Fright Night (2011)

Tom Holland’s Fright Night (1985) is one of those films I’ve seen bits and pieces of on cable but I’ve never bothered to sit down and watch entirely.  After watching Craig Gillespie’s remake (2011), the cinematic equivalent to the contents of a pumpkin shaped trick or treat pail, I may need to remedy that blind spot.   Fright Night may not be F.W Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) or Guy Maddin’s Dracula:  Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002) when it comes to great vampire movies but it is, like Sam Raimi’s romp Drag Me to Hell (2009), a hell of a funny, scary time. 

The set up is pretty ingenious for a horror film that hits the ground running.  Set in a suburb of Las Vegas where the residents tend to pass through and sleep during the day while working at night, the town provides a prime location for Jerry’s (Colin Farrell) nocturnal bloodlust.  Complications arise when a high schooler, Evil Ed (Charistopher Mintz-Plasse), notices that his classmates are beginning to disappear and he suspects Jerry as the culprit.  In order to substantiate his suspicions, he asks his former best friend – and Jerry’s neighbor - Charley (Anton Yelchin) to help him investigate.  Charley is ambivalent and writes Ed’s suspicions off as being childish…until Ed is absent from school the following day. 

Charley then becomes obsessed with uncovering Jerry’s means and motives, alienating his newly acquired “hot” girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots) and his mother (Toni Collette).  When it becomes clear that Jerry really is a vampire and Charley’s roster of allies (including James Franco’s younger brother, Dave) thins thanks to Jerry’s fangs, he is forced to recruit the Criss Angel-like Peter Vincent (David Tennant) to aid him in his quest in slaying Jerry and freeing Las Vegas from his evil clutches. 

Gillespie does a pretty strong job of balancing the scares and the comedy in the first hour before transitioning, with a virtuoso long take in an automobile (very reminiscent of a similar shot in Steven Spielberg’s hit-and-miss remake of War of the Worlds).  An early scene in which Charley infiltrates Jerry’s house in order to rescue the stripper next door features a superbly staged spatial game of cat and mouse.  Gillespie later balances out these thrills with Jerry’s blend of sexual charisma and toothy taunts and, more so, with David Tennant’s egotistical and diluted vampire hunter and magician with an addiction to a highball glass of Midori. 

The film falls a bit short when it comes to using the horror genre to critique American society.  Unlike The Descent (2005) or The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Fright Night is not concerned with how the horror genre depicts gender roles or how personal politics play a role in who survives and who does not.  Farrell chews it up (pun intended) as Jerry and Anton Yelchin makes a good loser turned hero.  Moreover, and perhaps I had the privilege of seeing Fright Night in a particularly bright projection, the 3D (which the film was shot in, not converted to) is quite fun.  This is especially true when Gillespie explores depth of field and not when he indulges pop out “shock” moments of blood splatter or an eye rolling t-shirt contest.  In the end, Fright Night is not a deep film; like a haunted house located in a corn maze, it exists purely to be fun and scary and it succeeds on both fronts.