Fright Night (2011) - Craig Gillespie

Fright Night (2011)
Director: Craig Gillespie
Writer: Marti Noxon (Screenplay), Tom Holland (Story)
Starring: Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, Toni Collette, David Tennant, Imogen Poots, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Dave Franco, Sandra Vergara

No, I tend not to be the biggest fan of remakes. However, I am a pretty big Doctor Who fan so the fact that David Tennant stars in this probably helped me decide to see it. It also didn't hurt that Shaw Girl thinks David Tennant is a total hotty and he spends a lot of the movie with his shirt off. Tennant isn't the only reason I saw this film though, the trailer actually made it look pretty good so I was at least a bit interested in how this remake would turn out.

I was pleasantly surprised.While it certainly did not outdo the original, it stood on its own as a pretty decent horror/comedy. I had a few problems with it but overall I was thoroughly entertained. The film pretty closely follows the plot of the original; a teenager finds out his neighbor is a vampire, no one believes him, he enlists the aid of a TV vampire killer, hijinks ensue.

The acting for the most part is pretty solid. No surprise that Anton Yelchin plays his part well, he has proven to be a pretty solid actor. Imogen Poots does a really good job playing a role that isn't your typical "damsel in distress" horror movie role. Christopher Mintz-Plasse does a great job as the comic relief and is actually less annoying than the similar best friend role in the original film. Colin Farrell manages to come off creepy enough, unfortunately he isn't really scary-creepy, he is more neighbor-you-think-might-secretly-be-a-sex-offender-creepy. Maybe that is what they were going for, but it didn't totally work for me. David Tennant completely steals the show as Peter Vincent though. He chews scenery for the entire movie but he does it so well and the whole film is better because of it.

Obviously the special effects have been updated since the original film. Some of them are pretty solid and some of them aren't. The effect of the vampires exploding into ashes was well done and looked very cool, on the other hand, the vampire makeup did not look good at all. It looked like way too much touch up work was with CGI in post production. It just looked like Colin Farrell face had been stretched and blown up in weird ways.

My one other problem with the special effects has to do with the fact that I saw it in 2D instead of 3D. There were just way too many shots that were obviously put in the movie just to take advantage of the 3D and they just looked cheesy when seeing the movie in 2D. Not that I am saying that you should see the movie in 3D, I would never recommend that.

So, overall it was a solid horror film that tells an interesting story and manages to make you actually care about what happens to the characters. It has a good mix of fun moments and scary moments and the pacing between those moments is well down. The acting is better than what you would get in most modern horror movie remakes. The special effects aren't always overly effective but they aren't distractingly bad either, except for the few "3D shots."

Rating: 6/10