Welcome To Fright Night, 2011

Okay, where do I start?

I guess I should admit that when they first announced a Fright Night remake, I nearly spit blood.  I mean, how could they take something sacred and re-do it?!  Especially in this day and age, when many films seem to be brain candy and vampires have lost their bite (literally -- the Meyer vampires have no fangs, and they sparkle).

But then I learned of the cast and crew -- Buffy writer Marti Noxon was on board, as well as Colin Farrell (a great actor, and hawt!), Toni Collette, Anton Yelchin, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and the Tenth Doctor himself, David Tennant (playing the beloved Peter Vincent).  Alot of great actors in there, and it seemed like the modernization of Charlie's mom might be a good thing.  Then, when I heard that Jerry would be scary (the shark in Jaws),  I changed my mind about the remake, so much that I was eagerly anticipating it, even making it my birthday outing.

Honestly, I was disappointed.  Let me preface the rest of this review by saying that when I first saw True Grit (2010), I wasn't sure I liked it, because it differed from the 1969 movie (and novel).  However, on my second viewing, I appreciated the movie in its own right.  While I tried looking at Fright Night as its own flick, I couldn't help but make comparisons to the original, and I think that's where the disappointment lies.

Some may argue that the original, by now -- some 25 years later -- is dated.  I say that a good story is never dated; look at Hitchcock's films.  And Fright Night (1985) is really Vertigo with vampires.  Everything about it is perfect.  You have an average, ordinary teenager, Charlie, staying up late watching horror shows, when.... he sees his neighbor with fangs about to bite into a girl.  And the missing prostitute had just gone into that house the other day!!

Of course, no one believes the poor kid, they all think he was dreaming after watching too many Hammer horror flicks.  Even his good friend, who is into the occult, earning him the nickname "Evil" Ed, laughs in Charlie's face and calls him a fruitcake.

The vampire, Jerry Dandridge, is handsome, charming, and suave -- but underneath, he is evil to the core.  He shows this to Charlie, but gives Charlie, "something he didn't have -- a choice."  Dandridge is evil, but in those words, there's a bit of longing, which becomes more pronounced when it's revealed that Charlie's girlfriend looks exactly like a long-lost love of Jerry's (a theme that Vampire Diaries totally stole!).

I could go on and on about the first one, but I'll stop there for now and get into the remake.  This movie, instead of telling a good story with believable, interesting, and most importantly -- likeable -- characters, was more a collection of scenes.  The scene in which Charlie, his mom, and Amy meet Jerry.  The scene in which Evil is turned.  The scene in which Charlie goes to Peter Vincent for help. The scene in which Charlie deliberately makes Jerry wait on the back porch (not inviting him in) for beers (this scene, I have to say, was actually pretty good).  And the scene in which Chris Sarandon, the original Jerry Dandridge, makes a cameo.  A collection of scenes, which, while some were good and suspenseful, didn't really make up for a spectacular movie.

Why?  Well, they messed with the characters and the dynamics, too.  Charlie is still an average kid, but now he's cool and popular 'cause he's dating the school Hot Chick.  Good for him, but I identified more with the old Charlie.  Jerry is handsome, but he's not socially adept; he doesn't woo and charm Charlie's mom or Amy, as in the first one.  Jerry had a motive back in 1985, to recapture lost love.  It made his character interesting and sympathetic.  But he was still a vampire, and killed to feed.  This time around, it was great to see a scary, out-for-blood vampire, but Dandridge had no depth, really.  For me, part of the vampire's allure is that they are so seductive and tempting -- you want to be with him, but you can't, because he's evil.

A big disappointment was Evil Ed.  His character is whiney and a petty blackmailer.  Yes, he's a nerd who's been dumped by his BFF, Charlie, so that Charlie can date the Hot Chick, but blackmailing Charlie to go check on a former friend by threatening to have childhood videos go viral does not make him a sympathetic character.  Yes, he did have a line, "You just think you're so cool, Brewster..." and thank goodness that the delivery was not meant to be like the first one, because no one could pull off Stephen Geoffreys.  In the first one, Ed was likeable.  This time, he's not.

The biggest disappointment is Peter Vincent.  While David Tennant's performance was great -- the character was completely unlikeable; crass, cowardly, and not actually necessary.

In the original, Charlie goes to Peter because he's got a vampire living next door to him, one who's sworn to kill him, and Peter is, after all, the Great Vampire Killer.  This is akin to the story of Dracula (later adapted into numerous Hammer films) in which a vampire moves into town, and it's up to Van Helsing to kill him.  The wrinkle -- the 1985 Vincent was actually a washed-up actor who was about to lose his job, which was third-rate at best.  He didn't believe in vampires, nor had he any intention of fighting them.  But the character was likeable, even as a coward, and he is completely redeemed when Vincent bucks up and fights side-by-side with Charlie.

There were details in this movie that also were unrealistic -- YES, I know it's fiction, with vampires, but if you're going to have a vampire move into town, I think, even in transient areas, he won't be taking out entire families in a single evening.  Nor will he make them into vampires so that they could do his bidding or take over the town. And if he's got a kid in his house, the old Jerry would have sniffed him out in half a heartbeat and taken him down, splat!

There was just something ordinary and very human about all the 1985 characters.  Little details that were lost in the remake -- no Billy Cole (no homoerotic undertones, no treating Jerry like some aristocrat with servants), the loss of love interest between a vampire and his reincarnated love, the fact that vampires can love, despite being demons, that Charlie was just an ordinary kid who had something extraordinary happen to him, a fading actor who gets to be the hero he always played in films.  Also, in 2011, entire families are wiped out in a single night.  True, the area is transient, but -- doesn't anyone notice this (besides Evil Ed?).  The original had prostitutes missing -- no one would really care about them. , and the dynamics between the characters -- it was just perfect.  Fright Night 2011 is two-dimensional, whereas the original was fleshed-out and completely 3D.

Maybe, like True Grit (2010), I'll see this one again and I'll like it as a movie in its own right.  But compared against the original, it was a disappointment.