Fright Night—Three Thumbs Up

So, I’ve never really been one to like horror films—and it’s not only because I’m not a fan of being scared (although I am a bit of a ‘fraidy cat)—it’s more about the fact that they mostly seem dumb to me. Gore for gore’s sake, weak plots, stupid characters (if one can even call them characters), and teenaged girls running around in their underwear (or less) and screaming. But I was lured into the lair of Fright Night by two factors, or should I say two cute boys—Colin Farrell and Anton Yelchin.

I’ve admired Yelchin as a young actor since the fabulous but underrated TV show Huff and I figured if he was in this, chances were it wasn’t that dumb. And Farrell? Well, even if the movie was dumb, watching him for 90 minutes would be a redeeming quality. ☺

So, I suppose I went in with relatively low but hopeful expectations, and boy was I pleasantly surprised. Because Molly loves lists, here are the top 10 reasons I liked it.

1. The vampires are scary monsters. Seriously scary monsters. No sparkling. 
2. The plot holds together and—there actually is a plot. Sure, the main plot is pretty much: kill the evil vampire and live, but it was a really well structured story. 
3. There were real characters. Well developed characters. Even characters who could have been throw-away stereotypes had some interesting quirks and inconsistencies that made them three dimensional. 
4. The supernatural world holds together. Sure, to pull off a teenaged boy defeats an ancient evil vampire story the writer needs to put some tools and knowledge in the kid’s path to help, but the way those elements were introduced—it made sense and all hung together. 
5. The girls weren’t stupid. The main character’s girlfriend was not only not stupid, she was brave and fought too. She wasn’t just a pretty victim for the hero to save. And we believed why she was with the main character beyond: the geeky guy in a horror movie needs a hot girl to save for no apparent reason reason. Even the neighbour who was basically a walk-on female character, who had maybe two lines, wasn’t a total dumb blonde stereotype. 
6. There were lots of places that made me jump – but there were also lots of seriously funny parts. And not just making fun of the movie, funny. Actually funny. Smart funny. 
7. Minimal TSTL moments. Yes, twice early on in the film characters run up stairs in a house when clearly they should be running out the back door... and I did roll my eyes at the time. But it turned out they actually had reasons to go upstairs, even if they weren’t instantly apparent as they started up the stairs. 
8. Toni Collete is always awesome. (And did I mention Colin Farrell?)
9. A small suburb outside of Las Vegas made a smart setting for a vampire movie—lots of people work at night and sleep during the day, so even blacked out windows aren’t that odd. 
10. It was just plain good fun and how can you not like a teen horror movie where there’s actually character development? 

Phew, I made it to ten. ☺

Basically, throughout the entire movie all I could think of was how well it was done. Then the credits rolled. Written by Marti Noxon. I know that name. She used to write for Buffy. And then it all made sense.

Smart writer = smart screenplay = smart horror movie.

Yes, there was lots of blood and gore (and I saw it in 3D) but I really liked the way it all hung together. Has anyone else seen it?