Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities

Lot 36

Director – Guillermo Navarro

Writers – Regina Corrado, based on an original story by Guillermo del Toro 

Stars – Tim Blake Nelson, Sebastian Roché, Elpidia Carrillo

Graveyard Rats

Director – Vincenzo Natali

Writers – Guillermo del Toro, based on a short story by Henry Kuttner 

Stars – David Hewlett, Alexander Eling, Ish Morris

The Autopsy

Director – David Prior

Writers – David S. Goyer, Michael Shea, based on the short story by Guillermo del Toro

Stars – F. Murray Abraham, Glynn Turman, Luke Roberts

The Outside

Director - Ana Lily Amirpour

Writers - Haley Z. Boston, Emily Carroll based on a short story by Guillermo del Toro

Stars – Kate Micucci, Martin Starr 

Pickman’s Model

Director – Keith Thomas

Writers - Lee Patterson, Guillermo del Toro based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft 

Stars – Ben Barnes, Crispin Glover, Oriana Leman

Dreams in the Witch House

Director – Catherine Hardwicke

Writers – Mika Watkins, Guillermo del Toro based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft

Stars – Rupert Grint, Ismael Cruz Cordova, DJ Qualls

The Viewing

Director – Panos Cosmatos

Writers – Panos Cosmatos, Aaron Stewart-Ahn, Guillermo del Toro

Stars – Peter Weller, Steve Agee, Eric André

The Murmuring

Director – Jennifer Kent

Writers – Jennifer Kent, based on a short story by Guillermo del Toro

Stars – Essie Davis, Andrew Lincoln, Greg Ellwand

‘Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities’ is a handsomely mounted series, containing many vivid, memorable performances and set pieces. It’s a much more intriguing and impressive selection than the cartoonery and scrappiness of ‘Creepshow’, and arguably more consistent (different aims, of course). Del Toro introduces each episode, pulling an item from the puzzle-box-like cabinet that triggers the story forthcoming and names the director. This generosity also acts as a badge of quality, for this is a bunch of pretty esteemed filmmakers. Ultimately, it’s a cut above as a selection. 

In the first episode, ‘Lot 36’, Tim Blake Nelson’s angry performance is all. It’s directed by Guillermo Navarro who has collaborated with Del Toro several times previously and is chiefly a cinematographer (he did ‘The Devil’s Bone’, ‘Hellboy’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, for example). The setting of a storage facility and Nelson’ abrasiveness as Nick Appleton are the hooks, but the narrative is a bit front-loaded; meaning when things take a turn for the supernatural, it seems like it hasn’t left itself enough time. The monster is the kind beset by CGI and it’s just a bit average and underwhelming, despite a superior adult tone.

Vincenzo Natali’s ‘Graveyard Rats’ is the kind of genre fare that, having established its protagonist as somewhat reprehensible, sets about gleefully putting him through the slapstick horror wringer. Rats, claustrophobia, taphophobia and more horrors are poured onto greedy, graverobbing Masson’s head (a game David Hewitt) to absurdist amounts. Natali – who established his genre credentials with ‘Cube’, ‘Splice’ and many episodes of genre series – channels his inner-Raimi and delivers one of those wild horror rides that fits just nicely in the 40 minute format. Nothing original but Natali’s direction delivers a better and more enjoyable slice of EC comic-style Gothic terror than many. The dental examination of a drowned corpse was one to make me wince.

And if corpses being messed with makes you queasy, then ‘The Autopsy’ will hit your buttons. David Prior’s ‘The Empty Man’ had plenty of genre savvy and mashing-up and ‘The Autopsy’ exhibits further his sure hand. Starts off in earnest looking like a police procedural (a serial killer tale, perhaps) and then moves into realms more … otherworldy. It helps that it has scored a seasoned veteran like F. Murray Abraham as the lead, especially when he’s working solo for the most part and can carry it all effortlessly. The tone shifts subtly and the shocks creep up accumulating in a go-for-broke gruesome ending. A full bloodied horror that gives equal attention to creeps and squirms and, wherever else it goes, has no intention of pulling punches.

