FRIGHT NIGHT 2: NEW BLOOD

Charlie Brewster is on a study vacation in Romania with his ex-girlfriend Amy and his friend Ed. One night, from the window of his accommodation, he sees in the building across a beautiful woman who exchanges affections with another woman and then bites her on the neck, exactly as a vampire would. The next day, Charlie realizes that the woman from the window is his art teacher, Gerri Dandridge, who from that moment begins to pursue him. The boy, pushed by his friend Ed, contacts Peter Vincent, the host of the paranormal show "Fright Night", who just at those days is in Romania to shoot the new episode of the program. Despite the cold public response to "Fright Night - The Vampire Next Door", a 3D remake of the 1980s cult film "Ammazzavampiri" that was released in cinemas in 2011 under the direction of Craig Gillespie, a sequel is now arriving directly for home video. But here, some distinctions need to be made. "Fright Night 2: New Blood" is an anomalous object because it is not the remake of "Ammazzavampiri 2" by Tommy Lee Wallace, but it is also not the sequel to the 2011 version of "Fright Night"! So, what is it? It is almost a further remake of Holland's film, or, to be more precise, a variant of the same story that, however, takes from the original "Ammazzavampiri 2" the presence of a female vampire as the villain of the story. Therefore, the same story that sees the same Charlie, Amy, Ed, and Peter Vincent facing off against a vampire, the same expedient as "Rear Window" and the typical phases of the original story respected in a philological manner, but a different setting! Eh yes, because "Fright Night 2" is filmed and set in Romania because it is known that in Eastern Europe it is cheaper to shoot films due to tax and labor issues, and thus the strong location was chosen based on the great vampiric tradition of those places. So, to the "vampire next door" Jerry Dandrige is replaced by Gerri Dandridge, who has the features of the supersexy Jaime Murray already seen as Lila in the second season of "Dexter" and in "Spartacus", an antediluvian vampire who acts in Romania as an Art professor at the university. In reality, Professor Dandridge is none other than the famous Elizabeth Bathory, the mythical "bloody countess" and one of the first vampires in History, who used to bathe in the blood of her courtiers to remain young and beautiful. And it is here that lies the first real novelty of this sequel, that is, to talk for the first time in the saga of vampiric figures well known to the public and not of generic vampires. It is a pity that in doing so they make the mistake of attributing to Countess Bathory a Romanian origin when in reality she was Hungarian, but well, let's take ignorance for poetic license. In general, "Fright Night 2" has little to offer. Its nature as a remake of a remake makes it a particularly useless object that reveals at every moment its nature of shamelessly "commercialized" without even hiding it behind a new story. In the end, it is a film that is left to be remembered for little or nothing, proposing characters that we already know who move and do things that we already know they will do. The only point of interest is, in fact, the figure of the vampire, to whom they sew an unprecedented origin linked to a curse, who becomes the protagonist of the only truly memorable scene of the entire film and who sees her engaged in the classic blood bath ritual thanks to which she rejuvenates. A long and bloody scene constructed in a decidedly suggestive manner. But that's where it ends, and exploitation lovers will have little blood, some nudity - but strangely not from Murray, who usually has no problem undressing in front of cameras - and a final monster that, however, is well realized. Ed (Chris Waller) is odious, respecting thus the original character of Holland's film, Charlie Brewster, played by Will Payne, is a colorless protagonist who gets his scene stolen by anyone, and Peter Vincent, here played by the anonymous Sean Power, is the host of a reality show about haunted places very (too) similar to the one that appears in the film "ESP - Paranormal Phenomena" by the Vicious Brothers, thus providing us with a further upheaval-update of the Fright Night show, after having already been a magic show program in the 2011 remake. In short, this "Fright Night 2" has no reason to exist. A carbon copy of the films of the saga already made that is left to be watched entertainingly but is also left to be forgotten at the speed of light. Never as in this case does the adjective "useless" fit a film.