Romania, Realm of the Supernatural: 'Fright Night 2: New Blood' (2013)
Specifications: Title: Fright Night 2: New Blood Release Date: October 1, 2013 Genre: Horror, Thriller Director: Eduardo Rodriguez Writer: Matt Venne Characters: Charley Brewster, Ed Bates, Amy Peterson, Gerri Dandridge, Peter Vincent. Production company: 20th Century FoxGaeta / Rosenzweig Films
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Country: USA Running time: 100 minutes Language: English Setting: Romania, no clear location is specified.
Synopsis:
A group of American high-school students travel to study in Romania and they find themselves charmed, terrorized and hunted by their Romanian Culture and History teacher, Gerri Dandridge, who is a very powerful vampire with an insatiable thirst for human blood. Ed and Charley have to stop their teacher from drinking and bathing in the blood of “a new moon virgin”, which happens to be Amy, Charley's ex-girlfriend. The group asks Peter Vincent for help, a vampire hunter who is also a host of a reality tv show called “Fright Night”. Together they hope that they will stop once and for all Gerri's plans and save their friend Amy.
Tropes: vampires, thirst for blood, innocent and naive Americans, supernatural elements, vampire hunter.
Personal opinion:
The movie really seems to be a modernized and modified 'Hollywood' version of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, with elements that have been taken out and other elements that have been added, because compared with Stoker's book the vampire is not anymore a creature that lives in the shadows and far away from people, but among them, by day being a teacher and by night letting his desire for blood and other pleasures to emerge.
Also, what Vesna Goldsworthy says in her book Inventing Ruritania:The Imperialism of the Imagination, in chapter three, when she is speaking about the Balkans as being the place of spies, murder and vampires it can be applied here. Because Fright Night 2: New Blood is just another film that portrays Romanians as vampires, making them look as beings who are controled just by their hunger and instincts, and who are not able to act normally. As if, by generalizing, any person who happens to be Romanian and be more excentric or different is a vampire, walking in the night and searching for a victim. Which makes us think of what Maria Todorova was saying by the fact that Romania is a land stuck in a far away past, staying barbaric, violent and without evolving in any way. Of course she wasn't speaking about vampires as being the violent or vengeful Romanians, but in this movie it appears to be like that.
And if we consider all the vampire movies, which by a coincidence have vampires of Romanian oirigin or they take place in Romania, even though, as this one, they don't also say in which town or region of the country, or any film which involves a monster or a creature that exists in nowadays "society", we could affirm that Romania is a vampire and/or supernatural kingdom: stuck in the past, bloody and who waits for innocent victims to fall in its embrace.
Furthermore, because Fright Night 2: New Blood brings something new, in a way, compared with other vampire movies, Charlie discovers that Gerri is no other than Elisabeth Bathory, one of the most powerful vampires. Which is a bit shocking, especially if we think that Countess Elizabeth Báthory was from a noble family in the Kingdom of Hungary, not in Romania. But maybe they decided to use it in the movie, because she is considered a serial killer and all the bloody stories that surround her character, hence she could have been a vampire in Romania. Or maybe it was the fact that she was a woman and the director decided not to make her a female version of Dracula or Vlad Tepes.
And by letting aside this small 'origin' mistake of Gerri, or Elisabeth, we can say that this movie as the other ones with vampires and supernatural creatures, makes Romania seem the kingdom of vampires, a place caught in its own time and tradition, and which doesn't seem and doesn't want to change that, too soon.