Just saw the remake of the 1985 film “Fright Night.” I heartily recommend it to fans who like their vampire stories leavened with a fairly large portion of comedy. [In fact, on IMDB, “Fright Night” is listed as a comedy before it is listed as a horror movie.] This remark comes to you courtesy of an active voting member of HWA (Horror Writers’ Association).
Director Craig Gillespie keeps the story from Marti Noxon and Tom Holland moving along briskly, and the actors are all spot-on in their parts. (Sad to see a fine actor like Chris Sarandon of “Dog Day Afternoon” reduced to a mere walk-on as a man driving a car involved in a crash with the main characters’ vehicle, though.)
Anton Yelchin (“Star Trek”) plays Charley Brewster, who, along with his mother Jane (Toni Collette, “The United States of Tara,” “About A Boy”) lives next door to a vampire named George (Colin Farrell). The tag line for the movie is, “You can’t run from evil when it lives next door.”
Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who made us laugh as the nerdy Fogell in “Superbad and in “Kick-Ass,” was Charley’s best friend when they were younger. Now, Charley has outgrown Ed (Mintz-Plasse’s character—who, at 22, is pushing the envelope of continuing to play high school characters much longer). Charley wants to appear cool for his new girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots) and Ed is a nerd, so Charley ignores Ed’s pleas for help in investigating Charley’s neighbor George and their disappearing classmates. Ed becomes very upset with Charlie’s seeming indifference. Taking matters into his own hands only gets Ed into bigger trouble, and his character effectively disappears from the movie until the final third of onscreen time, when Ed’s re-appearance triggers many of the film’s funniest moments.
Charley is finally convinced that George (Colin Farrell) is, in fact, truly a vampire and he approaches a Vegas lounge lizard type named Peter Vincent (David Tennant), (seemingly modeled on Criss Angel), to help him investigate and potentially kill Jerry. The film’s use of the city of Las Vegas as the setting is genius. Residents who sleep days and work nights explain away the darkened windows on Jerry’s house. The entire city (many aerial shots) has just the right look for the plot—although most of the film was actually shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
When Charley hears a woman screaming at Jerry’s house, he calls the cops, to investigate the status of Doris, the exotic dancer Jerry is entertaining. The police arrive but Jerry jollies them along and they leave, later causing Charley to say, “Last time I called the cops, they nearly all went to Chili’s together.”
It finally comes down to approaching vampire expert Peter (an homage to Peter Cushing of Hammer Films) Vincent (for Vincent Price), a Vegas lounge act who has an impressive array of vampire-fighting equipment for assistance. At first, David Tennant’s character of Vincent is reluctant to get involved. He reveals that he saw his own parents killed before his eyes by vampires. Vincent even has a “panic” room, and hustles off to hole up for safety’s sake at one point, when under attack — and attacks are quite frequent in the film.
However, Charley finally shames Vincent into accompanying him to Jerry’s lair. As they enter the house and must fall several feet to the crawlspace beneath the floorboards, Vincent says, “I’m like a great date. You get me drunk enough and I’ll try anything.” After falling several feet to the dirt below only to discover more horrors beneath the floorboards, Vincent immediately adds, “I may not be drunk enough for this.”
Houses blow up. Cars run over people. Heads are nearly chopped off with battle-axes. People are set on fire. Casino clubs are visited. Vampire bites start out sexy but end up horrific. At one point, Amy (Imogen Poots), the pretty blonde girlfriend, gets her werewolf/vampire lore mixed up and attempts to shoot Charley with a revolver loaded with silver bullets. The sly humor is in evidence when Farrell plucks the bullet off his lapel and whispers to Amy, “Werewolves.”
Colin Farrell is remarkable in his role, making Jerry convincingly dangerous and sexy at the same time. Farrell’s achievement is particularly noteworthy this summer, as he is coming off a recent stellar comic turn in “Horrible Bosses.” All the other actors deliver equally fine performances, although Toni Collette’s part isn’t as large as a multiple Emmy-winner deserves. The music adds to the overall effect, and many special effects houses have worked their considerable CG magic.
One comment: I saw it in 3D. Roger Ebert suggested that, because it is so dark, it is best to see it in 2D. I don’t know whether it is “better” or “worse” in 3D versus 2D, but I do agree that the film is dark (which could have been predicted from the subject matter, alone). However the comedy lightens the horror in the film in just the right way and in just the right amount, and it is safe to say that Colin Farrell’s vampire turn, while horrifying, is also sexy super cinema.