"Fright Night" 2011 - review

A Rippingly Good Remake

Horror reboots are certainly not a new trend in cinema, but as most are usually greedy cash grabs from opportunistic studios with no respect for the source material, such offerings are often rightly reviled before they are even released.  Therefore it is a delight to discover a scary movie that is not only a proper tribute to the original, but one that also works surprisingly well on its own.  The first “Fright Night” from 1985 was a creepy yet very funny horror film which adeptly balanced genuine scares with cheesy camp.  Director Craig Gillespie’s remake retains both these admirable qualities while adding some adroit alterations to the story.

While the original film took place in an old-fashioned, tree-lined street to evoke that nostalgic fifties feeling, Gillespie smartly sets his retelling in a modern, newly-built suburb outside glitzy Las Vegas.  Aside from being encircled by endless acres of empty desert which stretch to the horizon in all directions, many of the houses in this lonely bedroom community are still unoccupied.  This creates a superb sense of isolation because even before the danger takes wing, we know that the characters have no one to help them and literally nowhere to hide.

Anton Yelchin, more recently of “Star Trek” reboot fame, plays Charlie Brewster, the teenager who ultimately realizes that he lives next door to a vampire.  In a nice role reversal, it is Charlie’s best friend Ed who first suspects that something evil is loose in the neighborhood and Charlie is the one who needs convincing.  Yet students keep disappearing from their school, and when master vampire Jerry Dandridge gets wind of Charlie and Ed’s suspicions, the blood really begins to spurt.

The choice of Colin Farrell as the master vampire may seem odd at first as Farrell’s previous acting talents had mostly consisted of a sad parade of furrowed brows and pouty lips.  He was a pity puppy shamelessly trolling for sympathy.  Farrell obliterates this saccharine sweetness with a terrifying performance that radiates ruthless malevolence.  Jerry Dandridge wears his cruelty like a crown, and you love to hate him as he callously toys with his “food” before eating it, the fear adding flavor to the meal.

Since Late night horror movie hosts are more obsolete than the VHS players which replaced them, Charlie Brewster’s unlikely ally against evil becomes a burnt out glam magician.  Peter Vincent, deliriously played by David Tennant, has a Grand Guignol-style Vegas act chockfull of cheesy nineties Goth themes. While Peter’s moral exhaustion at whoring his talent with such undead clichés makes for some hilarious quips, he’s never so cynical that all empathy is extinguished, and his character provides yet another clever change from the original film when Peter reveals that certain elements of his act are not as fantastical as they seem.

The final descent into Jerry’s lair is a mostly silent, breathless and nail-gnawing exercise in claustrophobia.  There are no lights, and the darkness is compounded by the fact that though the house is furnished, there are no signs of human habitation.  This sterility is horrifying, because we know something lives here, and the shifting shades of black and grey incite the imagination to run wild even before the fangs and talons finally erupt from the shadows.  Craig Gillespie's “Fright Night” is that rarest of remakes; a modern version of a classic story that honors the past while offering a spine-tingling vision of the present!