The plot is exactly the same as the original, which is one of the core problems with this movie. It's just not that interesting. When I first heard about this movie, I thought it was more along the lines of Rear Window with vampires, a slow-burn type movie where Charley's realization that his neighbor is a vampire would be a big reveal or a unforeseen plot twist. Just like last time, the plot is as follows; Teenager Charley realizes his new neighbor Jerry is a vampire, and must enlist the help of a washed-up actor to rescue his romantic interest from Jerry's evil clutches. Again, there's virtually nothing to the plot outside of this, except the pacing is different this time. If there is anything nice to be said about this movie, it's that the pacing is better than the original's. The 1985 version had terrible pacing, and many scenes dragged on for far longer than necessary. At leas this time the plot runs a little a smoother, giving us a faster paced movie. This isn't much, but it's a nice touch.
In a B-Movie, characters are usually the least important part of the movie, but the remake of Fright Night is clearly not a B-Movie like the original. There's always an expectation of higher quality in current films, no matter what time period. We expect a movie from 2011 to be better in some way than the original from 1985. This is a silly expectation, but it's there nonetheless. I would have honestly expected the characters to have improved from the 26 year gap between the original and the remake. As I said, this isn't a B-Movie anymore, and I'd expect a little more than the bland characters that permeate this movie.
In the original Fright Night, our main character was Charley, a bland mix of various 80's stereotypes. This go-round Charley is an extremely obnoxious teenager from the tech generation. The character himself is not a particularly annoying character per se, but the actor playing him is unbearably irritating. Basically, Charley is still the same character from the original, but tweaked slightly to appeal to current audiences, but he's no longer played as a John Cusack knockoff. This go-round, Charley, played by Anton Yelchin, alternates on-and-off between being bland and being obnoxious. At times he's a harmless, albeit drab and generic, teenage character. But occasionally he switches gears and plays the character as a snarky, preppy type, even though the script seems to indicate otherwise.
The supporting cast suffers from the same problems as Anton. The script indicates that we're supposed to find these characters likable and relatable, but all of the actors alternate between being boring or being a jerk. But the main problem is that everyone in this movie gives a generally underwhelming performance. Most of the cast members have been in several other movies, so it's expected of them to being giving a good performance by now, but no one does. Much like Chris Sarandon in the original Fright Night, Colin Farrell fails to capture the needed elegance and creepiness necessary to play a vampire. Albeit his character is poorly written, Colin plays the character with a strange arrogance that feels really out of place for a vampire, as they're typically known for alluring and graceful personalities. Even David Tennant somehow gives a boring performance. Most of the time he seemed to be just standing around being British, as if his heart wasn't really in the role and he's only there for the money. (Come to think of it, that's probably the case with everyone involved with this film) His character was weak to begin with, but he doesn't give it any pizzazz, and fans of his work in Doctor Who are likely to be disappointed with his performance here.
Jerry the vampire is still as boring as ever, but the character lacks subtlety and is far more aggressive this time. He actively pursues Charley almost right off the bat, whereas the original Jerry didn't try to attack him until more than halfway through the film. Evil Ed, the Beavis lookalike from the original, is now just plain Ed, and his character is still thin as ever. Instead of just being some weird kid who abandons his friends for vampirism like in the original, Ed is now a pretentious nerd who abandons his friends for vampirism, and he does so even sooner than 1985 Ed. Strangely enough, Ed is the one who first discovers Jerry's secret, and it's only until he disappears that Charley actually starts to care and investigate his neighbor's nightly activities. Ed is also left out of the film almost completely after joining the legion of the undead. Whereas Ed got two fight scenes with some decent special effects, Ed shows back up in the remake for a boring and CG-ridden fight scene before biting the dust. In the remake, we also get the addition of two of Charley's friends, two guys who I assume are supposed to be preppy or something, but the film doesn't quite indicate. They're barely in the film, but their brief presence on screen is very annoying, and it adds nothing but some padding to the film's run time.
