Reviewing Jane: Nothing Ever Fatigues Me But Doing What I Do Not Like

In which we review (almost) every film adapted from or inspired by the works of Jane Austen.

Year: 2007

Director: Jeremy Lovering

Cast: Olivia Williams, Imogen Poots, Hugh Bonneville

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

It is no surprise that Jane Austen got the Shakespeare in Love treatment. Another British writer of popular romance works with an interesting historical life? Yeah, of course. There are only two things surprising about filmmakers cranking out a lightly fictionalized biopic of Austen: the first is that they waited almost a decade to make one, and the second is that they made two in the same goddamn year. The much more well-known Becoming Jane graced screens in 2007, shortly followed on British television by today's subject: Miss Austen Regrets.

Although, from the looks of this poster, maybe I made a mistake and I'm reviewing a 90's slasher movie instead.

Miss Austen Regrets, based on historical record, letters, and a lot of sweaty fantasizing, tells the story of the final months in the life of Jane Austen (Olivia Williams, who played Jane Fairfax in the BBC adaptation of Emma). Around the time that she is trying to get Emma published, she is visiting relatives, specifically her niece Fanny (Imogen Poots) who is deciding whether or not she should invite and accept the proposal of her suitor John Plumptre (Tom Hiddleston, with alarmingly curly hair). Watching this young woman experience love for the first time ignites reminiscences of her former suitors, broken engagements, and all the choices that led her to write and be the woman she is. Things are further complicated by the arrival of an old, now married flame Rev. Brook Bridges (Hugh Bonneville, AKA Paddington's dad).

And she never doesn't wear that bonnet that she has in that one drawing of her that everyone has seen.

Like all literary biopics, no matter how good, Miss Austen Regrets is a teensy bit dumb and doesn't give nearly enough credit to the author's powers of imagination. The characters in these movies always just write down exactly what happens to them and it magically turns into their well-known work (in this case she's directly inspired by the events of the movie to write Persuasion rather than Romeo & Juliet or Pride & Prejudice, so at least the filmmakers assume we're well-read this time). Also, I don't think Jane Austen just walked around saying random lines from her books in conversation as if she had just come up with them on the spot.

Now I don't have enough context for how well the film actually depicts Austen's life (though this watch has inspired me to crack open the giant compendium of her letters that has been collecting dust on my To Read shelf), but frankly that isn't a particularly interesting way to judge a movie regardless. However, that context might have allowed me to get more of a grip on the character study the filmmakers are attempting to play out here. 

Maybe what they're presenting here is entirely out of whatever historical record they could cobble together, but from my vantage point it seems incredibly messy. The script can't decide if Austen is a miserable spinster, a flirty sarcastic minx, a bitter drunk, or a playful feminist icon. And they're certainly not attempting to give her depth by showing she can be all of these things at once, because the tone keep erratically shifting around her (it also can't keep its eye on its secondary characters, shuttling Imogen Poots to the background too often for that storyline to really have the emotional meat on its bones it clearly desires). It's hard to get a bead on what this movie is trying to say about Austen, either psychologically or thematically, and once it ends it leaves you with a profound sense of "oh, that's it?"

Also the costumes are incredibly boring, I don't care if they're authentic. This is CINEMA, people!

Olivia Williams makes a game attempt at shoving all of these different characters into a single suitcase called Jane Austen. Her emotional scenes definitely sing, but they don't fit together in any sort of meaningful order or show any sort of actual progress to the character's arc. Her best moments are when she gets to just sit down with other characters and display her sparkling wit (entirely pilfered from any available Austenana). And at least there's a reliable stable of British acting personalities around to do the things that they do well and amuse eagle-eyed viewers (a special shout-out to Phyllida Law, who played Mrs. Bates in that other 1996 Emma, here playing Austen's mother).

And while Miss Austen Regrets never claimed to be mimicking the tone of one of Austen's novels, the endless references and homages to her work made me expect a film with a tone that was a little less, how you say... fucking depressing. It's a bitter, sad movie whose grueling grimness feels especially unearned by its failures as a character piece. It's certainly not a bad movie, even if it's an unfocused one, but I would certainly have enjoyed it for what it was if it didn't ultimately decide to be so punishing.