It's true that this series doesn’t really try with its titles. However, Ana Lily Amirpour’s ‘The Outside’ is the one that hits something heartfelt and horrific more than any other entry, It has an almost Joe Dante feel, in that Dante was good at surface gloss and the truly creepy in equal amounts, at serving up acidic slabs of brightly hued satire. Ana Lily Amirpour hit renown with ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’, so you know you’re in safe hands with the social commentary. Kate Micucci gives a brave performance as a woman who finds the pack of pretty but vacuous work colleagues fascinating and impenetrable and just wants to belong. Martin Starr’s performance as her husband is wonderfully warm and humane, and between these actors there’s a hook that goes deep. It’s the episode that has haunted me most and has begged that I mull it over. The shock did hit hard (oh yeah, of course: taxidermy) after the surreal turns had surprised, and it eventually ends up as tragedy. 

Keith Thomas’ ‘Pickwick’s Model’ has a winning period setting as an upcoming artist stumbles upon another whose paintings, in typical Lovecraftian fashion, acts as insights or instigations into untold otherworldly horrors. Or something. A chief pleasure of Lovecraft is that much of the horror remains abstract, of the imagination, untouchable. In visual adaptations, this can be a muddle, but this, as many are are prone, goes for what gross-out it can find for an anchor. Get past Crispin Glover’s distracting accent and it’s an entertaining if undemanding creepy tale.

But Catherine Hardwicke’s ‘Dreams in the Witch House’ is a depiction of goggle-eyed Rupert Grint stumbling through a Lovecraftian mess. Period recreation, the scary and the goofy and the maudlin barely hold together, leading to an end note that we don’t really care about. But it least it can be credited with the best title. 

Panos Cosmatos’ ‘The Viewing’, however, puts things firmly back in the singular vision vain. His beautifully composed shots, the auditory immersion breaking out into synth numbers to hit the pleasure zones, his broad use of colour plus his usual tweak of psychedelia – a kind of sunburnt trippiness – gives the simmering build-up and escalation a somewhat truer sensation of Lovecraftian horror, of meddling in and unleashing unimaginable horrors. One of Cosmatos’ dodgy guru types (Weller on fine form) gathers a group of artists and scientists together to try and penetrate the secrets of something he has acquired. The last image of set free horror is one to linger long after. 

Jennifer Kent’s ‘The Murmuring’ is the nadir of the series’ titles; yes it’s alluding to the murmurations of birds as well as ghostly voices, but even so. It gets all the marks for performances of Essie Davis and Andrew Lincoln and an increasingly unsettling build-up. Kent knows that jump-scares don’t haunt, even if she knows that noises in the night do. But as with her breakthrough triumph, ‘The Babadook’ there isn’t much subtext or thematic subtlety, with all the analogies pretty upfront. If the slow burn ultimately arrives at something quite routine - horror being a way to process grief, etc - there are enough creaks and bangs, empathy and quiet ghosts to hit the mark.

Bones and All

 

Bones and All

Director – Luca Guadagnino

Writers – David Kajganich (screenplay by), Camille DeAngelis (based on the novel by)

2022, Italy-United States

Stars – Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Mark Rylance

 

All I knew was that Luca Guadagnino was directing and that this was covered on the Evolution of Horror podcast. I knew nothing else, and that the poster looked like a coming-of-age drama but being featured on EOH peaked my interest even more. So, thoroughly clueless, the opening shocker came as a pleasant and gruesome surprise. Oh, so this’ll be the real deal, I thought. And it is that too.

 

[And here’s the spoiler alert.]

 

Then Maren (Taylor Russel) is left by her father and starts a road movie to find her mother. Then she meets a tour de force performance of ambiguous creepiness from Mark Rylance – a balancing act he keeps up right up to the end – and then meets Timothée Chalamet, translating their otherness as a junky hustler’s odyssey. This otherness, outsiderness, is what they call being an “eater”. Then they meet Michael Stuhlbarg, who matches Rylance creep-for-creep, possible threat for possible threat. It becomes obvious that this tale is almost as freewheeling as a Jarmusch ramble, except a little more control of the pace and a little trimming might have stopped the Young Adult source starting to dominate. This is despite the fact that the editing will chop short scenes to keep the flow (the opening montage of the empty school hallways that begins the film immediately set the tone and got me). And yes, we are in the realm where screenwriter David Kajganich says he doesn’t really think it’s a horror and seems a little disappointed when Mike Muncer says that’s how he sees it (Evolution of Horror podcast). Horror has long been gleefully eloquently mashing-up genres so somewhat dreamy coming-of-age horror for strong stomachs really shouldn’t be seen as beneath intelligence or sophisticated emotion.