Peter Vincent, the washed-up actor from the 1985 film is in the remake as well, but this time he plays a Criss Angel-type magician from Las Vegas, and he's even blander than last time. But instead of his shoehorned-in "crisis of faith" subplot, this time Peter reveals that his parents were killed by a vampire (and conveniently it was Jerry that did it, too). I think this was supposed to give Peter a reason to fight Jerry, but he never seemed interested to begin with. Even Amy, Charley's girlfriend is worse than in the original. In the 1985 version, she was the generic romantic interest character, but in the update her character is now not only an uninteresting romantic interest, but she's also objectifying towards women. Whereas the 1985 Amy dressed modestly and mostly refused Charley's advances, she now is a tawdrier version of the character, wearing overly provocative outfits (and ones certainly not appropriate for a girl that's supposed to be sixteen), but she straight-up tries to seduce Charley halfway through the film. Strangely enough, that particular scene is very uncharacteristic for this regularly bland character, and makes the women-objectification all the more blatant.
Another strange facet of this film is the humor. The original Fright Night is often labelled as a horror comedy, which is strange because there's literally no humor in the conventional sense. There's potential for a few laughs at campy moments, depending on your sense of humor, but the script clearly was written to be taken seriously. The remake on the other hand, has many jokes abound. None of them are particularly funny, and most of them don't even make sense. And although humor is subjective, if you find humor in tasteless sex jokes and gratuitous swearing, then you're probably not old enough to be watching an R-rated horror movie to begin with.
And of course the worst part of this film are the special effects. The original Fright Night withheld the special effects until the end, and actually had some cool ideas that worked fairly well within the confines of the budget. But as with many modern movies, regardless of genre, Fright Night revels in cheap CG. The special effects don't really kick in until the third act of the film, but when they do, it's atrocious. The design for Jerry in his more vampiric form is absolutely ridiculous, looking like a cross between Mileena from Mortal Kombat and some sort of zombie. A good rule of thumb with horror is leaving things to the viewer's imagination, or at least keeping the appearance of the villain to a minimum. The remake says "Screw that!" and blasts us with horribly fake CG shots of Colin Farrell towards the end. Most notably, and most laughably, a scene in which a newly-turned vampire disintegrates explosively, strangely leaving behind one of he legs. But even better is Jerry's death scene. He gets dragged into the sun and his chest starts to disintegrate, exposing his beating CG heart like some sort of video game villain. Charley stakes Jerry, and Jerry bursts into flame. The resulting shot is worth looking up Youtube if you enjoy bad special effects. The shot of Jerry bursting into flame is unnecessarily in slow-motion and so horrendously fake-looking that it's the only laughable part of the movie.
Unfortunately, the rest of the special effects fail to transcend to the hilariously bad category, and stay stuck in the just plain bad category. This is chiefly visible in all the other death scenes. For some reason, the special effects team decided to use CG blood as opposed to using their creativity and shelling out some extra cash for fake blood. If there's one thing that looks horribly fake in CG, it's blood. It's hard to recreate the look of liquid in CG, and it's best left to animated films that specialize in that department. But unfortunately a bunch of hack visual artists were assigned to one of the laziest and most fake-looking shortcuts in the visual effects handbook.
Overall, I really disliked this movie. If there's anything positive to say of it, it's that I didn't like the original Fright Night all too much, so I didn't experience any "Oh no, they're ruining everything that was good about the original movie" moments, like fans of the original might have. (Yes, the original has fans. Or at least people that mildly enjoyed it. It's currently at a 7.0/10 on IMDB) But even if you ignore the original, Fright Night fails as its own movie. It's just not good. The story is bland, the acting is bland, and there's an endless amount of stupid moments littered throughout the movie. (Jerry has a secret hallway that looks like the inside of a hospital hidden behind his closet, for the purpose of detaining victims, Jerry has vampires buried in the walls of his basement for some reason, Charley gears up in a flame-retardant combat outfit and lights himself on fire to fight Jerry, etc.) It's mind-boggling how a movie as stupid as this can get produced, but at the same time, it's really irritating when you realize it was only made to cash in on another franchise. Although, in a nice twist of fate, the film bombed. Just because you can cash in on another franchise doesn't always mean you should.
Quality- 1/5
Enjoyment- 1/5
IMDB Page- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1438176/