TL;DR: Miss Austen Regrets is an insubstantial character study but at least a fairly well-researched one.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 881

Other Films Based on Jane Austen in General

Becoming Jane (Jarrold, 2007)

Miss Austen Regrets (Lovering, 2007)

The Jane Austen Book Club (Swicord, 2007)

Austenland (Hess, 2013)

Don't Stop Beliebin'

Year: 2016

Director: Jorma Taccone & Akiva Schaffer

Cast: Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer

Run Time: 1 hour 27 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I’ve never been a fan of The Lonely Island. I think many of you probably wouldn’t blame me for that. Their celebrity-packed rap-sung songs featured on SNL were designed for 12-year-old boys to get detention for singing them in the classroom. It’s no beef against them, that’s just not my demographic.

So imagine my surprise when I sat down to watch their movie and it was actually kind of awesome. The cumbersomely titled Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping was directed by Jorma Taccone and Akiva Shaffer (the Lonely Island guys on either side of Andy Samberg), and written by them and Sandberg, so this is a pure, undistilled vehicle for their comic stylings, but perhaps the focus required to make a feature-length film brought out the best in them.

Their talent is out of the box, so to speak.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a mockumentary, a comedy genre that has finally been reclaimed from the network sitcom trenches. It follows Conner Freal (Andy Samberg), a young pop savant who got his start in a boy band called the Style Boyz along with his friends Owen (Jorma Taccone) and Lawrence (Akiva Schaffer). He has now struck out on a solo career under the name Conner4Real and had massive success with his first album. The film picks up just before his second album drops. Owen is now the DJ on his world tour and Lawrence has abandoned the scene to become a farmer and grumble about Conner claiming credit for a famous verse he wrote.

We join Conner, his manager Harry (Tim Meadows), and his publicist Paula (Sarah Silverman) as the album drops… Straight off the face of the Earth. It turns out that abandoning his songwriter and beat mixer has resulted in a widely hated album, leaving Conner and his team scrambling to pick up the pieces.

Oh, and his team also includes Bill Hader for like 5 seconds.

Popstar is very much a Lonely Island film. Absurdity and filth rub shoulders here like they’re the finalists in an All-County Shoulder Rubbing Contest. It can be very juvenile and sophomoric, but if that’s your style, it hits some spectacular highs. My biggest problem with the trio has typically been the music itself, and Conner4Real’s tracks do share some of their biggest weaknesses (a tendency to repeat the central joke until it has been jackhammered into oblivion and a certain lack of musicality in the verses), but they frequently transcend themselves to become biting pop culture satire.

My personal favorite track is “Equal Rights,” a scorching parody of Macklemore’s “Same Love” that highlights the hypocrisy of straight white men inserting themselves into minority corners. And that sense of no-holds-barred mockery spreads throughout the entire film. It’s very Of The Now, so certain jokes won’t translate well even a year form now (a joke about hoverboards catching fire is already a bit dated), but the best kind of satire is birthed from a very specific cultural context.

Popstar’s net is cast wide, and almost no piece of cultural ephemera escapes its laser gaze: Justin Bieber (an easy target, and Conner4Real’s most obvious analogue), reality shows, awards shows, surprise album releases, vapid celebrity couples, TMZ (with a particularly funny Will Arnett cameo), and even the movie Flatliners for some reason. Plus, there’s more than a little bit of the real life narrative of The Lonely Island snuck in for flavor. It even goes so far as to mock the very type of movie that it is, all while skewering the self-involved social media culture that has been defining the charts in the 2010’s.

You can find more of such criticisms on my Twitter page.

That’s not to say that Popstar is a life-changing comedy. It’s not. It’s frequently just as shallow as the artists it parodies, but it’s a mostly intelligent piece of light fun that breezes by without overstaying its welcome. Sarah Silverman and Maya Rudolph shine on the sidelines, it keeps the laughs coming, and only in the final shot does the trio finally indulge in the worst kind of over-the-top absurdity that has come to define their brand.

If you’re up for a heaping helping of R-rated frat boy antics, then see Popstar immediately. It’s a shame the box office kind of ignored this one, because it certainly deserves better. It’s an excellent light snack of a comedy, and that should never be underestimated.

