59. Fright Night (2011)

59. Fright Night (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes: 72%  IMDB: 6.4

Plot: Charley learns from his former best friend Ed that his new neighbor Jerry is a vampire. He seeks the help of Criss Angel like stage magician and self proclaimed vampire expert Peter Vincent to put Jerry in the soil in this remake of the 1985 original (see movie post 54).


My Thoughts: Remakes are a tricky business, you have built in name recognition and a built in pissed off fan base that no matter what you do you want please so why do them, well sometimes it's a cheap cash grab and sometimes you have something to say with the material, good examples of the latter being The Fly and The Thing. This one falls into the camp of taking the major themes and building blocks but constructing something new from them. Colin Farrell's version of Jerry is not the smooth charming gentleman of Chris Sarandon, watch for a cameo by him as well in the car accident scene, he is rather a tough but good looking charming douchebag type of modern man's man. These are very different films, the biggest change of course is in David Tennant's Peter Vincent, gone is the hasbeen sophisticated actor and in his place is a vegas stage magician ala Criss Angel with his goth flair. This could have been a train wreck but what is on screen works, I love it, I think the creatures look great, some of CGI is a bit ehh, but it all comes together well with a great final fight. There are enough nods to the original to please this fan without being slavishly devoted to a reshoot. I recommend.


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