Fright Night: Blood Curdling Farcical Fun

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll say that I've never seen Tom Holland's 1985 version of Fright Night.  From what I hear, it was a cult classic, which more often than not means it's not nearly as good as you remember it being and therefore, arguments against it being remade would be tenuous at best.  I find it easy to make such a sweeping generalization about the original not because I'm cynical about the state of 1980s horror or remakes – not exclusively, at least – but because I can't imagine how the low-budget precursor directed by the guy who made Thinner could possibly be better than Craig Gillespie's surprisingly smart and funny update.

Most immediately impressive about this go around is screenwriter Marti Nixon's decision to set her tale of vampiric woe in Las Vegas, a city where the nightlife so aggressively outshines that daylife that no one, especially high schooler Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin), would think twice about a neighbor who sleeps all day, comes out and night and keeps the windows blacked out.  That's Jerry (Colin Farrell), the newest neighbor in the copy-paste Vegas suburb that also hosts Charley's virginal girlfriend, Amy (Imogen Poots…hehe), and Charley's one-time best friend, Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), whose "one time" came when Charley was younger and not ashamed to play pretend.

Jerry tells everyone he works night construction on the strip, because to say that he was a vampire would most likely hinder his wooing Charley's single mother, Jane (Toni Collette).  Ed firmly believes that a recent rash of teenage disappearances are Jerry's handiwork, but Charley is not convinced.  After all, Jerry the vampire? What kind of vampire name is that?  Soon enough though, Ed also disappears and Charley stumbles upon some very convincing evidence of Jerry's undead state.  How does an ordinary teenage kid convince his loved ones that their neighbor is anything but? 

In a lesser film, the screenwriter would spend half of the two-hour running time trying to convince the protagonist of the reality of a vampire, which would then lead to an insufficient amount of time for him to convince the others around him and map out a plan of attack.  By killing off Ed to erase Charley's doubt in the first 20 minutes of the film, Nixon ensures plenty of time for the narrative to unfold in a way that feels organic and logical while Gillespie supplements the pacing with scenes of great tension invoked from genuine emotional connection.  On the surface it may be just a story about a boy battling a vampire, but Yelchin's penchant for playing a believable everyman just makes Charley's victories a little sweeter and his defeats a little more bitter.

Opposing Yelchin is Farrell who brings the perfect mixture of intimidation and camp to a roll that could've easily strayed into either extreme of blandness or cheesiness.  Farrell's inherent swagger is perfectly suited for the lupine Jerry and his contrast with the meek Charley is another testament to Nixon's skill as a writer, hearkening back to the youth-centric sexual undertones of 80's horror that have been lost in the modern haze of melodrama. 

And yet despite its moments of graveness and sophistication, Fright Night is also a lot of fun.  Between darkly humorous moments with the undead to the drunken hijinks of Peter Vincent (David Tennant), the illusionist/occuly specialist who aids Charley in his quest, you get the feeling that everyone, including the filmmakers, were having as much fun as a simple genre film would allow, which results in one hell of a good time for the audience. 

A word to the wise, though – if you wish to milk as much fun from this vampiric teet as possible, avoid seeing Fright Night in 3D at all costs.  Despite being shot natively in 3D, the final result is so dreadfully awful, so mind-numbingly pointless that I removed my glasses after 20 minutes and never put them back on again.  The double image did occasionally bother me, but in the remaining 86-minute running time those instances were nowhere near as frequent as the distractions of the overly dark and inexplicably flat 3D.  If you want to make it a good night, stick to two dimensions.