 

But the horror moments are strong stuff, and the film-makers conviction that it had to be was why it had to be independently financed, surely why the supporting cast is so, so impressive – everyone gets a memorable showpiece – and why the YA tropes don’t quite come to dominate. Indeed, Guadagnino will fade out the dialogue when it threatens to get bad and leaves Reznor and Ross’ score or a moody song take over, which simultaneously circumnavigates cheesiness but steers unapologetically into wordless melodrama. As well as the eating.

 

Perhaps a little too slacker, a little too YA for those looking for straight-out horror, but it’s a fascinating wandering road movie horror with the dangerous youths just trying to mimic normality and fit in. That it takes its potentially adolescent concept of all-consuming love equating to cannibalism means it is never quite sentimental or silly - and the players steer clear of this too - grounding their moral conflicts in the gore set-pieces. And yes, as is typical of the road movie genre, it’s quite often a series of vignettes and for that occasionally it feels it isn’t quite gelling. But the cast are fantastic, it’s beautifully shot, Guadagnino leaning on the poetic-romantic and gonzo-gruesome in equal measure, and although it is not poignant or revelatory in its portrayal of outsiders, its meandering nature means you never quite know which genre it’s going to pit stop next. It also means you can take the morsels you want from it, romantic, mood piece, actor's showcase, arthouse road movie or horror.

Crimes of the Future

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

Writer & Director - David Cronenberg

2022 ~ Canada

Stars - Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart

Judging a film on what has gone before surely only goes so far. Mark Kermode’s review has been reduced to mostly one just namechecking the obvious nods to Cronenberg’s previous works as if this mitigates ‘Crimes of the Future’s worth. But Cronenberg is totally self-aware and deliberate – oh, ‘Videodrome’ TVs; ‘Dead Ringers’ wish for a beauty pageant for internal organs, ‘Shivers’ autopsy; a chair that could be furniture from ‘Naked Lunch’, etc. – which surely means he is slotting this into the tapestry of what he originated. The ae debate. ‘Crimes of the Future’ even takes its title from Cronenberg’s earliest works; the conspiracies and underground rebel groups are the kind from ‘Scanners’ and the dirty dilapidated rooms and backstreets remind me of Interzone (‘Naked Lunch’). Saying “This is just like his earlier stuff and that was better” doesn’t really say much about how it therefore relates to Cronenberg’s oeuvre, or its independent merits, o. Easter egg spotting doesn’t illuminate more than homages, influences and derivatives. But when the artist is drawing from his own extensive back catalogue, and when that artist is Cronenberg, there’s more at play.  

If this namechecking is meant as a criticism of thematic and artistic repetition, and therefore inferiority and stunted artistic growth, I would argue that this too doesn’t quite enlighten: there’s Tarantino’s or Scorsese’s recourse to ensemble criminals, or Schrader’s lost male existential angst, or Bergman’s existential concerns, Ozu’s family dramas, or, etc. And if anyone has established his themes and held them close throughout a long career, it's Cronenberg. He is even credited with forming a subgenre known as body-horror.

Rather, that Cronenberg can still capture the spirit of the muse that set him off appeared a little remarkable to me, rather than reductive, considering how singular it is and with the evolution of his extensive filmography. ‘Crimes of the Future’ is just as talky, uneven, occasionally disturbing, visceral and not-quite-gelling, a little confusing, a little random, viscerally inventive and a little prescient as his earliest body-horrors. As soon as Mortenson said, “My bed needs new software,” I chuckled, because knew I was in Cronenberg’s world and therefore in safe hands for a somewhat messy palette of provocative ideas firing off here and there. But what we also have is the latter-day Cronenberg inclusion of pretty/slicker visuals and elegance smoothing down the scruffiness of exploitation. The opening shot of a boy framed with a sunken ship is a gorgeous holiday picture subversion. Then he eats a waste bin and the oddness is introduced to the narrative. That’s the surprise that sets questions; and then the mother murders the boy and that’s a shock. Then cut to a quite beautiful medium shot of an odd levitating bed-mechanism in which Mortensen is moaning in his sleep.

The husk of a ship also appears later as the backdrop to Saul Tester’s (Mortenson) clandestine meetings. Throughout there are clues to a ruined world that is hinted at but never explicated. The clues scattered around are what provide fun and discussion when trying to figure it out afterwards. The capsized society signified by the boat is at odds with the expense and luxury of the artists we follow, who indulge in body self-mutilation in a manifestation of cultural confusion of finding the human race has turned immune to pain. But there’s an obvious divide between the poverty and disenfranchisement alluded to by those grubby backstreets and the hipsters that are our protagonists.