TL;DR: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a surprisingly sharp satire of modern pop culture.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 776

Punk Is Dead

Year: 2016
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Cast: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat
Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

It definitely helps to have been alive during the 80’s to appreciate the punk movement. I mean, it’s not like I’m against liking 80’s pop culture (and boy is that the understatement of the century). Slasher movies form the very core of my being, and I can discuss the intricacies of the Duran Duran discography like it’s my job (Rio might have stronger singles, but Seven and the Ragged Tiger is where it’s at). It’s just that a thorough appreciation of the punk scene requires a certain nihilistic standpoint that could only have sprouted from the fertile loam of Reaganomics under the shadow of impending nuclear doom.

So as much as I’d like to live outside the established norms of society, there’s not a punk bone in my body. This severely limits my ability to connect with Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room on a superficial aesthetic level in addition to its deeper, thematic underpinnings. That’s no fault of the film’s, just my own bias. But that’s enough dilly-dallying. Let’s knock laced-up boots with that plot!

And then we’ll mosh with some analysis.

In Green Room, down-on-their-luck punk band The Ain’t Rights – led by Pat (Anton Yelchin) alongside Sam (Alia Shawcat), Reece (Joe Cole), and Tiger (Callum Turner) – get a gig at a crummy bar buried in the lush woods of the Pacific Northwest. This club turns out to be a skinhead joint run by Darcy (Patrick Stewart). After accidentally witnessing a murder, The Ain’t Rights and defector Amber (Imogen Poots) are trapped in the club’s Green room, forced to fight their way out through a crowd of Neo-Nazi thugs with guns, knives, and attack dogs.

Wow, the new Benji movie is DARK.

What Green Room has going for it is a strong directorial hand. Although Saulnier’s ponderous, nihilist indie milieu isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse, he lets his frame breathe, vividly displaying the majestic expanse of his exteriors in widescreen and reversing that aesthetic to highlight the cramped claustrophobia of our trapped heroes indoors.

And when that pace tightens up and sh*t hits the fan, we get some of the most well-realized gore I’ve seen in years. I’ve always said that movies can cut off heads and dismember limbs with abandon, but where it gets truly grisly is when the gore gets intimate. That’s the mode in which Green Room operates almost exclusively, slashing flesh with box cutters, smashing small but vital bones, and just generally showing its characters a pretty bad time. There’s a lot of it, but it’s never over-the-top.

There are no cartoonish geysers of blood in Green Room (if there were, it would be called Red Room. Eh? Eh?). There are no bombastic, gooey rippings and slashings. It’s all up close, personal, and so well made that your stomach won’t unknot for hours.

The popcorn will just start piling up in your esophagus like it’s rush hour.

Green Room also has a sly comedy edge, perhaps given away by the casting of Alia Shawcat (who, to be fair, gives a very serious, convincing performance). There are jokes slipped in so subtly that you barely even notice that your disgusted grimace has converted into a grin. Most of the greatest material is delivered under her breath by Imogen Poots, whose careless character is disconnected from our main group and thus totally unpredictable.

Frankly, it’s the best performance of her entire career, effortlessly cool but with splinters of “at the end of her rope” vulnerability. It’s the first time she’s ever stood out in any of the many great ensemble casts she’s somehow found herself in (28 Weeks Later, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, That Awkward Moment, Fright Night, V for Vendetta – she’s been everywhere and never made a mark, like a pretty blonde Where’s Waldo).

I suppose since we’re talking about the acting, I should bring up Patrick Stewart. His villainous turn is definitely a change of pace for the much-typecast actor, but to be completely honest, he’s not given much to do here. He imbues his role with a chilling, soft-spoken menace, but his scenes are so separate from the bulk of the plot, it reeks of Three Days on Set-itis. His antagonistic reversal is solid, but honestly I’d prefer either the ecstatic vamping of a Juliette Lewis in Jem and the Holograms or the intimately involved participation of a Heath Ledger’s Joker. As it stands, Stewart is performing well, but he’s pointed in the complete opposite direction of the movie itself.

At least he didn’t have to shave his head for the role.

