Fright Night: Movie Review

Vampires. No thanks to Edward and his pals, it seems as though that instead of being scary, they have been transformed into matinee idols swooned over by girls all over the world. If we were vampires ourselves, we would be pissed off for sure. "Fright Night" is a return to the old school horror movies of the Eighties and that is a good thing. This is not your emo-tastic, lovey-dovey vampire. In our opinion though, "Fright Night" is just plain normal - a film which people will forget a few months from now. Was it a worthy remake of the cult 80's classic? For sure its not and we wished it could have spent a lot more time fine-tuning itself to perfection.

Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) finally has it all — he is running with the popular crowd and dating the hottest girl in high school. In fact, he is so cool he is dissing his best friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). But trouble arrives when an intriguing stranger Jerry (Colin Farrell) moves in next door. He seems like a great guy at first but there’s something not quite right about him. After witnessing some very unusual activity, Charlie comes to an unmistakable conclusion - Jerry is a vampire preying on his neighborhood. Unable to convince anyone that he’s telling the truth, Charlie has to find a way to get rid of the monster himself before it gets to kill him, his mother and his girlfriend.

"Fright Night" starts off slow as in really slow. The first half was lackluster in our opinion - we even found it boring at times. But once the truth about Jerry was revealed (him being a vampire), the beauty of "Fright Night" just snowballs into an avalanche of fun. You know why? Because the film decides to stick to its Eighties roots and throws mayhem of wit, humor and scares. It was just too short of a time to say that "Fright Night" was great - good but not great or memorable. Yes, the last few scenes were awesomely good and maybe even salvaged it from bombing out but would it make up for almost an hour of lackluster lines? Not so much. What we sorely missed though is the usual gore from old school horror films. The 3D effects just didn't cut it in our opinion. We wished that they used a different method, a more natural one at that. "Fright Night" may not bring home awards when it comes to its acting, effects and everything else but it is still a scary film and even funny at times. It's just your average-joe film at best.

Rating: 3 and a half reels





Why you should watch it:
- the last few minutes was just fun

Why you shouldn't watch it:
- the boring first half just didn't cut it
- the visual effects were not that good