It is the questions left hanging, the pictures you can extrapolate and paint that makes this more that sum of its parts. It’s focused on one subculture’s response to the next phase of human evolution, but its proposition that Those In Power will always try and thwart this and any arguable progression that strikes true. It also has a prod at Look At me Art culture without recourse to mobile phones. 

But then there’s some nudity which, for the first time in a Cronenberg film, felt to me to be gratuitous. And although some enjoy Kristen Stewart’s performance seemingly for camp value, its wink and neediness seem out-of-tune with the careful calibrations of tone elsewhere. But Cronenberg was always a little messy and uneven at times. Raw is the word, even if the ideas are serious and dense. 

That is, to say, even if you judge this lesser Cronenberg, ‘Crimes of the Future’ is still fully spiced with a headful of ideas that interrogate culture, evolution and technology and reaches existential and exploitational ruminations characteristic of this singular director. What this film tells is that Cronenberg is no less an interrogator of these themes than he ever was at this later point in his career.

FrightFest Halloween 2022

FrightFest Halloween 2022

 

Tripping the Dark Fantastic

Director: LG White.

With: Simon Boswell, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Dario Argento, LG White.

UK 2022. 93 mins.

 

Simon Boswell in concert at Earth Theatre, London in 2021, with each track coming with some backstory from Boswell and interviews with a few director cameos. I have always loved ‘Santa Sangre’ and ‘Hardware’ scores (the former being one of my all-time favourite films) and the performances here are impressive with Boswell’s 12-piece band, Caduta Massi. Stepping in for Goblin – who had to cancel due to COVID – Boswell sticks a coffin on stage and concentrates on his horror scores. I still don’t care for ‘Demons’, and there’s some dodgy lyrics, but it’s a wonderful mix of rock-out and classical approaches via circus tunes, because Boswell covers a lot of ground and styles.

 

I thought a concert film/documentary was a curious/audacious way to start the Frightfest Halloween day, but I was thoroughly entertained. LG White – Boswell’s wife – is still editing and throws in lots of overlapping visuals to try to capture the stage activity and live video backgrounds featuring cameos (Iggy Pop! Argento!) and film clips. It’s a fine presentation.

 

Freeze

Director: Charlie Steeds.

With: Johnny Vivash, Ricardo Freitas, David Lenik, Jake Watkins.

UK 2022. 90 mins

 

Starts out promising a low-budget ‘The Terror’ Lovecraftian monster movie, which is all good. There’s admirable ambition, the Norwegian ice-scapes are breath-taking, but there’s some dubious acting and, worse, the monsters are somewhat ill-served. Not only is the fun design given away immediately (no build-up here - but just look at it!), and perhaps we can step back from questioning their logic (assumedly they are amphibious monsters that get their fishy food diving under the ice? Seals? Bears?), but their squat-walking really doesn’t seem to be any sense (I mean, they’re in a cavernous environment).

 

Gnomes

Director: Ruwan Suresh Heggelman.

With: Moïse Trustfull, Duncan Meijiring.

6mins.

 

I can report that Paul McEvoy, once of the FrightFest founders, sat near me and laughed his socks off to this. The main source of humour to this swift and hilarious short is the splatter excess. The designs of the gnomes and their attack machines are delightful. It’s a show-piece kill segment that doesn’t waste time in being outrageous.

 

Mad Heidi

Directors: Johannes Hartmann, Sandro Klopfstein.

With: Casper Van Dien, David Schofield, Alice Lucy, Leon Herbert

Switzerland 2022. 92 mins.

 

A parody frontloaded with its best gags, but then gets districted by women’s prison satire and then weighed-down by increasingly leaning on plot rather than jokes. Nevertheless, agreeable enough fun, powered mostly by Casper Van Dien’s consistently funny villainous performance.

 

Outpost

Director: Joe Lo Truglio.

With: Beth Dover, Dallas Roberts, Dylan Baker, Ato Essandoh.

USA 2022. 84 mins.

 

Takes a moment to settle down and make sense, but soon settles in to a seemingly straightforward tale of a woman trying to escape a troubled past of domestic abuse by becoming a fire marshal atop a forest lookout. A film unafraid to takes its time, strong on empathy and performances – Dylan Baker as the prickly neighbour and Ato Essandoh as Kate’s taciturn boss were personal favourites.       

