Good corporate citizen, safe pair of hands, nice approachable chap, collegiate, talented, works hard. If this were performance appraisal, I’d say “meets expectations. Fright Night is a comedy horror: a genre neither fish nor fowl that was popularised in the eighties by films like – well, Fright Night. And, anyway, it can’t: Dracula has been remade so many times even he’s lost count: talk about undead.Ĭolin Farrell and his cohorts, if they are striving for something new and not just trying to catch the last sparks of a departing comet, have their work cut out. You’re getting a bit “meta” if that could count as a novel angle. In the case of Clash Of The Titans, you could at least say that a film about big mythical beasts was a worthy candidate for the eye-poking process.Just when you thought the genre really had been sucked dry, there comes Fright Night. Terrible though the 3D The Last Airbender and Clash Of The Titans was, at least those films had the scale of production to provide an excuse for the bad stereoscopic effects’ existence. Gentle reader, I can say with reasonable authority that the 3D here is among the worst I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, there’s Fright Night’s weakest aspect to consider – its 3D. It’s almost as though Fright Night’s casting director found out that Brand was busy on another project, and simply hired another actor from the British Isles to put on some eyeliner and flounce about in his stead. Fans of former Doctor, David Tennant, will be disappointed and maybe slightly alarmed to see this fine actor pulling off what appears to be an impression of Russell Brand. One brief scene aside, it’s fairly easy to predict what’s going to happen next, even if you’ve never seen the original.Ĭolin Farrell’s perfectly good when he’s asked to be slick and charming, but he fails to bring a convincing air of menace to the role that Chris Sarandon filled so well back in 1985.Īnd then we come to the film’s oddest character, Peter Vincent. But at the same time, there’s little creativity in Gillespie’s direction, and the requisite humour it shares with the original isn’t backed up by any sense of drama or tension. Mintz-Plasse is great as Charley’s best friend, but he’s only around for a few scenes, and barely has a chance to build the kind of easy chemistry that the earlier film’s pairing enjoyed.Īt this point, you may be thinking that it’s a little unfair to constantly compare the 2011 Fright Night to the original, but when you’re dealing with a remake as disappointingly lacking in ambition as this one, it’s impossible to do much else.įright Night is by no means poorly made film – it’s fairly competent, in fact, and there are many scenes that left the entire audience chuckling appreciatively. This isn’t the fault of Yelchin, who’s a great actor, but the story, which recasts him as a more aggressive, cocksure youth than the Charley of the original film. For one thing, Charley is a less sympathetic protagonist than his 1985 counterpart, originally played by William Ragsdale. While there are still plenty of laughs and some smart lines, the tone of new Fright Night is subtly different. Colin Farrell is the suave, broad-shouldered blood sucker next door, while David Tennant plays Peter Vincent, a flamboyant, hard-drinking Las Vegas magician. Anton Yelchin plays schoolboy Charley Brewster, while Christopher Mintz-Plasse is his dorky best friend and amateur vampire hunter, Ed. The original starred Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale and Roddy McDowall, and was an effervescent mixture of teen comedy and vampire horror.Ĭourtesy of director Craig Gillespie, here comes the Fright Night remake, which, at the very least, has an even starrier cast than the original. Which brings me to Fright Night, a remake of a comedy horror movie that celebrated its quarter century last year. Breck Eisner’s redo of another Romero film, The Crazies was (whisper it) actually superior to the original, which was compromised somewhat by its tiny budget. Zack Snyder’s Dawn Of The Dead may have lacked the satirical edge of Romero’s movie, but it was still a fun, gratifyingly gory post- 28 Days Later horror flick. Instances of great remakes are rare, but they do exist.
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