While many individual elements of Green Room are strong, they never really cohere into a full, satisfying story. An intensely erratic lot is eventually drowned in a bucket of blood as the thriller mechanics take over, and the characters just float through their predicament. The only one who changes or adapts in any way is Pat, but we get so little sense of who he is at the beginning of the film that his descent into madness has zero frame of reference. Although, there is a pretty solid fart joke, so who am I to complain?

Green Room is a tense, effective thriller even if it didn’t make as much of an impression on me as I wish it did. It’s a swell-looking piece made by a talented team. It might not be for me, but that doesn’t mean it ain’t for you. As long as you’re OK with gruesome violence that makes you want to staple your eyes shut, feel free to go ahead and check it out.

TL;DR: Green Room is a well made, tense, gory thriller that lacks a certain sense of depth.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 969

Popcorn Kernels: La Vie En Rage

In this set of mini reviews, we explore the modern incarnation of the zombie genre that pumped adrenaline into a decade of horror.

28 Days Later (For our podcast episode about this film, click here.)

Year: 2002

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston

Run Time: 1 hour 53 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A bicycle courier wakes up from a coma, only to discover that London is completely deserted, devastated by a Rage Virus that turns humans into ravenous, bloodthirsty monsters.

Zombies as we know them have been around since Night of the Living Dead in 1968. They’ve been devouring humanity on the regular since that fateful day, but our current zombie boom (spearheaded by the ratings juggernaut The Walking Dead) can be traced back to one vicious epicenter: 28 Days Later. This massively influential flick changed the landscape of 2000’s filmmaking in an astonishing myriad of ways, introducing the world to Cillian Murphy, proving that theatrical films can be successful even when shot on digital video, and ushering in the slightly smaller but nerve-jangling subgenre of “fast zombie” movies that eventually spawned my favorite film, [REC].

We owe a lot to 28 Days Later, but the fervor it spawned shot off in a totally different direction, so it still stands alone as an idiosyncratic littler indie without too many copycats dragging it down. That’s something very unique, but then again 28 Days Later is a particularly special movie. With a budget approximately the allure of the Avengers 2 snack table, it crafts an elegantly simple, paralyzingly terrifying premise, which is a testament to the fact that it was shot by an actual film director (Danny Boyle would later helm Slumdog Millionaire and Steve Jobs, but even before 28 Days Later he had Trainspotting and A Life Less Ordinary) rather than an amateur thinking they can strike gold with a cheapo shocker.

Danny Boyle crafts his scares with great patience, allowing his audience time to breathe, giving the scope of the devastation time to sink in before he pounces, plunging his characters into hot water without a moment’s warning. In his world, you are never safe, and this structure invokes a constant paranoia, even (perhaps especially) during the film’s surprisingly frequent comic relief interludes. The fact that 28 Days Later’s fear is so fiercely politicized (included among the angry grab bag of subtext is an indictment of animal testing, blind activism, sexual aggression, human pettiness, and the military industrial complex – no wonder this flick is nearly two hours long) just makes its undercurrent of rage – the source of every danger in this film – that much more potent.

There’s just one thing that bothers me about 28 Days Later… The film is powerful ugly. It was shot on digital video, which opened up all sorts of avenues for easily obtaining iconic images, especially in the scenes taking place on deserted city streets. This is all fine and dandy, but the unfortunate side effect of the format is that everything looks like a 90’s grunge music video, all overblown colors and Vaseline-smeared lenses. A lot of the handheld, vérité aesthetic is intentional, but when compounded with the low quality camera (which is usually something I never mind much), it’s an immensely frustrating visual schema. However, I suppose that being brutalized by the aesthetic pitches you even further into the film’s deranged terror. Well played, 28 Days Later.

Rating: 8/10

28 Weeks Later

Year: 2007

Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Rose Byrne, Robert Carlyle 

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Virus-devastated England is being rebuilt by the American military, but when the rage virus outbreak begins once more, a defected doctor and sniper must protect two children who potentially hold the key to finding a cure.

28 Weeks Later is the Aliens to 28 Days Later’s Alien. Where the original was a methodical, chilling nightmare, the sequel gnaws the cap off a syringe of pure adrenaline and jams it right the hell into your eyes. And just like with Aliens, it’s a Sisyphean task to even attempt to decide which film is better, because they’re both great in almost totally opposite ways.

