Movies are a great escape. Sometimes you get to go places you can’t afford; sometimes you get to have an otherworldly experience in a place you couldn’t dream; and sometimes you see something so terrible you can barely wrap your mind around the story long enough to long enough to feel like you are actually there. This is, of course, assuming there is a story worth watching in the first place. This last category is littered with fun movies – you may not believe the premise, or the acting, or the world in which the story exists, but you still can enjoy it. But as we all know, the majority of them still just aren’t very good. All of this, of course, brings us to the matter at hand. I’m writing about FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD, the new film from DIMENSION pictures (“the house that Williamson built” thanks to the SCREAM franchise).
Usually this is where I talk about the plot but this time it is far more important to talk about what really makes this movie such an unoriginal, unfunny, and worst of all bland train wreck. FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD sounds an awful lot like a (hopefully) campy sequel to moderately successful FRIGHT NIGHT (2011) with Anton Yelchin (Checkov from the rebooted STAR TREK franchise) and Colin Farrell. Interestingly, FRIGHT NIGHT itself was a remake of a fun and campy horror flick from 1985. That one, also titled FRIGHT NIGHT, was kind of a cult classic and when I heard they were re-tooling it for the modern audience I hoped it would be fun… but it was really just a big bag of fine.
The really sad thing is that FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD doesn’t even follow the formula for a sequel, though it does nothing to explain this fact or even give a hint to the audience of what it is trying to do. This is completely frustrating to anyone watching FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD for the first time; throughout the entire first act you are sitting back and wondering why these kids are acting like they’ve never encountered vampires before. Perhaps it is the writing, perhaps the poor direction, or perhaps just the bland performances; any way you slice it this is just a bad movie. At no point is it made clear how this film fits into the world created in the ‘original’ unless you take the time to listen to the commentary. That’s just bad filmmaking.
FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD takes place a few years after FRIGHT NIGHT but, for all intents and purposes, this movie exists entirely on its own as kind of an alternate reality rather than a sequel. This time we are following literally the same characters, the primary being Charley Brewster (originally Yelchin, here we get Will Payne). Brewster has the exact same character arc as in the original(s), but this time he is finding a vampire in Romania while on a student study-abroad program. And then there’s the ensemble cast which includes characters that didn’t even survive the first film. The one nearly bright spot of the movie is friend Ed ‘Evil’ Bates (played by newcomer Chris Waller), who completely overacts the entire time but also brings some much needed campiness to a movie that would have done well to take itself a bit less seriously. I cannot recommend this film, in fact I think it should be avoided.
FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: (1080p Widescreen 1.78:1) FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD is a clear and pretty visual presentation and the picture looks very nice on your HD television, though there aren’t enough variations in the color scheme to hold your interest. The entire movie is very dark.
Audio: (English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1) The audio is clearly presented in a smooth and textured audio track for FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD.
Audio Commentary with director Eduardo Rodriguez, Alison Rosenzweig and Michael Gaeta It’s a reasonably interesting commentary except for the fact that the trio spend a lot of time complimenting each other on how great FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD is… which just has to be a joke.
Fright Night Webisodes (11:31) Four webisodes were recorded for FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD and the FRIGHT NIGHT reality show in the film. They are collected here for your viewing… ahem… pleasure.
Dracula Revealed (06:15) Very basic information on the mythology behind FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD.
FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD also comes with sneak peeks of new films, a DVD copy of the film and an Ultraviolet Digital Copy.
