Here ex-patriate Australian director Craig Gillespie (the offbeat independent romantic comedy Lars And The Real Girl, etc) and writer Marti Noxon (Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, etc) have stripped away the homoerotic undertones of the original and beefed up the horror and violence. They have also relocated the action to Las Vegas, which seems a perfect location for a vampire tale given its nocturnal life style and largely transient population that no-one cares about if they go missing.
Colin Farrell takes over the role originally played by Chris Sarandon (who has a cameo here), and gives the character much more of a sinister, ruthless and sexy macho edge. Farrell plays the mysterious Jerry, who moves in next door to single mother Jane (Toni Collette) and her teenage son Charley (Anton Yelchin, from the recent The Beaver, etc). Jerry’s behaviour might seem a little strange, but hey, it is Vegas after all, and almost anything goes.
But then Charley’s former best friend Ed (played by cinema’s favourite geek Christopher Mintz-Plasse, from Superbad and Kick-Ass, etc) is convinced that Jerry is a vampire. At first Charley is sceptical, but when Jerry reveals his true nature, the action ramps up very quickly. Charley seeks help from Peter Vincent, the self-styled vampire slayer.
In the original Vincent was a tv host of late night creature features, played with urbane charm by the late Roddy McDowall. (The character’s name was actually a combination of Hammer Horror stalwarts Peter Cushing and Vincent Price.) Here he is a flamboyant, alcoholic and self-absorbed Vegas showman and illusionist, played with gusto by Dr Who himself David Tennant, seemingly channelling Russell Brand and any number of obnoxious British rock stars. He lives in a lavish penthouse above a casino, and his sprawling home is crammed with all sorts of memorabilia and vampire artifacts. When the pair tackle Jerry on his home turf things get decidedly bloody.
Fright Night benefits enormously from some great CGI effects. It has also been shot in 3D, which is used to good effect in some sequences, although overall it adds little to the experience. And in the session I saw, the projectors were not aligned for the first reel, resulting in the film occasionally seeming blurred and unfocused.
With her work on Buffy, Noxon often played hard and fast with the traditional vampire lore, and while she again takes liberties, Fright Night is full of the usual ingredients – fangs, blood, and crucifixes. Her vampires here still cannot enter a house without being invited inside, they don’t cast a reflection in mirrors, nor do they appear in photographs. And when exposed to sunlight they burst into glorious flames and explode!
While the original Fright Night was hardly essential cinema it had a charm and sense of fun that is missing here. While this remake remains reasonably faithful to Holland’s original template, Gillespie’s slick direction doesn’t possess Holland’s sense of style or understanding of the tropes of the B-grade horror film. However, the film boasts some impressive technical credits, from Richard Bridgland’s production design, to Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography. Not surprisingly as Aguirresarobe also worked on the Twilight films.
