Fright Night 3D Post-Release - Page 2

I very much see all of that on top of the very simple and appealing genre wish-fulfillment stuff (monster next door, team-up w/ your horror movie idol, kick the monster's ass, etc). I'm not saying the movie is chiefly concerned w/ being some covertly brilliant essay on masculinity, gender, and sexuality in B-movie drag, but even if it's in the periphery, I think it's there and it helps carry a picture which already has a lot of verve and confidence.

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Originally Posted by JacknifeJohnny 

... but even if it's in the periphery, I think it's there and it helps carry a picture which already has a lot of verve and confidence.

Nice point. Seems we've lost a lot of that kind of swagger in the internet age.

Is it subtext? Yes. You can watch that film as a simple vampire horror movie. At no point is it expressly gay, even the scene with Jerry Dandridge and Evil Ed, where he's talking about people no longer making fun of him can be read as "straight" because being a vampire would make you powerful, etc. When I think of crummy 80's fare, I tend to go to stuff like The Burning, or The Prowler, which can be entertaining on their own merits, but are basically variations on Halloween, Friday the 13th, Psycho, etc. Or Sleepaway Camp, etc. etc.

The scene when Dandridge bites Evil in the first is one of those all time moments for me. Ditto when Peter Vincent kills Evil. Such great acting from McDowall throughout. And Geoffreys. I think the whole movie is fantastic, but those moments always stick out when I think of it. 

Sorry for liking it so much, Jacob!

The remake was a nice diversion. The structure of it felt weird to me, actually. But then, I kind of liked when it defied expectations a little. 

Hrm. As I said earlier, I quite liked the original. It's an entertaining movie. I never said it was "crummy". I just don't see it as any sort of genre classic.

Checked this out tonight, and it surprises me that people are doubting the existence of the sexual subtext. I would even argue that those themes don't qualify as subtext since they're pretty blatantly the point of the movie, even to the level where the adolescent "masculinity crisis" forms the whole backbone of Yelchin's arc. It is sort of interesting, since plenty of movies, books, TV shows, etc. have been produced about the sexual allure of the male vampire but few have been made about the threat they pose to traditional masculinity.

Putting Yelchin in the middle of that conflict and framing it as a teen movie and a coming-of-age story is pretty smart, and works as a concept -- if it were better-cooked, I can see it being one of those enduring horror premises. But other than those limited thematic pleasures, which never really edge towards "interesting" or "compelling" territory anyway, it's just passable in all departments and never manages to excel in any of them. Farrell's fun, though.

Am I the only one who tends to have supposed sexual subtext (especially in regards to gay ones) fly over their heads in movies? I honestly can't figure out if I'm not caring to look that deep or if people are digging to see what isn't actually there.

That said, I thought it was good fun and only similar in concept, while being far enough removed to be its own animal; the right type of remake.

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Originally Posted by Shaun H 

Am I the only one who tends to have supposed sexual subtext (especially in regards to gay ones) fly over their heads in movies? I honestly can't figure out if I'm not caring to look that deep or if people are digging to see what isn't actually there.

I'd say it depends entirely on the movie. You can read bizarre sexual undercurrents in pretty much any film, but for it to be legit, you need to be able to back it up. A friend of mine once made the assertion that both Armageddon and Deep Impact are secretly concealing an incest subplot (which the filmmakers themselves were oblivious to), which I actually thought to be a semi-dangerous assertion, since those movies both portray pretty boring, staid familial conflicts and reading incestuous undercurrents into them encourages a strange perspective on what the idea of family actually is.

So to me, reading sexual subtext in pretty harmless films is sometimes just a sign that somebody wants to prove the public's enjoyment of a movie to be founded on a twisted value system, which some people get an anarchic kick out of (not to beat a straw man, since I know that's frowned upon here...). But when it's supported by legit evidence, it's worth looking for and I think any discerning filmgoer would be smart to look out for it -- it would be silly not to read sexual subtext in something like Black Swan, for example.

Your example of Black Swan makes sense, but only because that subtext isn't so subtle.

