... what a good movie that this could have been. I'm a huge fan of the original version of "Fright Night", and of the television movie that inspired that, the 1972 ABC Movie of the Week, "The Night Stalker", which starred Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland, and Ralph Meeker, Carol Linley, and Barry Atwater. I was hoping that "The Shed" would be at least comparable. Unfortunately, it was not.
The first ten minutes of "The Shed" are actually pretty good. It's downhill from there, I'm afraid. The acting wasn't terrible, and the special effects were pretty decent. The creative team behind the movie played it pretty fast and loose with traditional cinema vampire lore, however. Humans are turned into full-fledged vampires within minutes of having been bitten, and by minutes, I mean two or three.
"The Shed" borrows heavily from "Fright Night", sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully. There are the usual jump scares, dreams within dreams, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah. The protagonist takes actions that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. In one scene, he believes that someone has broken into his house, and he ventures out to see if this is the case. Mind you, he has just experienced his pet German Shepherd and his grandfather brutally murdered by something monstrous in the shed on his property earlier that same day... and he takes absolutely ZERO steps or measures to arm or protect himself before investigating this possible prowler that night. There are the usual array of kitchen knives, a shotgun, a baseball bat and an axe, and he takes none of these. He wanders the house, in the dark, unarmed, afraid that whatever was in the shed has now gotten into the house. It just doesn't make sense. I understand that it's a customary trope in horror movies for characters to do stupid things that no person in their right mind would do under the same circumstances, but it's a trope that I have really grown sick and tired of. For example, the beastie in the shead rips apart a healthy, full grown German Shepherd, and Grandpa goes in for revenge, armed with a stick that is significantly smaller than the cane that he usually carries. Again, there is a shotgun in the house, as well as a baseball bat, and an axe, and grizzled, hard-bitten, combat veteran Grandpa opts for a two foot long stick.
I won't give away much more than I already have, save to say that the ending is a near copy of the conclusion of "Fright Night".
The first ten minutes of "The Shed" are actually pretty good. It's downhill from there, I'm afraid. The acting wasn't terrible, and the special effects were pretty decent. The creative team behind the movie played it pretty fast and loose with traditional cinema vampire lore, however. Humans are turned into full-fledged vampires within minutes of having been bitten, and by minutes, I mean two or three.
"The Shed" borrows heavily from "Fright Night", sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully. There are the usual jump scares, dreams within dreams, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah. The protagonist takes actions that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. In one scene, he believes that someone has broken into his house, and he ventures out to see if this is the case. Mind you, he has just experienced his pet German Shepherd and his grandfather brutally murdered by something monstrous in the shed on his property earlier that same day... and he takes absolutely ZERO steps or measures to arm or protect himself before investigating this possible prowler that night. There are the usual array of kitchen knives, a shotgun, a baseball bat and an axe, and he takes none of these. He wanders the house, in the dark, unarmed, afraid that whatever was in the shed has now gotten into the house. It just doesn't make sense. I understand that it's a customary trope in horror movies for characters to do stupid things that no person in their right mind would do under the same circumstances, but it's a trope that I have really grown sick and tired of. For example, the beastie in the shead rips apart a healthy, full grown German Shepherd, and Grandpa goes in for revenge, armed with a stick that is significantly smaller than the cane that he usually carries. Again, there is a shotgun in the house, as well as a baseball bat, and an axe, and grizzled, hard-bitten, combat veteran Grandpa opts for a two foot long stick.
I won't give away much more than I already have, save to say that the ending is a near copy of the conclusion of "Fright Night".