've been paying too much attention in my English lessons as every five seconds I was saying to myself 'ooh, that creates a sense of foreboding'. There were certain things about this movie that was so subtle and so clever and they made this film a success. I don't want to give away exactly what these things are, but I recommend you pay extra attention to what programme the television is showing when it is on and what happens in the video that Charlie watches. The use of technology in the background, dare I say it, created a strong sense of foreboding and hints at what's to come.
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| David Tennant really can play any role |
What's interesting is how this film plays on a lot of vampire stereotypes. There has been a lot of discrepancy recently as to what exactly wards off a vampire as there are just so many different vampire stories popping up but Fright Night sticks to the old traditions. I won't reveal exactly which methods are used to fight vampires in this film because that's all part of the suspense. The characters try just about every trick in the book to fight back against Jerry the vampire and you never know which ones are going to work and which aren't which keeps the viewer drawn in to the action. In addition, the vampires are a lot more primal in Fright Night. In fact, they almost become wolfish in their appearance when they turn, but minus the fur. Sometimes the vampires changed into demonic creatures that vaguely ressembled humans, but on the whole it was just a pair of fangs that appeared. During those brief moments when the vampires did change appearance, I was genuinely a bit frightened which is great because I suppose vampires are supposed to frighten you - at least they were until Edward Cullen came along.
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| Charley's girlfriend turns nasty. |
The soundtrack was truly excellent, which really surprised me. It was the music that got me frightened right at the very beginning and it does an great job at mediating your mood throughout the film. I don't know how they managed to do this, but at one point, I even started to feel hotter, just .... Another thing which surprised me, was excellent camera work. I don't think I've ever noticed camera work whilst watching a movie, but there really were some excellent shots in this. They weren't necessarily panoramic views (though there are plenty of those), sometimes they were really subtle things, but camera managed to capture each scene from the perfect angle.
Part of what made Fright Night a success was the great cast. The majority of the cast were actors of note and if not I still recognised them from one movie or another. I have to say that although I don't really like Colin Farrell as an actor, I think he made an excellent vampire - Farrell fans will be pleased to know that he seems to have worked out for the role. Anton Yelchin played Charley Brewster the main character and although I don't believe I've seen him in any movies before he's actually been in quite a lot. Academy-award nominated Toni Collette plays the mother of Charley, though she doesn't have a very large role in this film. David Tennant isn't as involved in the movie as I would've liked; however, his prescenece in the second half of the film definitely did a lot for this movie.
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| Definitely been working out... |
One criticism of this movie is that whilst the majority of the drama and horror looked realistic, the spurting blood really did not. It was obvious that these scenes would've looked a lot better in 3D and I imagine they were pretty spectacular; however, I was only watching it in 2D and it looked like red plasma, not blood. The blood looked fine when it was just trickling or lying still, but as soon as it started spurting it began to look computer generated.
Fright Night was a lot better than I was expecting it to be and it instilled a sense of fear in me right from the onset with it's dramatic and bloody beginning. It's defined as a 'comedy horror' film and I guess that would be about right since there are some horrifying moments and others when I just wanted to laugh out loud. This definitely isn't a movie for squeamish people or people that get frightened easily. I have almost become immune to the frights of horror movies and I still found myself gasping at a couple of points during the film. I guess this would mostly appeal to teenage boys there's no reason why girls who enjoy a bit of horror *cough* David Tennant and Colin Farrell *cough* shouldn't enjoy this too.