 

It was obvious from the Q&A afterwards that Joe Lo Truglio wanted to be as sympathetic to his approach to PTSD with a potentially conventionally conventional thriller, and it is this that distinguishes ‘Outpost’ and motivates as well as allows for its narrative surprises.

 

On The Edge

Directors: Jen & Sylvia Soska.

With: Aramis Sartorio, Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska, Mackenzie Gray.

Canada 2022. 114 mins.

 

Aramis Sartorio gives his all while the Soskas pose and pout their performances. Any message about female empowerment is filtered into sadism-revenge fantasy as a family man that books a dominatrix in a hotel gets more than he bargained for. This sadism-revenge agenda also guided the Soska’s far superior ‘American Mary’ but the body-horror fascination there is replaced by two-bit Catholic morals here. Anal rape is the main source of humour. But even more egregiously is the badly recorded diagetic dialogue and amateurish sound mix that makes much incomprehensible. Which is problematic for a film that is constantly talking at you. Eventually it devolves into strobe lighting and bible verse and a simplistic morality play that makes a nonsense of any of its transgressive and feminist intent.

Look to 'Promising Young Woman', 'The Beta Test' or even 'The Special' for more nuanced, troubling and fun interrogations of these themes.

 

The Offering

Director: Oliver Park.

With: Nick Blood, Allan Corduner, Paul Kaye, Emm Wiseman.

USA 2022. 93 mins.

 

Introducing the film, director Oliver Park said it portrayed beat-for-beat terrifying nightmares he’d had since he was a toddler. One can only imagine that his nightmares came with bangs and blares and musical stings. Certainly I anticipated a more surrealist, nightmare-logic to the film, but what followed was a far more conventional horror. It relies too much on jump-scares, which quickly become tiresome, despite being distinguished by its Jewish family drama and folklore context, good performances and funeral home setting. 

______

Favourites: ‘The Outpost’, ‘Gnomes’.

Surprised I liked: ‘Tripping the Dark Fantastic’.

Sad that: I ended up being a little indifferent to ‘Mad Heidi’ after the opening had been such parody bonkers and fun. 

Blonde

 

Blonde

Director – Andrew Dominik

Writers – Andrew Dominik (written for the screen by), Joyce Carol Oates (based on the novel by)

Stars- Ana de Armas, Lily Fisher, Julianne Nicholson

 

Well, you’re not going to make many friends with such an interpretation, surely. With ‘Chopper’, Andrew Dominick was on safer ground with an irredeemable subject; and ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’ had the advantage of historical distance and being about criminals too. But Norma Jeans was a much more controversial and tricky choice, for Marilyn Monroe is much beloved. I was never one for the breathlessly ditzy blonde sex-bomb type and if nothing else the film established that Norma herself wasn’t much for it either. A criticism is that the Norma Jeane here doesn’t have much agency, but surely that’s the point. She is totally defined, concocted, manipulated, and abused by the male gaze. Projection is a central theme. And not every woman is an ass-kicker who can overcome and march defiantly towards the camera. This Norma is a far milder affair, not stupid but not bold enough to fight the overwhelming odds against her.

 

But make no mistake that this is all fiction, a fantasia, a somewhat sleazy imagining of a superstar’s sordid start and fall. Based upon Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, this should not be mistaken for a biopic and Dominick doesn’t pretend that’s the intent: it’s all impressionism and arty, dreamy and pretty, moving between black-and-white and colour at a whim. In this imagining, Norma Jeane’s happiest time is her marriage to Norman Mailer. In fact, it is this section where we get a little beneath the skin of the character, with her first meeting with Norman Mailer being the film’s highlight, for it effortlessly conjures how men underestimate her and her charm. Soon, Mailer mentions that she has no cruelty in her, and it’s hard not to think that these kind of insights come a little late in the film. Up until then, there’s a sense of speed-walking through Marilyn touchpoints, scared of not hitting all the beats. Although arguably this drags out the running time and rushes some of the rhythm. Arguably, this also stymies Ana de Armas’s performance as Norma in places, although she is always compelling, staggering and coping through the black-and-white Golden Age of Hollywood, sometimes with some exploitation nudity.

