Fright Night review
Remakes don’t always have to be a terrible idea. Outside of certain unimpeachable classics there isn’t anything inherently wrong with taking the premise from a film a few decades old and giving it a new spin that might even enhance the original material. This has been especially true of genre films where budgetary or technological effects might have been a constraint on the native production and in fact, two of the best horror films of the ’80s are remakes: John Carpenter’s “The Thing” and David Cronenberg’s “The Fly.” Each film came about 30 years after its predecessor and managed to improve upon the originals. I didn’t have especially high hopes for the update of the 1985 vampire-lives-next-door tale “Fright Night” but thought there was certainly potential to make something worthwhile out of this redo and reviews were surprisingly strong.
Written by Marti Noxon (a vet of “Mad Men” and “Buffy The Vampire Slayer”) and directed by “Lars & The Real Girl” helmer Craig Gillespie making his first foray into Hollywood (he’s slated to direct the adaptation of “Pride & Prejudice & Zombies” next), “Fright Night” unfortunately does not stack up to the original. The remake updates Charley Brewster from an every-teen to a kind of brooding social ladder climber as played by Anton Yelchin. Likewise his girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots, my God) here is improbably hot and way out of his league. Toni Colette steps in as the single mother, Christopher Mintz-Plasse is his former best friend “Evil” Ed and Colin Farrell subs in for the vampire who moves next door, Jerry Dandridge.
The opening credits are stylish and first scene holds promise but it’s all downhill from there. The original really hinges on the boy who cried wolf scenario and after all, who would really believe a teenager that vampires exist, he can hardly believe it himself. The new version dispenses with all of that “story” nonsense and gets right into it. Within the opening minutes of the film Ed is telling Charley that vampires exist, he’s tracking one and that’s why their friend is missing. Charley more or less goes along with this right away and so do the rest of the characters in the film. As much as we might be sick of characters onscreen wrestling with the improbability of a fantastic situation (“vampires don’t exist!”) it’s sort of necessary if you’re trying to approximate characters that live on Earth.
Farrell is totally miscast and miscalculates his role. In addition to prowling around sniffing at the air trying to act menacing (and keeping his American accent in tact) we’re not really sure what his character wants. He kills his neighbors in broad daylight in the middle of the street, isn’t he the least concerned with it being traced back to him? Also not clear why he would go out of his way to terrorize Charley in particular when he seems content to eat just about anybody, why go through the effort? It’s hard to watch the film without spending half the time talking back to the screen with these kinds of logic issues. (Why isn’t Charley telling his girlfriend, mom, anyone about what’s going on? We’re never really given a slightly plausible reason.) The use of CG on the vampire faces is really distracting and drains any possible suspense that might have been taking shape.
The original, dated as it may be, was funny and scary and cool (at the time, anyway). The 2011 version is none of those things. Director Gillespie just doesn’t seem to get how to build the tension in any of the scenes and the script is devoid of the wit that made the original a low-key genre classic. Moved from the suburbs to the desolate outskirts of Las Vegas, the remake is unnecessary and only makes the original look even more accomplished in retrospect. It’s not the worst movie in the world, recent remakes of more established classics “Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Friday The 13th,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and “Halloween” were all far, far worse but it’s underwhelming and a botched opportunity.
Also worth noting is that the film, which I saw in 2D, has a handful of ridiculous “stuff flying at the camera” shots clearly intended for 3D but distract from the flat version.
