Fright Night 2: New Blood - 0 out of 5
Just one question entered my mind after watching this Direct-to-DVD supposed sequel to the 2011 remake of the 1985 Fright Night. That question was: How the FUCK did this film get made?!?
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| Follow up question: What the hell is with that hair being long on one side? |
According to Wikipedia, Fright Night 2: New Blood is a sequel to the Tenth Doctor and Colin Farrell-infused remake of the incredibly fun Fright Night movie from the 80s but knowing this going into it just makes the movie make no damn sense. To prove this, I will give two synopsizes for the film. One of them will operate under the assumption that it is a sequel to the 2011 film and the other will operate under the flag of what it is more likely to be.
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There was an animated sequence in the film...which, no doubt, ate up most of the
film's budget. |
Charley Brewster (Will Payne) and his no longer a vampire friend “Evil” Ed Bates (Chris Waller) no longer remember that they battled their vampire neighbor Jerry Dandridge and are now learning aboard in Europe. Their sexy professor Gerri Dandridge (Jaime Murray) seems to have a dark secret beyond the fact she has the female version of the already androgynous name "Jerry" and the same last name as the dude in the first one and is actually a deadly vampire who is out to fulfill a menacing prophecy that will make her the ultimate badass vampire. Charley, Ed and Charley’s crush; Amy (Sacha Parkinson), are still suffering amnesia and can’t remember that they already went through this shit with a guy vamp named Jerry (very creative, movie) and they enlist the help of a supernatural hunter named Peter Vincent (Sean Power) who seemingly gave up his life as a Time Lord and as a magician surrounded by naked women in Las Vegas and started a night-vision happy ghost hunting show that looks like it will be a part of the SyFy fall lineup. Vincent, originally skeptical and an admitted fraud, refuses to help but, eventually, agrees to help Charley do this whole run around all over again.
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| "The cleavage denotes that I'm sexy..." |
Okay, now here’s the synopsis under the assumption that this film is actually a reboot of the remake (because it seems more like that)…
Charley Brewster (Will Payne), a teenager who in no way has ever dealt with vampires in his entire life, is heading to Europe with his annoying and completely unlikeable friend who, despite obviously being the punching bag of both bullies and nerds alike, calls himself “Evil” Ed Bates (Chris Waller) and together they are going to learn about the history of vampires—a dark species from mythology that they, I repeat, have never dealt with before—and, along the way, Charley hopes to get into the pants of his crush Amy (Sacha Parkinson). As the classes start, Brewster starts to worry that something mysterious is up with his sexy professor Gerri Dandridge (Jaime Murray) and he soon learns that she is a member of the blood-sucking undead (remember, until this time, he never actually seen a vampire). Frightened, he asks for help from a reality show ghost hunter by the name of Peter Vincent (Sean Power) and seeks out how to stop the evil professor.
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| Apparently fighting sexy vampires smells very unpleasant. |
Even operating under the idea that this film is more reboot of the franchise rather than sequel to the remake, the film makes little sense. In reality, I think someone wrote a shitty little vampire film about a sexy professor who sucks blood at night and is discovered by one of her students and some asshole film producer (in-between snorts of blow) said, “Let’s tweak that script and make a Fright Night sequel. Name recognition will at least get us some rentals at RedBox.” That’s the only theory I can come up with that explains why this is called a sequel and none of the original actors return or any reference to the first film is made (I don’t feel like Google-ing the actual reason).
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| "In 1991 I found my perfect haircut and I've stuck with it ever since." |
Other than the fact the film is nothing but a vacuous attempt at cashing in on a cult classic film with a decent remake, there is nothing about this film that works and is actually a painful lesson in piss-poor storytelling and filmmaking. Ignoring for a moment that this movie was clearly re-engineered in order to be a half-assed sequel, nothing about this movie’s story makes much sense beyond the fact it is just a generic vampire film. Everything about it just reeks of a lack of effort—mostly the endless recycled theme of having the main vampire--who, I remind you is “sexy.” Every synopsis of the film has to make that distinction clear--be something of somewhat import that is out to fulfill some bullshit prophecy so they can blah blah blah. Why is there also some ancient prophecy these vampires are trying to unlock?
