An 8-minute preview of the DreamWorks remake
Tuesday at CinemaCon brought the second studio presentation, this one from DreamWorks, and the one movie ShockTillYouDrop.com readers will want to know about is the Craig (Lars and the Real Girl) Gillespie-directed 3D remake of the 1985 cult classic Fright Night.
Just to give you some background in case you haven’t seen the original movie, it stars Anton Yelchin as Charlie Brewster, a young man in the suburbs, who suspects his neighbor Jerry Dandridge, played by Colin Farrell, to be a vampire.
Gillespie and Farrell had a hard act to follow after the behind-the-scenes footage for Steven Spielberg’s War Horse and The Help, both potential awards contenders, and they came out winging it a bit compared to the cast and crew of the latter.
Instead of showing a behind-the-scenes sizzle reel like the movies before them, Gillespie showed an 8-minute chunk of the movie that was filmed and screened entirely in 3D.
It opens with Charlie Brewster’s mother Jane, played by Toni Collette, walking into his room while he’s whittling a piece of wood into a stake, and when they go downstairs, Charlie’s girlfriend Amy, played by Imogen Poots, is there wondering why he’s been acting so strangely.
Before they get too far into the conversation, Farrell’s Jerry knocks at the door telling Charlie’s mother that Charlie has been harassing him and that he wants to come in to talk about it rather than going to the authorities. Charlie begs his mother not to give him permission to come into the house so she refuses and he walks off but then returns menacingly with a shovel and walks out of view.
Jerry starts digging in the backyard of the house as Charlie and his mother watch from the window horrified, we see that Charlie has lined his windows with rows of garlic to keep out vampires, which was pretty funny. Jerry keeps digging until he reaches the gasline and he gives it a yank hard enough to pull it out of the back of the stove. He then gets a knife and cuts the line then lights a match at the end, sending a stream of fire to the house blowing out the stove and the fireplace. It actually takes out a good portion of the house and Jerry approaches, fangs now bared with his pupils having turned black, saying that he doesn’t need to be invited into the house if there is no house.
The three of them make a beeline for the car in the garage and Charlie’s mother floors it, knocking over a motorbike outside and the house immediately explodes behind them as they drive off. Jerry follows them out on foot and sees the downed motorcycle but instead of getting on it to ride after them, he chucks it through the back window of the SUV as it drives away the tire spinning dangerously close to Amy’s head. As the three of them flee in the car, they’re all panicking, especially when they see headlights behind them and Jerry’s vehicle plows into the back of their car, then goes along side and sideswipes them before speeding past and parking the car across the highway so they can’t pass. As they approach, they see Jerry standing in front of them and Charlie’s mother floors it, slamming into Jerry and the car, leaving a wicked red trail of blood as they keep driving. Before they can relax, they hear a thumping coming from underneath the floorboards of the SUV and then Jerry’s taloned hand smashes through the floorboards trying to grab either Charlie or his mother.
The footage looked absolutely fantastic in 3D, just crystal clear with just the right amount of depth to make you feel as if you’re right there in the house or right there in the car with the trio as they’re pursued by Jerry. Although we didn’t get to see that much of the comedy aspect of the movie, the action and the suspense seems to be done well, and we definitely got the vibe of something like Disturbia, which was also produced by DreamWorks oddly enough.
After the presentation, we sat down with Gillespie and Colin Farrell to talk about what we saw:
ShockTillYouDrop.com: Right before coming here this morning, I decided to watch the trailer for the ’85 movie and just remind myself what that movie was like and the trailer really makes that movie seem much more serious than it actually is.
Colin Farrell: Big time. It’s really dark, isn’t it? It’s like “Friday the 13th,” it’s like that kind of thing the trailer. Camera panning through the neighborhood.
Shock: Well, it did come out in a time when that sort of horror was big, so I was curious how did the two of you come onto this? Were you both fans of the original movie?
Farrell: I was, I was.
Craig Gillespie: Basically, I became a fan. I wasn’t that familiar with it, and just the idea of remaking it wasn’t that appealing to me, but then I read the script and it’s such a strong script that I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was almost this reluctant thing. I know how to make the movie and Marti (Noxon, the screenwriter) did such a great job with it in terms of the horror and the humor, which is what I love about it, which is sort of more of an homage to the â80s in that sense like the film I kept thinking of was “An American Werewolf in London.”
Shock: I think “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (the popular cult show which Marti wrote) was always a throwback to the â80s in some ways. “Fright Night” was very much a cult movie where people loved it, but I’m not sure if it would stand up if you watch it today. Did either of you go back and watch it recently?
