Fright Night remake

[ThePowerCosmic]

What didn't you like about the second? I mean, the original is definitely better than the second, but I do like the second film.

Mainly the characters, they didn't interest me as much as the first film's did. I thought the Ghoul in FN2 was a lot less interesting than Billy, who pleasantly surprised me in the first FN when he came back to life after being shot down(What a gruesome scene!). The hairy and wolf-like vampire seemed like a *****ebag and his library scene had some cheap scares. There's also something about a rollerskating Vampire that just isn't scary to me... As a matter of fact, the scene where he's skating out of the fog towards that girl had me laughing at how silly it looked. The movie didn't have great "frightful" moments like the original did, and I didn't really understand what was going on with Charlie after he was bitten. Was he slowly undergoing the transformation over a course of days or something? Is that even possible? Also, when I heard Regine say "Welcome to Fright Night" like Jerry did in the first one it lost it's significance to me. The sequel also seemed like it had a cheaper budget than the first one did; along with feeling like it lacked the classic horror movie components of the original.

 

[Metallo]

I never did really did rate Fright Night 2 that high. Its ok but not nearly as good as the original. The new female vampire wasn't as interesting to me as Sarandon as Dandridge.

I'll probably check out the FN remake tomorrow. I still want to see it out for myself. That and Conan.

It was probably memorable to those born in the 70's..

I was born in the 80's so...

 

[ThePowerCosmic]

That's another thing, I liked Regina but she wasn't nearly as interesting or terrifying as Jerry.

 

[bullets]

It was due to it being kind of a subdivision thing where everyone sleeps during the day, like he said, and they tend to move in for a while and move out.

Ok cool. I remember Charlie bringing that up now.



I never got see Fright Night 2 but I just watched a review on cinemassacre. It looks fun but the acting seems terrible.

 

[WildcatNC]

Fright Night 2 wasn't that great to me.

 

[Punisher Rising]

I enjoyed Fright Night 2, I think it's just a notch under the first for me.

 

[DACrowe]

FN2 had an OK villain in Regina and the new girlfriend I liked better than Amy (nice shoutouts to Stoker's actual novel!), but everything else about that movie was pretty awful...save for McDowell of course.

Onto Fright Night (2011).....

I was pleasantly surprised with this flick. At first glance, it felt like a rush job of a remake in the early scenes, but it managed to keep me entertained throughout and changed enough to feel like a refreshing take on the tale while keeping a number of the hallmarks that made Fright Night....well Fright Night.

However, it's biggest problem is in its attempt to seem modern, different and anti-cliché (which it was), it actually lost a lot of the things that made the original movie so fun. It was a self-aware, satire/love letter to those classic Universal and Hammer vampire movies for the '80s. The bats, the fog, the ghoul, the Peter Cushing-esque vampire hunter, the homoeroticism between Jerry and Billy, it all had an old school horror vibe. By making him "the shark from Jaws" they clearly went after the Twilight fad that has ruined the image of vampires in popular culture, but they also distanced themselves from the classic vampire tropes as well.

For this reason, the real standouts that kept it entertaining were Colin Ferrell's Jerry and David Tennant's Peter Vincent. Both were clever reimaginings of their 1980s counterparts and, like the original film, the best part of the movie. I prefer Sanderson's disarmingly charming Jerry and MacDowell's classic hunter/coward, but seeing the vampire as the smug, cocky bad boy whose hitting on both Charlie's mom and girlfriend simultaneously when he first meets them was a fun take. And as late night horror was dead before I ever saw Fright Night on cable, and sadly most teenagers today have no clue who Peter Cushing or Vincent Price are (probably Anthony Hopkins for that matter), turning Peter Vincent into a Las Vegas horror-magician showman was a brilliant stroke. Even more brilliant was casting David Tennant who obviously and desperately was ready to play a character that wasn't The Doctor. He takes his scenes and runs miles with them as the crude, narcissistic and cowardly Peter Vincent. I also like how he had a young, traumatic experience with vampires and all his collected toys were not props but actual weapons he collected for the day he'd use them...if he ever found the courage.

....Unfortunately, Peter Vincent has almost no screentime (a horrid mistake, that the original knew to avoid) and Jerry shows his hand far too early. Less than halfway through the movie he blows up Charlie's house and reveals himself to be a vampire to all the supporting characters. Not really enough time of cat and mouse and too much chase.