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Script writer: "Okay, so the professor is really sexy. I mean REALLY sexy..."
Movie producer: "So you've explained for the last twenty minutes..." |
Things only get worse in the script as it is obvious that the man who wrote it doesn’t understand how teenagers talk. This is very evident with the “Evil” Ed character who, obnoxious acting aside, sounds like how an out-of-touch, coke addicted movie executive would ORDER a writer to write a teen. I’m almost entirely certain that “Evil” Ed actually said “cowabunga” in the film.
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The guy playing "Evil" Ed always looked like an annoying asshole in the movie...
even when he was being turned into a member of the living dead. |
That brings me to the next bit of half-assing this movie is guilty of: really, really bad acting. I get that the film is Direct-to-DVD and the budget is probably just a little larger than the spending money your mom gave you when you took the school field trip to the museum but do you have to make it so damn obvious with your casting choices, Fright Night 2? I already mentioned how bad Chris Waller was as “Evil” Ed but how can your movie succeed when your main character; Charley Brewster, is played by the male equivalent of Kristen Stewart? The entire movie is this lame duck with the hair cut of a 90s skater standing around out of breath and looking like all he can smell is festering dog shit.
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"Seriously, does anyone else smell that? It's taking my breath away and making
the long part of my stupid hair cut curl." |
I won’t even get started on how the script writer couldn’t juggle making this incarnation of Charley both naïve to the world of vampires AND a reluctant hero (like he's been in two other films) but when your hero looks like he ran a marathon after running only 20 feet and hits the ground when he’s faced with even the weakest of shoves, it’s really freaking hard to feel like you should encourage this character to live.
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"Ow, I was lightly shoved into this chest high pool of liquid and now I'm in pain,
I'm out of breath, I think I smell poo poo and I'm still a complete waste of space." |
The worst, and most painful, actor to endure in this film isn’t, shockingly, Jaime Murray as the main vampire—although she is guilty of looking like she did the film for the paycheck. Instead, it has to be enduring the few short scenes that involve Sean Power as Peter Vincent. The character of Peter Vincent has a rich history of two great actors taking on the role. First off, in 1985, you had Roddy McDowall rocking the Vincent role and then, in 2011, you had the best Doctor EVER take the reigns. In this film, you have a complete nobody who plays the role like he is impersonating Colin Farrell. It’s like the director said, “Sean, we’re doing a ‘by-name-only’ sequel to the Fright Night remake—you know, the one with Colin Ferrell.” Then Powers held up his hand, requesting the director to explain no further, and just wrongly assumed that Ferrell had played the role of Vincent instead of Jerry and decided to do his best impression of the far more talented actor.
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Director: "Um Sean, you do know that Ferrell played the vampire in the remake, right?
Did you even watch the movie?"
Sean Powers: "I looked at the DVD at Walmart. I think I got the idea." |
Fright Night 2: New Blood is just a piece of shit. If it’s truly a sequel that makes no reference to the previous film, it’s a huge piece of shit. If it’s a reboot of the remake retelling the story we already heard less than two years ago, it is an even BIGGER piece of shit. No matter which way you inhale it, this film stinks. The film has no redeeming factors working for it. I couldn’t even make fun of it MST3K-style in order to make the film bearable because it was just that awful and sad to experience.
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Finally, this movie REALLY liked strobe lights and, apparently, vampires can fire
that shit from their mouths (which, I guess, was suppose to be echo location or some shit)
and the resulting strobe actually was painful to the characters. Yes, there was no depth to how
stupid this movie really was. |
Fun Movies
Published:
2013-10-02T16:20:00-07:00
Title:Fright Night 2: New Blood Film Review
Rating:
5 On
22 reviews