TheRetroCritic

Fright Night was certainly a rarity: a vampire comedy that actually works both as a vamp flick and as a horror movie satire. The film had an irresistible charm with its cool 80's score, its turtle neck-wearing villain and its genius Peter Cushing/Hammer homage. This sequel takes the same formula and introduces new dastardly vampires to add to the mix. It's years later, Charlie (William Ragsdale again) has undergone a lot of therapy and has accepted that everything that happened in the first film had been the result of group hypnosis and never actually happened. Peter Vincent (the ever-reliable Roddy McDowall), however, still remembers the truth of the events that unfolded but being the only one who believes that reality, it's hurting his work to say the least. Basically, the first half of the film is nothing but build-up to resuming the status quo of the first movie: Charlie being a douche to his girlfriend, Peter Vincent losing his job, vampires orgy-biting victims

Ok, so I'm actually watching Knight And Day while posting this and I still have no idea what DAY is in that god forsaken ass title. Why?! I mean, I know Cruise's character's parents are called Knight but he's actually called Roy Miller and Diaz's character is called June Havens so... Well, I guess her sister's called April which is another month which contains days... Nope.  That can't be it. They fucked up: they fucked up bad. You can't just sacrifice sense for THE cheesiest pun out there! See! Oh dear, looks like I'll have to check out what my country of origin, La France, has to say about that translation-wise... No no no no NO!!! Bordel de merde!!! KNIGHT makes sense!!! Then again, Night And Day makes sense but... that's the pun! You've unpunned the pun! Now it both makes sense and is completely altogether meaningless. Night And Day... that could be about anything! Come on Italy, you can do this, you can fix it! Rea

Shyamalan produces this first instalment of his "Night Chronicles" and surprisingly creates an entertaining, if uninspired, horror tale. After a truly engaging Hitchcockian first half the film unfortunately chooses to go down the familiar path of every silly supernatural horror film ever made and pick off its characters one by one only to build up towards a hammy revelation which doesn't really make sense. It's a shame because Devil really didn't need to be a supernatural horror. Had it stuck with its original premise and gone for a more Speed / Phone Booth -style thriller it could have been a genuinely tense and clever film. Alas, Shyamalan's head-explodingly naive religious message and childish take on the horror genre boils down an otherwise decent outing to a very watchable but flawed first attempt. One hopes the silliness is either kept quiet or full blown to its maximum in further instalments.

Climbing back up the hill after cult classic cinematic catastrophe The Happening was always going to be a tough one. With The Last Airbender, Shyamalan takes a small step in the right direction but still falters on so many levels making this last effort better than his Mark Wahlberg turkey but just about. M Night Shyamalan's de-evolution as a filmmaker could be traced back to when he really became Shyamalan the "auteur" with Lady in the Water . The latter had its merits and was wrongfully underrated upon release but it was flawed, clunky and uneven like no other Shyamalan film had been before. Even a lesser effort like Signs felt focused and acutely paced and executed compared to it. One can only conclude that M Night is just not a good screenwriter. The naivity and annoyingly juvenile undertones of his ideas just fly through his script pages like concords cancelling all senses of danger, suspense or darkness from the finished material. A horror film like The Happeni