Growing up as a kid, I watched the original
Fright Night really just to pass time and soon started enjoying it more and more. It had its own share of laughs sure, but mostly, it was a chilling film, and I grew to be a big fan of it. The second film was just as good too. So when I discovered that the remake was to get itself to the silver screen, I was overjoyed, yet very skeptical about it. Most remakes today just rehash and screw up whatever it is that it is trying to redo, and just ends up being a shadow of it former self. It is very insulting to the films we grew up with. Well this remake however, did not let me down. It carried itself very seriously, and stayed true to the source, yet it had its own take at the same time, making it a very enjoyable and fun film. This film gave the vampire the terror and essence of power that it should have, removing the bad taste of those horrible
Twilight movies. The film pretty much has the same plot as the original, yet with a few changes that I think were essential to this remake, and overall, was a fresh film.
To sum up the plot, the film is about a teenage boy named Charlie Brewster(Anton Yelchin) who finds out from his childhood friend 'Evil' Ed Lee(Christopher Mintz-Plasse) that his new neighbor Jerry Dandridge(Colin Farrell), is a centuries-old vampire which soon starts terrorizing the town. With a little help from his girlfriend Amy(Imogen poots) and a more or less phony film star Peter Vincent(David Tennant), he destroys the vampire and his minions for good.
All in all, it formed into a well made film and was cleverly put together, taking me back to the days of the original, without straying to far into the ridiculous. The performances were solid, especially with Colin Farrell as the stalker of the night. He made a believable vampire, and didn't over do it. He nailed it as Jerry, capturing the mysterious side, yet adding his own twist to the villain. Yelchin did his part well, and he brought that innocent, yet brave pesonality to the role of Charlie, as William Ragsdale did in the original movie. As for the other performances, Imogen Poots didn't really sell me as Amy. Her bland acting could have been better, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse delivered as he usually does with his roles, but even with his good performance, he couldn't top that of the original 'Evil' Ed, Stephen Geoffreys. On the other hand though, he did make me feel more for Ed than Stephen did. Moving on to an important detail that was changed greatly in this film was that of Peter Vincent. He was still a phony yet was much younger and vulgar in his ways. In my opinion, this was a highlight of the remake because I felt that if someone would have tried to redo Roddy McDowall as vincent, it would have just sucked. Thankfully, that didn't happen, and David Tennant was surprisingly great as vincent.
While many aren't much for remakes(including myself), I found this remake to be a very faithful re-imagining of the original film that I grew to love. There were some aspects of the film however, that didn't sit too well with me, but they were minor problems that didn't really affect the quality of the film. The original is still the best, and nobody can ever capture the greatness of it. The remake though, comes very close to doing so, and I highly recommend this film to anyone who liked the original
Fright Night and/or to anyone just looking for a good vampire film.
Overall rating: 4.5/5 stars