David O'ConnellFright Night
September 18th 2011 23:30
Tom Holland’s original Fright Night, released in 1985, was one of those films you return to safe in the knowledge that it will have lost little of its lustre. It’s a flawed film perhaps, but such a fun, scary amalgam of horror and comedy that any lingering shortcomings that surface are conveniently papered over by the passing of time.
This new incarnation of Fright Night (2011), directed by Australian-born director Craig Gillespie, gets it all wrong from the get-go. Virtually no sense of pacing exists; instead of a build-up, consisting of intrigue – a period in which the audience is allowed to filter the discovery of fresh developments through the eyes of the characters – we get the first of many wretched structural imbalances.
Ten minutes into the new Fright Night we’re already aware that new neighbour Jerry (Colin Farrell), this time in the bland suburbs of Las Vegas, is a member of the undead and on the prowl for new meat. Simultaneously, Charlie’s (Anton Yelchin) geeky best friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) – played so brilliantly by Stephen Geoffreys in the original – is already ahead of the game. This misstep from screenwriter Marti Noxon erases the potential build-up for any horrifying discovery and throws the early scenes out of all logical alignment.
Charlie thinks his childhood friend has lost the plot. He’s now embarrassed to even be seen in Ed’s presence (again, a damaging alteration from the original) and takes some convincing before he recognises the danger one door away.
A series of chess moves follow, Jerry attempting to gain entrance to Charlie’s home whilst Charlie tries to fend Jerry off his mum’s neck. Eventually streams of CGI blood are spilt as the confrontation between good and evil stretches beyond the playing field of the family’s pristine neighbourhood. The film hits its marks but by the end feels about 20 minutes too long, the fakery further enhancing my love for the original with every passing moment.
There’s nothing expressly wrong with the casting of Farrell as the demonic neighbour. He has the body and physical presence required to exert a charm that’s supposed to prove magnetising to Charlie’s mum (Toni Collette). But it's an unimaginative piece of casting, unlike that of the left-of-centre Chris Sarandon who brought something fresh and unpredictable to his original portrayal (and is rewarded here with a wasted cameo as a highway victim of the new Jerry).
Yelchin is hard to warm to; as in The Beaver (2011) he carries a 'cool, smart-arse wit' around with him like an aura. Toni Collette’s role is basically useless, a painfully underwritten secondary character. After having her contribution upped in scenes at the halfway mark, she then becomes just another stream of effluence diverted away from the scene of the tiresome final showdown and its preamble.
David Tennant seems to be channelling Russell Brand as vampire hunter Peter Vincent, a role that couldn’t be more of a polar opposite to that played to perfection by Roddy McDowell in Holland’s film. Tennant inadvertently knocks against a funny bone or two for a while before deflating like a pricked balloon. The same could be said in summary of the film: a hard and fast piece of slick entertainment that those ignorant of its source may be momentarily amused by.
For the rest of us, the woefully inadequate recreations of the original – being so disrespectful of what made it so good - will produce only painful flirtations with nostalgia. Thankfully Ramin Djawadi's score plays it all straight, projecting menace where it really has no right to exist. The sound of an organ embedded in the main theme and fleshed out most entertainingly in the end credits, is a belated musical treat that hints at what might have been.
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