Fright Night

Recommendation

Horror is sometimes a difficult genre to persuade people to watch. Many people make a blanket claim to never watch horror movies, but to those people I offer up Fright Night as a gateway into the genre. This movie strikes a great balance between more comedic or light hearted elements along with sinister horror. Most of the levity comes from Colin Farrell leaning into and really hamming it up as the movies antagonist.

I often suggest this as a party movie around Halloween because I think it fits the vibe well without being overly terrifying. I was reminded of the 2007 remake of The Rear Window called Disturbia when watching this. Both movies have a similar level of suspense and the same style of plot beats. If you liked Disturbia I think you would also like this.

I should be clear that this movie gets a recommendation from me and a favorite badge, but is still not an extremely good movie. For me, it hits the sweet spot of being a gateway movie to introduce people to horror as well as fitting the bill perfectly for a movie to watch in mid-to-late October, but it’s not exactly “art”. The reviews you will find for it online are mixed.

Thoughts

Colin Farrell’s Performance

What makes this movie work for me is how much Colin Farrell hams up his performance. His character is cartoonishly evil to the point where the audience can have fun and stop stressing about the more thriller aspects of the film.

At the start of the movie, the characters have the same opinion about vampires as the audience: namely that they don’t exist. This adds an element of suspense as Charley first doesn’t believe his friend’s suspicions. Later, he is faced with the same problem of convincing his mother and girlfriend that Jerry really is a vampire and it feels like they aren’t going to believe him.

To the schlocky, cheesy rescue comes Colin Farrell who’s next move after being denied an invitation is to explode their house. From that point on the movie becomes mostly a fun romp as Jerry shows off his vampiric powers and we go from fun set piece to fun set piece. The movie doesn’t miss an opportunity for Colin Farrell to do something comically vampiric or to drop some corny one-liner.

Vampiric “Realism”

I appreciate that this movie pays close attention to the aspects of vampire lore. There’s a significant portion of the plot devoted to talking about killing vampires as well as the limitations of vampire powers. Not being able to enter their home without an invitation is a great example, but I think most of the major vampire tropes have at least a small call out.

Just to name a few we have: vampiric seduction in the night club scene, vampires “turning” characters, sunlight killing vampires, garlic and crosses, vampiric immortality, vampire thralls, and loads of discussion about the various ways to kill vampires. There are even some jokes about Twilight thrown in just to make sure all of their bases are covered. I appreciate that they made the movie chock-a-block full of vampire lore, and used those discussions for jokes and fun action set pieces.

The most fun part of the movie in my opinion is when the vampires are attacking them in Peter Vincent’s pent house. The scene gives Amy and Charley an opportunity to throw every vampire killing technique in the book at them. It sets up a super corny bit of dialog about silver bullets only working on werewolves which I enjoyed. It’s also fun to see the payoff for all of the ways that Peter Vincent explains one could kill a vampire in a preceding scene.