Fright Night was never about being subtle.
When the 1985 Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) spotted his new neighbour hauling a coffin into the basement and painting windows black, he quickly twigged that the population of Transylvania had suddenly dropped.
The story is really about dispatching pesky vampires, not discovering them. Rising dread is for other horror movies, like Rear Window or the more recent Disturbia. It does seem, though, that movie IQs have plummeted in the intervening 26 years since Fright Night first spooked the box office.
The 2011 Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) is slower on the uptake in this worthwhile remake, but then so are most of the other residents of his Las Vegas suburb. Charley is brave, though. You’ve got to give him that.
Kids keep going missing? The body count is rising alarmingly and bloodily? Is it coincidence, casinos or Count Dracula? Dunno, dude.
The neighbourly bloodsucker this time is played by Colin Farrell, who is no more subtle than Chris Sarandon was in the original, but he’s both scarier and more fun to watch.
His fast-quipping Jerry — and who calls a vampire “Jerry”? — likes Budweiser, women with fake boobs, mystical home decor and, er, drinking blood. You know those ancient rules about how to deal with vampires, the stuff about daylight and crosses and garlic and all that? Some apply to Jerry, some don’t. Deal with it, dude.
Farrell and Yelchin, fine actors both, obviously had a great time putting their brains into neutral, as did director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Marti Noxon, who used to write for TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
So might you, if this kind of comedy-horror hybrid, more of a novelty in ’85 than it is now, is to your taste. Gillespie can’t be bothered to make literal or even movie sense of this bloodsucker-in-suburbia scenario, just as he didn’t impose logic on the mannequin love of Lars and the Real Girl.
Gillespie just wants to alternately amuse and frighten you and, to a large extent, he succeeds.
Dim-bulb Charley takes ages to accept that Jerry is up to more than working the night shift on a highway construction crew. He finally gets wise thanks to his smart-but-whiny pal Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), who has a stake in the proceedings, so to speak.
Charley still has to convince his distracted mom (Toni Collette) and his vexing girlfriend (Imogen Poots) that the only welcome wagon Jerry needs is a hearse. One hellish ride on the highway, the film’s action high point, certainly helps.
The determined teen will also require an assist from Vegas show wizard Peter Vincent (David Tennant, TV’s Dr. Who, channelling Russell Brand), who knows a lot about vampires, but also about drinking.
He’s the update to Roddy McDowall’s TV spookmaster from the original Fright Night, and the comic yin to Yelchin’s serious yang.
This is one remake that benefits from the CGI and 3-D revolutions of the past quarter century. Especially the latter, which really splatters.
There’s also a cameo that will amuse fans of the first Fright Night.
And kudos to screenwriter Noxon for a great line about Twilight, a series that will likely be getting its own remake in 25 years’ time, but not as amusingly as this one.