My Review of Fright Night

J. Geils Band, Fright Night

Fright Night Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1985)

The original Fright Night is probably my favorite vampire movie ever.  I bet I've seen that movie four or five times a year ever since I was about twelve, which, to a reasonable degree of mathematical certainty, adds up to nearly one million.  I had mixed feelings about a remake, but it was getting pretty decent reviews, so I went and saw it.  It wasn't nearly as bad as I'd worried, but it was good enough that I was a little frustrated that it wasn't as good as it could have been. It was still pretty good though (but not as good as the original).

First the bad: Chekov from the Star Trek reboot was Charlie, and he kind of bugged.  Zero charisma.  He looked like a sicklier version of Silver Spoons era Ricky Schroeder.  James Franco's little brother Dave was crammed in as some kind of dope smoking jock for absolutely no reason; he totally should have played Charlie instead.  And then McLovin was Evil Ed, and he was just awful.  Those two parts, which are pretty damn important, were woefully miscast.  Also, Evil gets turned way too soon, which guts a big part of the movie, but I guess the tradeoff is that McLovin wasn't on screen for as long as he would have been, which was okay with me.  Instead of being a lovably pathetic geek like in the original, he's just a nerdy dick.  I hated him.  Chekov probably could have pulled of Evil way better. So it is a little frustrating that the ingredients were there to solve the casting problems, but I guess that's just Hollywood.

Now the good: Dr. Who as Peter Vincent was freaking awesome.  I wish there had been more of him.  Seriously, I hope they make a spin-off sequel just about Peter Vincent, vampire killah. That would make up for McLovin. Colin Farrell was also way better than I expected.  They changed the character of Jerry Dandridge quite a bit and made him much more of a monster.  In the original, Jerry was pretty classy and then pretty creepy, kind of like O.G. Dracula.  In the remake, Jerry comes from some tribe of dirt vampires and is always sniffing around and talking about scents and stuff.  He's not classy at all, he's just scary as shit. This movie made me forgive Colin Farrell for sucking universes of ass as Bullseye in that Daredevil abortion.

I also liked the explanation about how necessary it is to actually penetrate the heart with a stake, not just to cram it into the chest.  That's a pretty good point which I hope will be noted when they inevitably remake The Lost Boys (it has always kind of bugged me how the Frog Brothers just stuck those things anywhere and it killed the vampires...but I digress).  I liked the Chris Sarandon cameo, too.

And last but not least, I saw it in 3D, which I usually don't care for all that much, but it was totally worth seeing it that way.  There's this part where this chick who just got turned into a vampire but doesn't know it walks into the sunlight and blows up, and that was especially badass in 3D.

If the original Fright Night is a 10.0, then the remake is a pretty solid 6.5 or 7.0.  I'll quit talking about this movie now.