You Gave Me Such a Fright Night!

Shall I start this by saying I was not going to review this film. No intention whatsoever. I mainly planned on seeing it to celebrate David Tennant's first major Hollywood role and so I dragged along a good friend and off we went, donning our "Real-D" glasses. It soon became apparent that not only was I going to review this film, but I am duty-bound to do just that.

For those of you who didn't see or ever hear of the first one, this is a vampire movie! Spoiler. The vampires are not very nice. And head vampire Jerry (Colin Farrell) has moved in right next door to our hero, Charlie (Anton Yelchin). To save his mother (Toni Collette) and girlfriend (Imogen Poots), Charlie seeks the help of Peter Vincent (David Tennant), who is sort of a Criss Angel parody. And so the match is set, the war waged, and off we are on a lovely little adventure!

Every film starts with a script, and the writing of Fright Night is tight knit and funny. On more than one occasion I found myself first stricken with laughter and then suddenly heart all a flutter in suspense in a lovely sort of dance. Pacing was right on and everything fits tidily into 106 minutes. 

The actors fully absorb the words and make them their own; not a bad performance out of the lot. And keep your eye open for a certain Franco's younger brother and the original Jerry. The characters aren't exactly multi-dimensional, but they're nicely fleshed out for the genre. Yelchin constructs a strong but sensitive kid trying to define who he is and is opposed nicely by Farrell's self-centered, creepy vamp-tramp king. 

Supporting cast are all a riot - Christopher Mintz-Plasse makes an appearance as Ed, a childhood friend Charlie left behind, and David Tennant is endearing and pretty hilarious as the scallawag with a haunted past. And a shoutout for my ladies! Toni Collette is lovely as usual portraying a mother who refreshingly pays attention to her son and Imogen Poots takes what could have been a standard "oh I'm a frightened teen girl" to the girl you want her to be.

All in all, this is a nice little feather for director Craig Gillespie's odd hat. And this brings me to why I'm reviewing this. I wrote this film off for a few reasons. First of all, it's been released at the end of the summer against no real competition. Second, it was not released at Halloween. Third, given both those things, the film hasn't done well. And what a shame! I think the distributors made a real mistake not holding out for a Halloween release. What fun it'd be to stay up late and go get scared with this movie in the autumn frenzy of All Hallow's Eve! This is my attempt to save this movie - GO SEE IT!

8/10