Fright Night Review

Call Scooby Doo and gang.

Fright Night is a magisterial study of vampires by screenwriter Marti Noxon. When the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series veteran adapts the critically acclaimed 1985 film of the same name, the result is a briskly paced movie adroitly negotiated with a hermetic narrative which quite unfortunately, rarely challenges the ascetic storytelling orthodoxy of its source material’s time. At its best, Fright Night thrives on unadulterated action with an air of insouciance. At its worst, the movie feels emphatically malnourished with the conspicuous apathy of modern storytelling techniques.

Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) and Ed Lee (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) are high school buddies whose friendship has recently grown distanced. Ed feels that Charley’s new next door neighbour Jerry Dandrige (Colin Farrell) is a vampire responsible for the few kids who have been missing classes. Charley figures that the only way to attract the girl of his dreams Amy Peterson (Imogen Poots) is to hang out with the cool kids on campus and avoid his seemingly fatuous friend. When Ed goes missing too, Charley decides to investigate and discovers the truth about Jerry. With pseudo vampire slayer and illusionist Peter Vincent (David Tennant) the only vampire maven around, Charley must turn to him to help protect his mother (Toni Collette) and put an end to Jerry’s existence.

Fright Night approaches its subject in generally bold ways, eschewing the usually self-effacing vampire for a more intrepid one. When Jerry decides that he wants to stick a straw into the blood vessels of everyone around Charley, he figures that the first step should involve leaning on Charley’s door and telling him that he’s coming for their blood – while asking Charley to get him a few bottles of beer from his refrigerator for good measure. Farrell turns in a remarkable performance, portraying Jerry with great flair and panache because he is able to embalm the character with a mosaic of sordid sexuality, social confidence and charisma that coaxes the conviction out of the proceeding. Jerry is a vampire that audiences would grin rather than cringe at when he comes onto the screen.

Jerry’s abrasiveness quickly maneuvers the film into high gear before audiences have time to decide whether Edward Cullen from Twilight or Jerry is better at getting girls. When Jerry fails to get Charley’s mother to invite him into the house, the despondent vampire in him forces Jerry to abandon all forms of logical reasoning and blow the entire house up. What transpires after is a Scooby Doo affair in which the movie scrambles hither and thither in search of action, much of which involves Charley and his girlfriend racing from Jerry – and occasionally hitting him with what they think would work on vampires. Director Craig Gillespie frames the shots with aesthetically pleasing visual effects which make the proceedings more believable than what could possibly be afforded by its source material.

A huge fraction of audiences is going to enjoy Fright Night because it emphasizes vampire action at its most cardinal – which also happens to be the most fun. A vampire’s only motive is to drink your blood and it chases you from one end of the world to another if you do not comply. For the more discerning audiences, Fright Night could be found egregiously lacking in modern storytelling parlance like suspense, tension building and character development for critics to tear into. Most movies strive to keep their characters apart for a reasonable amount of time in the interest of building tension and developing their characters – couples are kept apart in romantic films; vampires are kept apart from humans in Daybreakers and the more recent Priest; Jason Statham is kept apart from the person he’s trying to save or kill in an action picture; Indiana Jones can’t seem to get his artifact; Voldemort can’t get close enough to Harry Potter – but Fright Night buckles the trend and relishes in the audacity of diving headfirst into the thick of the plot.  

In the hands of a lesser screenwriter, there are many opportunities for Jerry to outstay his welcome, wallowing in despair because he is incapable of quickly disposing of his victims but Noxon orchestrates much of the movie with a perspicacious hand that maintains the inventiveness of the action. Nevertheless, much of Fright Night’s appeal still depends explicitly on your preferences. If you watched Transformers: Dark of the Moon and wished that Michael Bay just totally skips Shia LaBeouf and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and jumps right into Optimus’ battle with the Decepticons, then Fright Night will be thoroughly enjoyable. If you watched Friends with Benefits and liked how Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis continually reject each other’s love despite the fact that they absolutely love each other, then you may wish to consider other options.