 

It reminded me of Mickey Keating’s ‘Psychopaths’. And perhaps that’s a clue as to the edginess and atmosphere of the film, that it would remind of such an arthouse horror oddity that’s about performance, artificiality and something unhinged. Certainly, Mark Kermode calls ‘Blonde’ a horror film. It’s to do with the tone of a woman’s fall, of the exploitation and tragedy. David Lynch is often namechecked when talking about ‘Blonde’, and certainly Cave and Ellis’ score hits on a ‘Twin Peaks’ Badalamenti feel at times. And again, to reiterate that this is a fiction based upon the narrative of Marilyn Monroe as victim. Marilyn Monroe through ‘Inland Empire’. When we get to a close-up of Norma fellating the President and then to the abortion, it even touches on Gasper Noe provocation.

 

There’s plenty of play and provocation in ‘Blonde’, and it’s apparent it doesn’t want to be everyone’s friend. There’s as much exploitation as artistry, and the lurid touches is to expose the seedy side of Tinsel Town, but there’s also a sense of having its cake and eating it. Where a real person/icon is involved, this can prove problematic, which is where all the accusations of misogyny come from, such a Stacey Henley’s condemnation. Perhaps a conventional biopic by Guy Maddin would look like this, but that would probably lean towards the humanitarian worldview rather than victimhood. Although its aesthetic goes all-in in a way that insists on its fiction, ‘Blonde’ hues so close to the Monroe-Jeane beats so that you can’t deny that making misery porn of a real life, all-but denying her agency and looking like you are joining in the objectification, leaves a somewhat sour aftertaste.

Fright Night (1985 & 2011)

Fright Night

Writer & Director – Tom Holland

1985, USA

Stars – Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale, Amanda Bearse

 

A quintessential, trend-setting horror of the ‘80s, with this and especially ‘The Lost Boys’ bringing the John Hughes sensibility to the genre and making vampires teen-friendly and a rites-of-passage ordeal. The other one: ‘Near Dark’ was for the counter-culture kids. This may be the lesser of the three but Holland, though nowhere near as distinctive as Bigelow or Schumacher, nevertheless exhibits a sure grip on tone between genuine horror treats and the slightly tongue-in-cheek/satirical leanings. This was true of Holland’s ‘Child’s Play’ too.

 

Sarandon is sinister, seductive and svelte as old-fashioned Gothic vampires tend to be when they move in next door, and yet also assuredly modern; Roddy McDowell gives a little of retro-horror class; and Stephen Geoffreys manages to bring pathos to the Annoying Friend role, its excessiveness becoming a tragedy of loneliness. The link between death and sex sets it off – losing virginity is interrupted by spying the neighbours disposing of a body – and the obsession with this inspires our all-American boy protagonist’s neglectful behaviour towards his girlfriend. He needs to overcome this association to get on with his life; and/or he must overcome his voyeuristic fascination with the somewhat queer-coded neighbour and his “live-in carpenter” to get on with his sexuality.

 

There’s also an agreeably tendency towards the kinds of practical effects showcases that were defining 80s horror, dipping into werewolf transformations. It’s all very entertaining and enjoyably dated and silly, if nothing more, and features just the most 80s soundtrack.

 

 

Fright Night

Director – Craig Gillespie

Writers – Marti Noxon (screenplay) Tom Holland (story)

2011 – USA, India

Stars – Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, David Tennant, Imogen Poots, Tony Collette

 

If you’re going to do a re-mix, an updating, this version of ‘Fright Night’ does many things right. The cobalt blue of the Eighties has been contemporised for Twenty-First century blue-green night and the vampire certainly has more modern serial killer trimmings. Farrell is mostly menace over charm. Here the vampire called Jerry doesn’t have a “live-in carpenter” and his house is modern chic. In fact. It’s the charlatan/illusionist Peter Vincent who has all the Gothic décor (and in one of the film’s chief gags, a whole armoury of antiques); and in this version David Tennant’s Vincent is crude where Roddy McDowell was hammy.

 

Starts with a good home invasion. Like the original, doesn’t waste too much time with Charley’s nearest-and-dearest disbelieving him: in fact, it’s his disbelieving Ed that is a plot-point, although Ed is probably the most unconvincing portion here. The film finds its own set pieces, the most impressive being when the vampire starts digging up the garden and it escalates from there. The script is savvy enough to have neat touches like when you can’t ride the bike, just hurl it at the escaping car. There’s some under-impressive CGI. There’s the sensation, around this time, that this may actually improve on the original… but it doesn’t quite get there. Nevertheless, it’s decent undemanding horror fun with an above-average cast.