Fright Night

Simple, simple stuff. Vampire moves in next door to kid, nobody believes kid, people go missing, kid recruits occult expert to help him fight vampire, kid fights vampire. The film is an absolute straight-line-from-A-to-B, three-act fantasy thriller. It's not a horror movie, unless for some reason Colin Farrell with Big Teef scares you; horror is about the terrible things that cannot be faced, whereas a monster movie like this is all about using a bit of ingenuity to stand up to the bully.

So that's what it is; is it any good? Yes it is. I mean, it's not The Lost Boys, but it's in the same ballpark. Anton Yelchin is good as the high school kid with way too much on his plate, and Colin Farell all but steals the film off him as your old-school charming, remorseless killing machine vampire. No fucking shiny vampires in this film, and in fact, they take the piss out of Twilight a few times.

Problems? One major one. David Tennant. What? Heresy? David Tennant's brilliant isn't he? Yes. That's the problem. David Tennant's character is the older guy, the mentor. The Obi Wan to Anton Yelchin's Luke. Only that's not all he is, his character, Peter Vincent, is a leather clad, hard drinking, womanising, quipping stage magician. He's not just Obi Wan, he's Han Solo too. And he's also, let's not be coy about this, The Doctor. Which is not just to say that David Tennant owned the role of The Doctor for four years, and you can't look at him without remembering that, it's also that Peter Vincent is the flaky genius who knows everything and flaps about the place in a really good coat. So yes, he's absolutely great, but in many ways, he leaves Anton Yelchin in the dust, as far as being the hero is concerned. It's like Pirates of the Caribbean; good film, but nobody left that film doing an Orlando Bloom impression. Star Wars got round the fact that Han Solo is awesome by splitting him and Luke up after the first movie. PotC basically didn't solve the problem, and increasingly sidelined Orlando Bloom to the point of him disappearing.

The latter is increasingly likely in this film; once he arrives, David Tennant doesn't take over the film, but you do want him to. I kind of found myself resenting the fact that the script inevitably sidelines him. So in that sense, the film fails to be satisfying, because really, the wrong character is featured front and centre.