Sunday, September 28, 2014

Fright Night 2: New Blood (2013)

This is the strangest thing I've seen in a sequel.  It's a remake of the original story, but in a different place.  You go into this expecting an actual sequel, but it's as if none of the other movies happened.  You'd expect people to believe Charlie and his tales of vampires, but everyone is just like, What? No way Charlie, you're a jerk.

Charlie, Evil Ed, and Amy are on a school trip to Romania to study... something.  Charlie keeps seeing this mystery woman making out with people where blood runs down their necks, but no one else sees it or believes him.  The next day in an epilepsy inducing slide show in their class, Charlie discovers that the mysterious woman is their professor.

After seeing her carrying what appears to be a body and floating down to the street from the second story, Charlie decides to investigate.  He doesn't plan well because he's inside her apartment when she comes home. Unfortunately he chooses to hide in the secret passage in the bookcase, and then climbs into the coffin in a room with the bathtub full of blood.  Silly emo-haired Charlie, that's the worst possible place to hide.

The story unfolds pretty much as you'd expect if you've seen Fright Night.  This time Peter Vincent is a paranormal investigator instead of a horror host, and with the location being Romania, Charlies assertion that he's seen a vampire is even less believable, if that's possible.  It's like the boy who cried wolf.

The original Fright Night had charm and a mixture of humor and horror that this one isn't able to find. Evil Ed is incredibly annoying for the first half of the film, but when he decides to help Charlie with his vampire hunting, he becomes manageable.  Peter Vincent is almost a throw away character because he's in it so little.  Overall it was okay but seemed kind of long.

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