Fright Night (2011)

Thankfully this vampire isn’t named Edward, or Jacob, or any other name that those sparkling vampires have.

This film sees when teen Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) suspects that his new neighbor, the sinister Jerry Dandrige (Colin Farrell), is a vampire, and turns to a self-styled vampire expert, Peter Vincent (David Tennant), for help. Las Vegas magician Vincent proves useless, and it’s up to Charley to save his mom, Jane (Toni Collette), and girlfriend, Amy, from the seductive bloodsucker.

I have to confession to make…I have still not seen the original cult classic that this film is based off of but after seeing this I may just have to give it a shot.

This film focuses a lot on the horror rather than the actual comedy aspect of the film, which in ways they both worked out. The scares were here but were more suspenseful as they were freaky, and humor had me chuckling here and there which isn’t that bad considering the type of horror/comedy films we have come out in today’s day and age.

The problem with this film is that it doesn’t know whether to choose to be a comedy, a horror, or even an action film for that matter, and just instead turns out to be a bit of a mess. I kept wondering what director Craig Gillespie wanted me to laugh at, as well as be scared about because even as tense as this film may be, it’s never really scary unless it’s trying to live up “the scary factor” with a bunch of cheap jump-scares.

Another problem I had with this film was that after I checked out the trailer, I felt like this was going to be sort of making fun of our usual vampire flicks we have in today’s world, but instead ends up being the same old generic piece of junk that nobody really cares about in the end. I mean I liked how they kept up with a lot of the traditional rules a vampire must have, but they never really made that idea click anymore than it really should have. Some of this could have been amazing, but the writing was just sort of lame.

Although the writing may be poor, the action is awesome and is what kept me going for this film the whole time. The film takes awhile to get where it needs to get but when it does get there, the non-stop action kept me excited as well as the constant flying of blood, guts, and gore at the screen. I did not see this one in 3-D but if I did it was probably a total magic show by how beautiful all of these visuals actually looked and added so much more to the action of this film.

Anton Yelchin is pretty good here as Charlie, with his cool kid look and one-step-ahead-of-you approach to everything, Yelchin keeps this character interesting and somebody we want to win in the end; David Tennant is a bit over-the-top as the local illusionist, Peter Vincent, and seems like a role that was made for Russell Brand but Tennant sells some of the funny moments here, even though the dialogue may be a little crappy; and Toni Collette is OK as Charlie’s mom but she isn’t really given much as well. Oh and McLovin‘s here. He’s the man!

The best out of the whole cast was actually Colin Farrell as Jerry, the next-door neighbor vampire. Farrell absolutely just seems like he’s having a total ball with this role and totally shows the sexual undertones that is within Jerry’s soul when he is sinking his teeth into these people’s necks. Farrell commands almost every scene he’s in and makes you feel uncomfortable and not knowing just what he may do or say next. Great casting job for this part!

Consensus: The action is fun and great to look at, especially in 3-D, and the cast is good but the writing is a little too sloppy because it doesn’t quite know what it wants to be nor does it actually live up to any potential of being a new and cool type of vampire flick that we need to see done well.

5.5/10=Rental!!