Farrell: I watched it, not before doing it, but I think I watched it like a year and a half before I signed on to do it. I’ve seen it so many times, man. I mean, I’m really versed with it, I really did love it from the first time I saw it when I was 12, and it’s dated, but it’s still a fun experience. The make-up stands up brilliantly, it’s really such good stuff, and I just love it, I love the dynamic of the original and I love the character and I love Chris Sarandon (the original Jerry Dandridge) and who was the actor who played Evil Ed? (Stephen Geoffreys) He was so f*cking weird in it, man, he was brilliant! (Does a scary impression of Evil Ed at his oddest.) But I loved it and this is a very different film. It honors the narrative structure, and it honors the whole concept and the dynamic of this ominous, nefarious killer that lives next door, somebody who is rampant in the neighborhood, and these kids that are making the journey from boys to men, trying to figure out how to deal with the situation that’s threatening their lives and those that they love.
Shock: It’s funny you mention make-up because I think we see you wearing more make-up than ever even in your human formâ¦
Gillespie: That wasn’t any make-up there.
Farrell: That was just lights and a bad diet.
Shock: Or maybe it’s just that you were clean-shaven, which we don’t often see.
Farrell: Exactly. (laughs)
Shock: We only got to see you a little bit in your vampire form in the footage, so was there a lot of practical make-up FX being done?
Farrell: There’s five different stages and we got up to Stage 5 once, up to Stage 4 once and mostly when Jerry turned, it was between Stage 2 and 3 that he existed in, which is just fangs and some veinwork. But the main prosthetics was done by Howard Berger and his crew.
Shock: He is the best.
Farrell: Yeah, Howard’s a great guy, so he did the stuff, you know.
Shock: What about the 3D? I really liked what I saw, and it was not like the normal movie we’d see in 3D, because we mostly see it used for animation and big FX movies. This you’re seeing just ordinary life and it looked crystal clear. Who came up with the idea to make the movie in 3D?
Gillespie: DreamWorks from the first meeting brought up 3D and I was excited about it, because you see all these fantastical worlds in 3D and animation, but to do two people talking in the kitchen in 3D was really intriguing to me, because it makes you feel like you’re in that space.
Shock: Exactly, that’s exactly how I felt!
Gillespie: Yeah, and that’s just kind of horrifying and then when the suspense is building and the threat is building, it makes you feel like you’re actually standing in the room with them, and that’s what was so intriguing and fun for me. We didn’t try to make it 3D in the sense of reminding people constantly that they’re watching 3D. It was more about just feeling like you’re in that world.
Farrell: Immersed in it.
Shock: I imagine this is going to be R-rated because there were enough F-words in the footage we sawâ(to Colin) though not from you
Farrell: Yeah, yeah, I know.
Gillespie: We’re going to give “Superbad” a run for its money.
Shock: Was that ever going to be an issue or was that always the intention?
Gillespie: You know what? You’re doing a horror film and it just seems chep to try and do PG-13 in a sense. He’s a vampire that sucks people’s blood and the show was going on and to use that to its advantage, it just seems like it would be handcuffing us to try and do a PG-13 version.
Shock: When you have Anton Yelchin and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, you really have two very funny young actors, so Colin, were you able to do any comedy as well or do you pretty much take the serious approach?
Farrell: My guy, the comedy didn’t really seem to emanate from Jerry too naturally, whether it was scripted.. I mean, Marti wrote a couple funny one-liners for me, but Jerry was pretty even-keeled, pretty unemotional character, completely lacks fear, just an insatiable appetite and just an instinctual sense of drive that propels him through the story but the situational comedy was taken care of by the mortals.
Gillespie: He definitely is the horror threat in the film that keeps you on the edge of your seat and then the humor is derived from the other characters, but that threat is always there with him.
Shock: I was bummed we didn’t get to see David Tennant or Chris in the footage shown, so are you saving that to show at Comic-Con? Have you been to Comic-Con, Colin?
Farrell: Never, man, never been there.
Shock: This might be the year.
Farrell: Right (to Craig) are you going to Comic-Con?
Gillespie: When is it?
Shock: In late July and if you open in August, it seems silly not to go there.
Farrell: Oh, yeah? Okay, see you there.
Gillespie: No, no, I just wanted to pick a clip that sort of gave everybody a sense of what is going on and you get Colin and you get the seriousness of him with a little of his flipside, and then just that tricky balance of the humor of the family as they’re walking around inside and then some of the action that’s going to be happening. There’s definitely some fun scenes of David Tennant and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.
Fright Night is scheduled to open on Friday, August 12. There’s a lot more coverage of CinemaCon over on ComingSoon.net on the CinemaCon Blog.
Source: Edward Douglas