While there’s still an angry political element to the film, rotating the vices of the military system front and center, 28 Weeks Later is more of a rapid-fire family drama about a Bad Dad hall of famer who abandons his wife to the rage zombies, destroying his family from the inside out, and then pretty literally destroying them from the outside when he becomes the next Patient Zero. The last vestige of humanity within him converts his guilt into pure rage, sending him after his own children like a bloodhound. As if you couldn’t extrapolate from that, this is a remarkably dangerous movie, a wicked, brutal extravaganza of blood and pain.

This is elegantly reflected in a seemingly innocuous Act One scene where a group of snipers spy on the citizens of the safe zone through their scopes. They may be laughing and joking about what they see, but the message is disturbingly clear: Every single living person is in the crosshairs of 28 Weeks Later. Violence is coming and it has no mercy. This atmosphere makes it a spectacularly effective action-horror film, if not a universally palatable one.

The one area where 28 Weeks Later is a marked improvement on the original is its aesthetic, which isn’t so bodaciously ugly. The quick-cutting handheld aesthetic is resurrected for the zombie scenes, but when it has a confident, appealing aesthetic to juxtapose against, it makes it so much more effective. Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo crafts his film impeccably, making moments like the stunning visual metaphor in the aforementioned sniper scene possible, and capturing the forlorn emptiness of London with a keen attention to detail that grinds the dreary mood into every fold and crevasse of your mind.

It helps that 28 Weeks Later had a significantly higher budget and more developed CGI technology to fill in the cracks, but a well-shot movie is a well-shot movie. Let’s not blame the dollar bills. Now to even things out, let’s broach 28 Weeks Later’s biggest flaw. The film spends much more time world building than its predecessor, allowing us to explore a zombie-free London for quite some time, all this occurring after a significantly long opening scene (a terrifying affair, to be certain, but one that also eats up a good chunk of the run time). As much as I appreciate both these sequences, 28 Weeks Later is already a full ten minutes shorter than Days, so when the main plot finally kicks in, it’s a rather truncated affair that feels like it ends before it can even begin.

It’s not often that you’ll hear me begging for a longer movie, but it’s not often that a horror sequel assembles a stellar cast (including future stars Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Imogen Poots, and even Idris Elba) for a bloodthirsty, challenging, incredibly sharp horror affair. 28 Weeks Later earned those extra ten minutes, but even dismayingly abrupt as it is, it’s an indelible film and an eternal beacon to the cause of proving that sequels can be genuinely terrific.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1198

Hanging By A Moment

Year: 2014

Director: Tom Gormican

Cast: Zac Efron, Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Have you ever heard of the term in medias res? It's Latin for "in the middle of things" and it is a rhetorical device used to draw people into a story by revealing details from a later point in time at the beginning, then telling most of the story in flashback. This idea has been used far and wide in movies like The Hangover, which opens with a desperate trio wondering how they will make it to the wedding before going back to the beginning to explain "how we got here." There's a whole thing about it on TV Tropes. Check it out.

As you may have gathered, That Awkward Moment begins with an in medias res moment. Jason (Zac Efron) is sitting on a park bench in the freezing cold as his voiceover narration asks "I bet you're wondering how I got here." 

No, Zac Efron. We are not wondering why you're sitting on a freaking bench. It's a park bench, not the Iron Throne. The rest of the movie is no less stupid than this opening scene, although it is somewhat less exciting to mock, alternating from being bland and tasteless to relying on the worst kind of odious gender essentialism.

And a heaping helping of white nonsense.

Jason is one of a trio made up of him and his friends Daniel (Miles Teller) and Mikey (Miles B. Jordan), two other up and coming actors. Teller attempted to make a name for himself in the quickly forgotten YA adaptation Divergent and Michael B. Jordan recently lit up the indie scene in Fruitvale Station. It is clear that they agreed to do a movie together in order to hopefully lift each other's careers up and over the high wall of success. 

It is unclear why they chose to do this particular movie with its characters that are far too old for the actors portraying them (Mikey is a married surgeon; Daniel and Jason are successful book cover designers), a director fresh off of producing the steaming pile of rat dung that was Movie 43, and non-starter dialogue and scenarios that could only be an aborted script for a sitcom pilot.

