2011s "Fright Night"
remake hadn't exactly been the runaway success the film makers had hoped for (to put it mildly), so no one was more
surprised than I, when a sequel duly appeared just over a year later on home video.
Ignoring the events of the previous film, for this outing, high school student Charley Brewster (played here by Will Payne) and his friend 'Evil' Ed Bates (Chris Waller) are on a school trip to Romania. Whilst at the hotel, Charley notices a couple of naked women making out in the apartment opposite, but is surprised when one of them appears to have fangs and starts sinking her teeth into the neck of the other.
He is even more surprised when the woman in question turns out to be one of the lecturers, Gerri Dandridge (Jaime Murray), who's giving their class lessons about Romanian history. Then when they go on a late night tour of one of the castles in the city, he sees her again, seducing one of the students, who subsequently disappears.
Convinced she's a vampire, the local police are understandably sceptical. But as luck would have it, paranormal expert Peter Vincent (Sean Power), who fronts one of those "Most Haunted" style TV shows, is in town filming a special episode about vampires, so Charley and Ed seek him out to ask for his help.
Vincent, of course, isn't having any of it. But after Gerri kidnaps Charley's girlfriend Amy (Sacha Parkinson), and Vincent has a close call with a vampire himself, he ends up rapidly changing his mind and a fun end battle quickly ensues...
One might argue that this was yet another pointless remake, or pointless sequel depending on how you view the film (it is actually another remake, which starts over with new actors in the roles, and owing nothing to the previous film) and I sort of got the impression that this story was probably adapted from one of the rejected scripts for the 2011 film. That being said however, this is still quite an amusing film, which although follows the basic premise of the original, is sufficiently different so as not to be too derivative.
I would suggest giving this one a go if you like vampire films, just remember that this isn't a sequel as such, and you need to view this on its own merits.
