Review of Fright Night

Fright Night 2011 is not a bad film, but it is not a great film, and it is a pale imitation of the original 1985 cult classic. When producing a remake, an obvious pressure is to make changes and appeal to a current crowd, and there lies the problem with Fright Night 2011 - there is no mystery. The charm of the original is Charley's gradual suspicion of what should not be - that his next-door neighbour is a vampire - and the obvious disbelief his fears elicit in all he tells. In the remake there is no real build up, we see a vampire attack from the outset and it is Ed who reveals the vampire, in one clumsy lets-get-on-with-it info-dump, and so Charley merely becomes a slayer. Colin Farrell is an actor who is not devoid of charisma, but he doesn't nail Chris Sarandon's urbane and hypnotic charm (and even more so when he becomes a CGI vamp), while David Tennant's Peter Vincent is less Roddy McDowell (but who could match the peerless Mr. McDowell?) and more of a fusion of Russell Brand and Captain Jack Sparrow. Furthermore, the 2011 version of Vincent fails due to a weird quirk revealed later in the film. This is so because when Charley first comes to the great magician he is greeted with mockery and rejection, so far, so as with the original, but then we later learn that Vincent's mother was the victim of a vampire, so why would he be so quick to disbelieve and dismiss Charley? He knows, all too tragically, that vampires exist, so why not at least question the lad before giving him the elbow? This is, of course, for dramatic purposes, but it sets off an unravelling of the plot when Peter's story is revealed and then pondered upon as Vincent's scepticism makes no sense, and so only further draws an unfavourable comparison with the charm of the original.