One example I can point out (and you can use this for what you will) is all of the gay undertones in Freddy's Revenge. I never really picked up on it in the few times I'd seen it and it wasn't until I watched the documentary on it where the writer comes right out and says it was his intention all along that I said "okay, I see it". Call it naive, I guess, but outside of someone coming forward and saying that was their goal or doing it in the way of something akin to Black Swan where it's obvious, I have a really hard time with believing most accounts of what people deem as subtext. The fact that so many of the other people behind the project never picked up on it, either, says quite a bit.

Which is odd, when I think about it, because I'm a pretty deep thinker and love diving into movies beyond the casual.

Yeah Black Swan is a bad example, the sexual stuff there doesn't really fit the "subtext" definition any better than the stuff in Fright Night.

I do think subtext analysis is a little precarious though, since it can be hard for a movie to toe the line of obviousness that separates subtext from the surface-level themes of a film -- i.e., there does have to be evidence for subtext, but when there's too much evidence it stops being subtext. It's not sexual subtext specifically, but I was gonna say the post-9/11, Iraq War themes in War of the Worlds satisfy the definition, but then again there's a lot of talk of terrorists and occupations in the text (along with the more subtle allusions). Something like No Country might be a better example, since the themes of nihilism and whatnot are very much kept in the background so that the plot/story itself tends to embody those ideas.

Either way, it does suck that the two options tend to be a) make it obvious or b) tell everyone it's there, neither of which are very artistically sound.

A subtext is something that can be read into a film, but isn't necessary to appreciate the whole. I would say that the original Fright Night has a subtext. I would argue the subtext of Black Swan is about the artistic process.

Yeah, if we're sticking to that definition (which I'll do so a little reluctantly, since it is pretty scant) then Fright Night 2011 is more or less devoid of subtext, despite the themes of adolescence, masculinity, etc. which it makes clear.

And I agree with that assessment of Black Swan -- but once again, the movie is about an art form and an actress, and there is much talk about the nature of performance art and how an artist "gives" oneself to their craft throughout the film. So it's still not the best example for trying to illustrate "true" subtext, really.

Yeah, there is that. But I also think of the film as a fairy tale, so I don't know if that's the standard reading.

I saw this last night. Maybe it was the audience I was with, but a lot of parts that were supposed to be funny or sinister came off as stilted or awkward (like Jerry's little monologue outside of Charlie's kitchen door). When Peter revealed that his parents had been killed by a vampire there were actual laughs of disbelief from the crowd. It came out of nowhere and was incredibly hokey.

Did anyone find this film really dark? And not in a tonal sense, but in a literal I-can-barely-make-out-shapes-on-the-screen way? I only found it really bad during parts where they were inside and it was dark: everything looked indistinct, like there was smoke around. Maybe it was something wrong with my projector, or maybe I'm just going blind.

I liked this movie, but I wanted to like it more. I thought the whole cast was great and I liked how traditional it was with it's vampire lore (a nice touch was how both Jerry and Ed looked calm and at peace just before crumbling away. That's straight out of 'Dracula'). But the film overall just didn't click with me. 

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Originally Posted by Sumeragi 

 

Did anyone find this film really dark? And not in a tonal sense, but in a literal I-can-barely-make-out-shapes-on-the-screen way? I only found it really bad during parts where they were inside and it was dark: everything looked indistinct, like there was smoke around. Maybe it was something wrong with my projector, or maybe I'm just going blind.

Did you see it in 3D? Because if you did, I had the exact same problem. The entire film looked murky, dark and ugly, and all the backgrounds were blurry.  Half the time it was hard to make out what was going on (ala the 2D AVP: REQUIEM) and I wound up watching half the movie without the glasses on in order to see faces. I'm guessing it's a projector issue, as I don't hear many other people complaining.

 I actually like the 3D. Its the third movie, My Bloody Valentine and Piranha 3D, where it actually made a difference. The ashes from the just destroyed vampires looked like they were a couple of feet in front of me.

Was this film promoted at all? I've seen at least 5-6 flicks this summer and don't recall a trailer for this movie. I didn't realize it was out already.

 I thought the movie was well promoted. I so TV spots on a regular basis, and the internet trailers were good. Its a drag the movie wasn't a hit. Maybe people are burned out on vampires or only like them when they sparkle.

I couldn't stop looking at Charlie's sideburns. One was cut straight, and the other was cut at an angle. What the hell was that all about?