MoviesSome Came Running by Glenn Kenny

Bite me, it's the current cinema.

By August 17, 2011January 12th, 20268 Comments

01

So this remake of Fright Night turns out to be kind of a piss­er; who’d uh thunk it? Colin Farrell’s hav­ing a time, as is David Tennant; Anton Yelchin’s now poised to take all the good troubled-post-adolescent roles Jesse Eisenberg’s get­ting too old for; Imogen Poots, nice kid. And I also dug the gore and the shame­lessly shame­less 3D stuff. I did­n’t wanna get too inside base­ball about it in my review for MSN Movies, but I cred­it this pleas­ant sur­prise largely to exec pro­du­cer Michael DeLuca, who, as a fel­low crit observed on the way out, has “good qual­ity con­trol.” Fun. Less fun is that One Day num­ber, con­sidered here. 

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8 Comments

  • haice says:
    August 17, 2011 at 11:36 pm

    This review reminds me of Jay Cocks at Time magazine in the early 70s doing geni­us work with­in the element.

  • lipranzer says:
    August 18, 2011 at 12:47 am

    Despite your enthu­si­asm for FRIGHT NIGHT – I liked the ori­gin­al well enough, but not enough that I see a remake as sac­ri­lege – I must admit I imme­di­ately became skep­tic­al when I saw Marti Noxon was involved. I’m not one of those who thinks she’s to blame for everything that went bad on the TV ver­sion of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, but she cer­tainly has­n’t proven her­self over time.

  • bill says:
    August 18, 2011 at 3:06 pm

    Colin Farrell’s involve­ment in the FRIGHT NIGHT remake kind of sold me. I like that guy gen­er­ally, and he seemed like such an oddball choice that I just have to go along with it.

  • Claire K. says:
    August 18, 2011 at 4:10 pm

    I like to pre­tend that Marti Noxon is the bizarro-version of Marni Nixon.

  • JF says:
    August 19, 2011 at 1:34 am

    @lipranzer: Hasn’t Noxon been writ­ing for Mad Men? I’d say that proves some­thing. But oth­er­wise I’m hav­ing a hard time think­ing of many Buffy alums besides Joss Whedon who have proven them­selves over time, or been giv­en much of an oppor­tun­ity to do so. E.g., S.M. Gellar seems to get offered parts based on her being the lead act­ress on a WB show rather the act­ress who man­aged to cap­ably pull off both self-conscious screw­ball com­edy and the pain­fully acute emo­tion­al real­ism of “The Body.” I guess it might be a sim­il­ar situ­ation for some of its writers. There’s not a whole lot of genre-based TV to write for that’s half as smart and ton­ally diverse as Buffy was.
    Noxon was prob­ably one of the more tal­en­ted writers in Whedon’s stable, but she’s acquired this prob­lem­at­ic stand­ing amongst Whedonites/Jossholes because of the time she spent as the show’s helmer in Season 6. Which it’s true does­n’t quite cohere in the way that the best of the earli­er sea­sons do and fea­tures a couple of major mis­judg­ments (like a heavy-handed, reac­tion­ary equa­tion of black magic and hard drugs), but over­all seems to me an admir­ably ambi­tious and boundary-pushing sea­son of TV, my go-to rebut­tal whenev­er any skep­tic­s’ve tried to dis­miss the show as strictly teen-oriented. “Yeah, remem­ber that sea­son of Saved By The Bell where Jessie comes back from the dead, becomes clin­ic­ally depressed, and tries to f*ck the pain away with a tent­at­ively reformed vam­pire who’s into sadie-mazie?” Buffy did­n’t really go south until Season 7, though even there you’ve got the par­tially Noxon-penned and just-awesome “Conversations With Dead People.”
    All of which is a round­about and nerdy way to say I might have to see this.

  • Josh Ralske says:
    August 19, 2011 at 2:33 am

    I have no prob­lem with Season 6 of Buffy, and enjoyed the earli­er Fright Night ok as a teen, tho it was cheesy. I don’t get how people form these intense attach­ments, even as kids, to things like The Smurfs and Transformers and Fright Night, but whatever. I sup­pose I’ll feel dif­fer­ently when the Gilligan’s Island movie comes out and they change Gilligan’s hat or something.
    This Fright Night was trashy fun. Not par­tic­u­larly ambi­tious, but done in the right kinda nasty spir­it. And there were little moments like his strip­per neigh­bor hold­ing up her fin­ger to her lips that reached a little deep­er. Or Ed, not a funny-ha-ha geek, but genu­inely resent­ful and angry. As I wa– um, ima­gine such teens might actu­ally be.
    Didn’t enjoy the 3D much, though.

  • Donna M. says:
    August 19, 2011 at 5:17 am

    I won’t hold your age against you. I loved the ori­gin­al Fright Night. In fact, I have the soundtrack for the movie. When I found out they were mak­ing a remake of this clas­sic movie, I was excited until I found out that Colin Farrell was play­ing the part of Jerry. Unless you saw the ori­gin­al movie when you were a teen, you can­not pos­sib­ley under­stand the draw this movie holds for a cer­tain age group. I do not know if I will go and see the movie. I can­not ima­gine a more seduct­ive vam­pire than Chris Sarandon.

  • hamletta says:
    August 20, 2011 at 2:12 am

    Aaahh, but Donna M., I was a teen in the ’70s, and I remem­ber Chris Sarandon as the perv in LIPSTICK, and I’ve had a hard time stom­ach­ing him since.
    Repeated view­ings of THE PRINCESS BRIDE help, though.