Fright Night

There's generally two giant problems with remakes these days. They either stick so closely to the original format that there's really no point in seeing a remake for $20 when you can see the original for cheaper. OR! They try and make a bunch of changes to appear as original or inventive. Fright Night actually shoots for both. And it fails miserably at both.

One of the biggest problems with Fright Night, is that some of the touches in the original that made it so great are totally fucked to the ground here. First off, Peter Vincent (in an incredibly OTT performance by David Vincent)...is a Las Vegas magician. Why? I don't know. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. His character comes off as obnoxious when in the original...he was pretty fun to watch. Charley and Evil Ed's characters are fucked with as well. Charley's an asshole so you don't really give a shit what happens to him. Evil Ed is just obnoxious, you don't care when he gets killed, and all of the sadness in the original when Evil Ed is killed...is gone here. You can't wait for him to die. And as for Jerry...we'll get to him in a minute.

The performances are a huge problem as well. Anton Yelchin comes off as bland and one-note from beginning to end. Christopher Mintz-Plasse is criminally underused and is given very little to work with at all. The worst performance is easily Colin Farrell though as Jerry. All of the subtle sexuality and fear within Jerry's character is totally M.I.A here. Colin overracts to a ridiculous extent. His scenes don't come off as scary or sexy at all. Those who try hardest generally fall the hardest. And that's his problem. He forces terror and sexual appeal on the audience so much that his entire performance comes off as camp.

Laughs and thrills are generally missing as well. The writing comes off as amateurish and tedious. Nothing is funny or even clever at all. It's a very "been there, done that" type of movie. References to other movies are made that might have been funny about...10 years ago. Now it's just stale. For a movie about a vampire killing everyone in town, Fright Night comes off as awfully boring and unscary as well. Very little happens in the movie when you think about it. In fact, I would say about 90% of the movie is pretentious build-up to shit that just doesn't have any sort of fright in it. It's a sad day when you wished you had stayed home and did nothing over viewing such a terrible, worthless movie.

0/4