And not a particularly good sitcom. Not the kind that pushing the envelope of storytelling like or creates a zeitgeist hit based on a solid ensemble of relatable characters. But rather the uninspired style filled with (two and a) half-baked zingers and lazy gender psychology. Did you know that the one thing every woman in the entire world wants more than anything is a pair of shoes? Zac Efron knows. And all the women in the film agree.

Sure, shoes are cool. But it makes you wonder if the screenwriters have ever met an actual woman who wasn't a 3mmx3mm jpeg at the corner of a chat bar. And the inclusion of the line "So, you're gonna go full girl with it?" spoken to an emotional man was enough to cement the movie entirely into my lack of esteem. The shock displayed when a girl expressed interest in video games sent me into a supernova of anger, from which my houseplants are only now starting to recover.

True story: Sometimes they were so aware of the direness of their dialogue, they tried to mask it with a jaunty pop tune.

The film is just as blasé and careless about every other aspect of its creation. The editor cuts abruptly away from scenes before they end, any of the human emotions that are more challenging to write (i. e. anything that isn't "horny" or "bland") are smoothed over by turning them into musical montages, taking all the contrivances out of the plot would render the movie twelve seconds long, and - perhaps most egregiously - there is a date scene in the coffee shop where the scone they are sharing lies on a plate untouched for a matter of hours.

So, the plot. I guess. Let's just get that out of the way real quick. Mikey and his wife (Jessica Lucas) are getting a divorce, so Daniel and Jason make a pact with him to stay single in solidarity with their fallen brother. They of course all immediately fall into intense, loving relationships. Jason meets a Word Vomit Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Ellie (Imogen Poots), Daniel falls in love with his sarcastic best friend (Mackenzie Davis), and Mikey gets back together with his wife after little deliberation. The pact doesn't seem to matter until the very end of the movie when it suddenly does, where it is used to create a frail snotrag of conflict.

For the first hour or so, though, we are stuck watching absurdly well-off white people date each other in New York while an absurdly well-off ethnic couple does their business in private on the other side of town. There is no sense of urgency, no plot direction to speak of, just endless minutes unspooling of Zac Efron romancing his nonsense maiden.

You rang?

The humor is like a low sodium cracker - it exists, but it doesn't make you smile. The title is irrelevant to the plot and immensely pandering. The ending is bonkers if you're a sane human being. And although the production values are nice enough and the people are pretty enough to not hate spending an hour and a half together with them, they certainly tried their hardest to make you feel otherwise.

TL;DR: That Awkward Moment is entertaining enough to make me not want to drive a knife through my eye, but is too terribly put together to be much more than that.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 955

Modern Vampire of the City

Year: 2011

Director: Craig Gillespie

Cast: Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, David Tennant

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Full disclosure: I have not seen the 1985 Tom Holland vampire flick on which 2011's Fright Night is based. So I can neither extoll its virtues as a glorious remake nor detract it as a pale shadow of its ancestor's glory.

I have no idea of the quality of the original, but I'll say my opinion on the 2011 iteration couldn't be downgraded easily - the film's much too dazzling for that. Fright Night 2011 is one in a long line of modern age remakes of classic 80's horror films and one of the few to accomplish what the remakes of that period (Carpenter's The Thing, Cronenberg's The Fly, The Blob) tended to do regularly - capture the tone and magic of the original film while updating it for the modern world.

Fright Night is endlessly fun and immediately earns a spot in my top five remakes of the century. Although, to be fair, my Top Five Remakes Awards Shelf currently contains Fright Night, Evil Dead, Wizard of Gore, some dead flies, lint, and a Post-It Note that reads "NOT Prom Night."

And a collage of "Colin Farrell shirtless" Google Image results.

High school student Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) has risen in popularity due to another generous gift from the Puberty Fairy, leaving his geeky old friends Adam (Will Denton) and Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse and is there a film in the front half of this decade that doesn't have this guy in it?) behind in the dust. Why would he hang out with them when he can make out with his way-out-of-his-league girlfriend Amy (the hilariously named Imogen Poots) or her douchey friend Mark (Dave Franco)?