And that brings us to Charlie. Strangely, I'll say the three main teenagers (Charlie, Amy and Evil Ed) are all much better actors than their 1980s counterparts. However, the script does a huge disservice to the actors, because none of them are likable. Charlie is a shallow *****ebag for almost the entire movie and really shows no signs of changing or any semblance of an arc, Evil Ed is desperate, whiney and vindictive before he even becomes a vampire and Amy is just there with no real personality other than being "the hot girl." They're boring to watch and Ed's demise instead of being tragic was just tedious as I didn't like either character.

And that is why the movie fails to reach its full potential, in my opinion.

7/10

P.S. It's box office flopping signals that sadly for at least this decade that tweens have claimed the image and perception of vampires in popular culture and it is that of a brooding, romantic fantasy. Audiences no longer care to see them as monsters. That's the scariest and saddest thing about this movie.

 

[DarKush]

^
Pretty good points,though I would say that Fright Night wasn't following the trend, or perceived, Twilight trend of wimpy vampires, I think it was trying to go against that, by showing Jerry as truly monstrous, not some tragic, romantic figure with a minor blood drinking problem.

Also, I agree that the main characters were unlikeable, but I think that Charlie did have something of an arc. He started out as a 'cool' kid-though it wasn't explained how he got to roll with the in-crowd-who denied his nerdy past and rejected Evil Ed. He came to a realization that he had done his friend wrong, but it was too late by then, and there was reluctance and genuine care when he had to ash him. I think that ashing scene would've worked differently if the film had done a better job building up the friendship instead of having them at loggerheads though.

As for Amy, yeah she was the hot chick, and there was that unnecessary insinuation that she slept around. However I can't say there was anything unlikeable about her. If anything, she's the hot chick that actually liked the reformed nerd Charlie, for who he was, and not for who he was trying to be. The *****es were Ed and Charlie.

Also, I think we sometimes are too hard on Twilight. I know I was, until I watched it. It's not necessarily my cup of tea, but the Twilight vamps-despite being sparkly-aren't as completey defanged and neutered as I feel some of us claim them to be. Their potential is often squandered or upstaged by Edward-Bella. But the idea of them being called "Cold Ones" and having that marble-like flesh, their long running conflict with the werewolves, and the red-eyed Volturri, all of those are not bad ideas and don't make vampires look weak. It's the flowery package that they are wrapped in that I'm not jazzed about.

Meyers take is different than I generally prefer, but she has a right to it, and it's obviously struck a chord and brought in more fans into the genre (like Anne Rice a generation before), which ultimately should be a good thing. I mean, it's pretty awesome to see all these books on werewolves and vampires filling the bookstore these days, or to see this kind of content getting on TV, etc. And Meyers deserves some credit for that.

 

[Spider-ManHero12]

The thing with Twilight is just that it insults vampires to a great extent. I know Vmapires usually make girls attracted to them, but Twilight puushed it way too far. It feeds off of a teenage crowd and as I said, it's an insult to vampires. That's only some of the reasons, if you ask me.

 

[chamber-music]

Having watched orignial Imogen Poots made a far better Amy than the 80s one who I found annoying and not a very good actress. Charlie in the orginal and the remake was a *****e but I found Yelchin much more likable as his character arc was better written and handled.

I like that all the changes actually serviced the story. I also like how the location of setting it in nevada really played into the story. You don't see many films in Hollywood these days really think through stuff like that.

Onto Fright Night (2011).....

I was pleasantly surprised with this flick. At first glance, it felt like a rush job of a remake in the early scenes, but it managed to keep me entertained throughout and changed enough to feel like a refreshing take on the tale while keeping a number of the hallmarks that made Fright Night....well Fright Night.

However, it's biggest problem is in its attempt to seem modern, different and anti-cliché (which it was), it actually lost a lot of the things that made the original movie so fun. It was a self-aware, satire/love letter to those classic Universal and Hammer vampire movies for the '80s. The bats, the fog, the ghoul, the Peter Cushing-esque vampire hunter, the homoeroticism between Jerry and Billy, it all had an old school horror vibe. By making him "the shark from Jaws" they clearly went after the Twilight fad that has ruined the image of vampires in popular culture, but they also distanced themselves from the classic vampire tropes as well.

Modern Vampire movies have been on trend from moving away from the traditional vampire things for the past few decades. I don't think the Twilight fad has much to do with it

Movies like From Dusk Till Dawn, The Forsaken and Near Dark have done the modern American desert vampire thing already.

