Movie review: ‘Fright Night'

Sometimes the original version of a movie is just a rough draft to be perfected later, and yet the default position for so many filmgoers is that the first is always the best. In the case of this new, killer version of “Fright Night,” they would be dead wrong

Director. Craig Gillespie's. stylistic and bitingly funny new “Fright Night” uses the 1985 original as its template, but gives its characters and situations more resonance and spark

This. “Fright Night” takes put in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Las Vegas, an expanse of sand-colored cookie-cutter houses. Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) is a teenager living with his divorced mother, Jane (Toni Collette). He's. a geek made good, a former Dungeons and Dragons nerd who became just cool enough to attract the beautiful Amy (Imogen Poots) and hang out in a higher social stratum at school

The. immediate problem at Charlie's. school is that the truancy rate is sky-high. Every day, fewer kids are showing up for class, and Charlie's. estranged best friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) suggests that their old role-playing buddy is the victim of a vampire. Charlie writes it off as the ravings of a vengeful dork, but the guy who moved in next door, Jerry Dandrige (Colin Farrell), seems to be a real night owl

Gillespie's. first masterstroke is to find past the mystery, because there's. no question around it: Jerry is a vampire. Furthermore, Charlie knows he's. a vampire, and Jerry knows that Charlie knows. Charlie must create sure that his mother never invites the night beast into their house, and must destroy a guy who's. been doing just fine as a bloodsucking parasite for the past 500 years

Thanks. to Marti Noxon, a television writer responsible for 23 episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and two key installments of “Mad Men,” the “Fright Night” screenplay is witty and as free of nonsense as any vampire movie could hope. She incorporates some smart updates. This time around, the magician Peter Vincent (David Tennant of “Doctor Who”) is a high-dollar Vegas charlatan, a combination of Criss Angel and Russell Brand driven to drink in order to keep the nightmares of his own vampire-infected youth at bay

Farrell's. quirky take on Jerry delivers on the palpable menace and dark comedy needed for such a role. The strong cast delivers Noxon's. lines with wit and energy, and Gillespie (“Lars and the Real Girl”) goes for a slick, dark tone that acknowledges the current vampire-centric pop culture while driving a stake through the heart of most of it

The. first “Fright Night” will live on as a quirky, funny take on mid-1980s horror, but this time, the characters are more fleshed out, the screenplay is more full-blooded, and the film has bite



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