If only to witness Colin Farrell languidly wipe thick red blood off his face with the back of his hand, “Fright Night” is worth a few minutes of your time.
What Farrell’s doing slumming it as the vampire-next-door in this intermittently amusing remake of the 1985 cult hit is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the actor suddenly looked up and noticed it’s been a long time since he’s been in any kind of commercial hit. But he certainly has a good time with the part of Jerry Dandridge, a vampire so confident in his sexual magnetism that he barely lifts a sharp-nailedfinger to lure his prey. There’s none of the whiny angst of Robert Pattinson in “Twilight”; none of the gym-pumped, soft-core smarm of Alexander Skarsgard on “True Blood.” Farrell moves slowly and deliberately, lifting his nostrils delicately when he sniffs out a kill, savoring the taste of blood on his lips. He’s the sociopath as food critic.
A shame there’s nothing nearly so original anywhere else in the update, despite likable Anton Yelchin as the teen target Charley and Toni Collette (also mysteriously slumming it) as his mom.
The movie springs to life when Charley visits Peter Vincent (British actor David Tennant), the Las Vegas magician whose ability to kill vampires may be more than just illusion. In the original, the role was a late-night horror-movie TV host, played by Roddy McDowall. Channeling Mick Jagger (or maybe just Russell Brand), Tennant spins it in a clever new direction — a jaded superstar, perpetually drunk on Midori, who doesn’t exactly want the redemption being offered.
Mostly, though, “Fright Night” — filmed in 3-D, so you can duck when the good guys try to drive stakes through the vampires’ hearts — plods along, never generating enough momentum or charm to keep us fully engaged. The PG-13 rating precludes the film from exploring any truly dicey terrain — who wants to see a vampire movie for tweens?(Christopher Kelly,
McClatchy Newspapers)
