Fright Night - An irishman leaving his mark on impressionable youths

The original film wasn't a favourite of mine to begin with but I am not one to throw the baby out with the bathwater; this film seems to have been a by the numbers film that like the original includes all the clichés but never tries to be original or clever. The main characters are suburbanites played by American teens (or at least the actors that pass for teens these days); they do a poor job of creating any likeable characters so you don't really mind them all being torn apart by Jerry the local undead. The only actors that are enjoyable are from this side of the pond, Tenant’s phoney illusionist with his drunken ranting and diva attitude and Farrell’s vampire who seems to be the biggest dickhead to roam the earth.

Collin Farrell has been in some great movies, some good movies and Miami Vice; this film is a little short of In Bruges or Tigerland. Jerry(Farrell) strides through the film like a casual predator killing for sport while people throw everything they have at him, Farrell has this monster down to a tee and leaves you feeling he’s looking at you like a piece of meat. He toys with Charlie the protagonist and enjoys messing with people’s heads and is unfortunately for all the others easily the best character in the film.

Tenant plays an alcoholic vampire hunter with a score to settle; the thoroughly useless way he goes about his life and fighting the vampires left me holding my sides at times. He bursts into the film with screams of abuse and drunkenly throwing shapes and exits the film in much the same manor. Tenant manages to bring the most tongue in cheek send up of the rockstar lifestyle since Spinal tap when he is heavily adjusting himself while complaining of the rashes his leather pants cause. What I find interesting is that his character’s history with Farrell makes him the most interesting and fleshed out of the human characters.

Anton Yelchin’s Charlie is not much of a character and in fact the as the protagonist wasn’t someone you could relate to, he is the nerd that ditched his friends to date a pretty girl and he doesn’t make me want to see him win, I actually wanted to see Jerry tear him in two. This is probably the first time I have not liked his portrayal of a character I don’t think he is to blame and it may have been directorial issues. He seems to flat and buttoned down and in every scene I am just waiting for him to explode to life.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse (“Evil Ed Lee”) is wasted until the film jumps from trying to be atmospheric to being an action packed gore fest. This is someone we all remember from his iconic McLovin and I know he is an hilarious actor but it seems that he was hired for five minutes of comedic action the in the end seem far too tacked on.

Imogen Poots and Toni Collette play Charlie’s girlfriend and mother and while both do nothing to earn my ire they have both give far better performances in the past. Poots especially seemed very wooden in charged scenes when everyone else was having a force five freak out. Their stillted dialogue and awkward moments are lacking in a way that makes me glad those fleeting moments on the screen are just fleeting.

To close this crypt with the moan of badly oiled hinges; I found that the first hour of the film was dull and lacked pacing and then somebody gave the writer a copy of Blade and said “Make them do this”. The jarring leap from horror to camp action film was enough to propel me to the end of the film like a mainline of adrenalin, in fact if they had done the entire film in the same way this would have been excellent. In the end this film is a fine watch but not for reasons other than blind luck.