Hey everybody, I'm back. Hurricane Irene knocked my power out for a week and the internet was screwed up for another 3 days so I didn't get a chance to watch or review anything. I did however catch up on some H.P. Lovecraft reading, which is actually pretty awesome when reading in the pitch dark by flashlight only. Now that I'm back in the 21st century I'm back to CT, and caught Fright Night 3D in theaters earlier when I was randomly asked and treated to go... can't pass that up no matter how bad it might be, right?
If you have seen the original Fright Night, the cult classic from writer/director Tom Holland that features a crazy Evil Ed, Roddy Mcdowall being awesome as usual and just great 80s vampire fun and saw the trailers and TV spots for the remake you have to be aware that they don't look too similar. And you're also aware at just how shitty the trailers for this remake were. It is no wonder it didn't make much money at all, and I'm surprised it was even still in theaters today.
Charley has just found popularity in his later high school years after a lifetime of living the life of a nerd with his former best friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). After several classmates go missing Ed persuades Charlie to investigate with him. Ed believes Charley's new neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrel) is a vampire and quickly taking over the town. It isn't long before Charlie realizes that Ed is right and enlists the help of vampire/occult/reality/Vegas celebrity Peter Vincent who has a history with these creatures. Charley and Peter Vincent chase Jerry back to his lair where they get more than they bargained for.
I'll start with a positive first... I expected this movie to be truly terrible. I mean fucking God awful. This has everything to do with the disastrous trailers and marketing. It did end up being better than expected, but that isn't saying much. The writing seemed rushed to me. Everything jumped from one part to the next without much actually happening until the finale. The acting across the board was pretty bad. Colin Farrell wasn't a convincing vampire... or a convincing creep who seduces high school girls. McLovin wasn't bad as Evil Ed, who they only referred to as "Evil" once in the entire movie as far as I could tell, but they didn't give him much screen time at all. It was a decent modern day take on the character. David Tennant was a cross between Criss Angel and Russel Brand which made him about as unlikeable as a human can get until the last 20 minutes by which point it was too late for me to give a shit about him. The CGI effects for the vampires was obnoxious and totally missed out on the practical latex effects used in the original that were awesome and added to the feel of the film. These odd looking, shark toothed vampires were just annoying to look at and screamed "LOOK AT ME I'M A FUCKING FEROCIOUS VAMPIRE!". The humor from the original was mainly lost as well. With only a few genuinely funny moments out of dozens of attempts with cheap one liners and slapstick it was more face palming than knee slapping. And as for the 3D which any reader of this already knows I just could not care any less about, it was actually decent looking. There was noticeable depth without many cases of it looking awkward and some effective use of the gimmicky things flying at the camera. But seriously, who fucking cares about that?
Like I said, there were far more positives than I expected. It had some cool vampire action scenes, and there were the few successful funny moments but it missed the mark by a mile.
3.5/10
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