Sidebar: Amy is the worst. She doesn't want to go to prom cuz that's lame (I'm thinking she'll regret the decision to be too cool for prom fifteen years from now) and she forces him to buy her smoothies. 0/10. Would not recommend.

He lives in a cookie cutter Las Vegas suburb with his realtor single mom (Toni Collette, who has been playing this part since about the time Hollywood was invented). Business has been tough though, because of all those families in the neighborhood that keep moving out mysteriously without warning. And what's going on with that weird neighbor who only comes out when the sun goes down?

It takes about 30 seconds for Ed to warn Charley that Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire and oh hey, maybe don't let your mom invite him inside.

The real horror is not being allowed to let this carefully unbuttoned man into your home.

Already the plot is moving at a fast clip (take into consideration that it took Bella Swan about an hour to figure out that Edward was a vampire - in a movie completely predicated on this plot point) and Fright Night sprints full pelt through a variety of delectable vampire setpieces as Jerry slinks around stalking his prey, as sly and calm as a jungle cat.

David Tennant plays Russell Brand Peter Vincent, a Las Vegas magician and master of vampire lore who is contacted by Charley to help maybe vanquish the guy who's been killing all his neighbors. But all is not as it seems and Vincent is as cowardly as they come, refusing to go anywhere near him. This is wise, especially considering that he's landed himself in the one remake that's actually pretty consistently scary.

Left to his own devices, Charley must find a way to destroy Jerry and somehow avoid looking like a complete psycho in the process. This leads to a variety of awkward teen situations ("What are you working on?" "...Porn") and the sudden realization that not only is this movie pretty scary. It's funny.

I'm talking actual laughing out loud intentionally funny jokes. Jokes that land! In fact, at least three moments are among the funniest scenes I've ever witnessed in any horror-comedy film (see: Ed falling in the pool and Charley's escape attempt with Doris). And one look at the credits would reveal who else but Marti Noxon behind the pen, one of the key women behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

With a goddess of the craft in her element, a barrage of bloody vampire mayhem, and irrationally solid comic performances across the board, Fright Night is an undeniable success.

It really bites. ...You know. In a good way.

That came out wrong. I meant to say it sucks.

Screw it! It's good.

Imbuing the explosive excess of the 80's (Literally - things explode left and right here. People, houses, you name it.) with modern sarcasm, references to Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, and an unusually well-integrated use of modern iTechnology, Fright Night is a wonderful marriage of two decades of awesomeness.

With an utmost dedication to gleeful pandemonium and a balls-to-the-wall outrageous Third Act chase scene, the film overcomes even the nacho cheesiness of the 3D effects. Did I mention it's in 3D? How could it not be? Although I didn't watch it in three dimensions, which greatly hampers the overall effect of some of the more CGI-based moments.

Alongside the action and gore, the sound design works triple time in a uniquely exaggerated register that is absolutely inspiring. Not many films would be able to stand under the weight of the almost grotesquely comical sound effects (Dave Franco swinging his fist sounds like a freight train) but the film is funny enough all around to sustain and benefit greatly from it.

And although, like most 3D films, the cinematographer is mostly held at bay by the necessities of adding a whole dimension (Altering the basic properties of quantum mechanics is hard, OK?) but one shot - an elevator going down with the sun - is imbued with all the beauty the film could muster.

Kind of like Colin Farrell.

All around it's a great film that doesn't take itself seriously and allows the scary moments to bubble up naturally from within the silly scenes instead of laying them atop them like oil on water. Not for no reason is this film one of the highest rated remakes on Rotten Tomatoes (although we shouldn't necessarily trust them considering that they don't ask for my opinion)

Even if you're not a fan of horror (or perhaps especially if you're not a fan of horror), I urge you to check out this cotton candy gem. It has crazy vampire teeth, a quippy hero, Doctor Who, explosions, and even a twist ending that gets revealed in the final scene! The twist ending being that Anton Yelchin is secretly the hottest member of the cast.

Who could have guessed?

TL;DR: Fright Night is a remake that I'm absolutely not ashamed to admit is pretty fantastic.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1147
Reviews In This Series
Fright Night (Holland, 1985)
Fright Night (Gillespie, 2011)