Fright Night 3D

Fright Night 3D - All Charley (Anton Yelchin) every wanted was a normal life with his single mom (Toni Collette) and girlfriend (Imogen Poots) he suspects is too good for him. But Jerry (Colin Farrell), the next door neighbor has some strange mannerisms and habits. Kids are disappearing from class at school and Charley's former best friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) suspects that Jerry is a vampire.

Okay, this movie is a lot of fun. It has some tightly coiled suspense, well crafted characters, and a good mix of horror and comedy. There's rather more of the former than the latter. What's more, the film isn't so meta (aside from a few jokes about vampire lore and Twilight) that you would get taken out of the story. The screenplay was done by Marti Noxon of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel writing staffs, and it's a well crafted piece of work. Although the film never gets much better tension-wise than the first scene with Jerry and Charley, it's still has plenty of thrills along the way. And it makes vampires into a dangerous difficult to kill menace again! A small but note-worthy achievement in a day where True Blood asks us to get along with them and Twilight desires for us to snuggle in a meadow with them.

Colin Farrell is excellent as Jerry the vampire. It's kind of a shame that as his box office returns get lower, Farrell delivers better and better. I also love David Tennant (of Doctor Who fame) in general, but he's great as vampire hunter/stage magician/drunk foul-mouthed hasbeen Peter Vincent.

Bottom line, Fright Night is a very fun, occasionally scary, well scripted movie. It's not amazing, and doesn't say anything new about the subject of vampires, but if you're going to do a re-make, it might as well be fun enough to make me forget that fact. In a month typically bereft of good movies, Fright Night is the best you're going to do for entertainment this August. Fright Night gets a B+