Fright Night 2011

Fright Night was not the film I expected it to be. I'd heard good things about it from Roger Ebert and TV Tropes, but I didn't think it would be as good as it was, allow me to fill you in.

The story is deceptively simple to say it's such a good film, a teenager named Charley (Played by the guy who played Kyle Reese in Terminator Salvation apparently.), after a series of incidents, suspects his next door neighbour Jerry (Colin Farrel) of being a Vampire, which is an easy assumption to make seeing as he never steps into the sunlight and can't enter a residence he hasn't been invited into. Speaking of which, the Vampire entrance rule always did interest me and made me wonder why I hadn't heard it in more stories, I first heard of it in Let Me In where it was used interestingly, and again here, where it is a recurring plot point that a vampires can't enter people's houses, and the rule is played exactly like a rule, something that can be bent. Such as a scene early on where he enters an abandoned house and explains he can enter it because there's nobody to invite him in, and of course one very funny way of breaking the rule halfway through.

One of the film's main strengths in my opinion is the casting, Colin Farrel plays an extremely scary vampire even before you see him do anything, obviously you know he's a vampire from the start but he seems scary even when doing something entirely innocent such as asking his neighbour for a beer or doing some carpentry. He holds himself in a very scary manner, suggesting himself to be very powerful and intelligent without actually doing anything that would suggest so.

A second great casting choice is David Tennant as Peter Vincent, stage magician, vampire expert and TV personality, I held onto his every word because when he spoken, you knew that he knew what he was talking about. Obviously this is because of his experience in playing The Doctor, so I would naturally pay attention to any character he plays, he even exhibits several Doctor-like characteristic, such as the same accent, knowledge of things unexplainable to humans, acting the centre of attention to disguise his dark and troubled past, and even saying "Well...." the exact same way. At the same time though, he is clearly playing this role to move away from being typecast as The Doctor, as his character swears a lot, is very cowardly, hiding away at the first sign of a Vampires and fleeing when the opportunity arises.

The story is very interesting, it goes to a lot of places I did not expect it to take, which I won't spoil, and though none of the scares really scared me, I still found it very thrilling.

The film is not the greatest film of all time, despite not being able to think of any criticisms. But I would entirely recommend watching it, I myself could watch it lots of times, which I can't say about many films.