40 Days Of Night done the vicious Shark vampires.

The Vampires in Fright Night 2011 are like the Vampire from Let The Right One In which are still closer to tradional vampires than the more scientific approach vampires from Blade, Ultraviolet, Underworld, The Thirst, ect

There are not a huge amount of vampire movies these days that have Vampires that can turn into Bats/Wolves/Fog or hypnotise people and so on. Those type of old school vampire references would be lost on most modern audiences because alot of vampire movies the last 30 years have been moving away from that kind of stuff.

 

[The Dark Defender]

I thought the acting was fine in both films, the original was just far, far better written and directed. The only character that may have been an improvement was Amy, and she was more of an improvement visually than anything else. I never found Amy annoying or unlikable in either movie, and I never found Charlie to be so in the original, can't say the same for this one. Yelkin is a good actor though.
I was glad Vincent wasn't in this one much, couldn't stand what I already saw of him, which again was not the actors fault but just the horrible direction they chose to go in with character that has a great counterpart.

The only thing I really didn't like about FNII some some of the stupid humor, mainly with the psychiatrist, for the most part I think it's awesome. Not on par with the original but many miles ahead of this.

 

[DACrowe]

^
Pretty good points,though I would say that Fright Night wasn't following the trend, or perceived, Twilight trend of wimpy vampires, I think it was trying to go against that, by showing Jerry as truly monstrous, not some tragic, romantic figure with a minor blood drinking problem.

Also, I agree that the main characters were unlikeable, but I think that Charlie did have something of an arc. He started out as a 'cool' kid-though it wasn't explained how he got to roll with the in-crowd-who denied his nerdy past and rejected Evil Ed. He came to a realization that he had done his friend wrong, but it was too late by then, and there was reluctance and genuine care when he had to ash him. I think that ashing scene would've worked differently if the film had done a better job building up the friendship instead of having them at loggerheads though.

As for Amy, yeah she was the hot chick, and there was that unnecessary insinuation that she slept around. However I can't say there was anything unlikeable about her. If anything, she's the hot chick that actually liked the reformed nerd Charlie, for who he was, and not for who he was trying to be. The *****es were Ed and Charlie.

I didn't really see an arc for Charlie though. He felt bad for not listening to Ed, but somehow i wonder if it would've been more effective if his guilt prevented him from killing Ed and Peter Vincent or Amy had to do it. I dunno, it just seemed he was a tool at the beginning of the movie, kind of regretted it, but still has Amy, mini-James Franco and just hasn't really changed as a person. Maybe, there really isn't room for that kind of arc in this story, which is why I don't think they needed it really to begin with.

And again, as you said, Ed was as much a "loggerhead." He was so obnoxious and clingy to Charlie we really didn't like him. And while I think the actor was hilarious as McLovin' and in Role Models and Kick-Ass to boot, here he was just really kind of annoying as he yammered on. It just wasn't that sad when he died-died.

Amy had no personality that I could see. She was the hot girl friend who was upset Charlie started neglecting her, then his sidekick who eventually got turned into the classic Dracula Bride type. Just not a real character, IMO. She's a way better actress than the original Amy, but unlike the original Amy she really had nothing to do other than that one scene with the silver bullets and Holy Water.

Also, I think we sometimes are too hard on Twilight. I know I was, until I watched it. It's not necessarily my cup of tea, but the Twilight vamps-despite being sparkly-aren't as completey defanged and neutered as I feel some of us claim them to be. Their potential is often squandered or upstaged by Edward-Bella. But the idea of them being called "Cold Ones" and having that marble-like flesh, their long running conflict with the werewolves, and the red-eyed Volturri, all of those are not bad ideas and don't make vampires look weak. It's the flowery package that they are wrapped in that I'm not jazzed about.

Meyers take is different than I generally prefer, but she has a right to it, and it's obviously struck a chord and brought in more fans into the genre (like Anne Rice a generation before), which ultimately should be a good thing. I mean, it's pretty awesome to see all these books on werewolves and vampires filling the bookstore these days, or to see this kind of content getting on TV, etc. And Meyers deserves some credit for that.

Meyers's take on vampires is perfectly legitimate in the sense she is an artist creating. I don't see her vision of vampires as less legitimate than Bram Stoker's. She is just kind of the end point epitome of what Anne Rice began with her great early vampire books--the lonely, brooding, sexy vampire. Meyers took it from obscure harlequinn romance and put it in an emo high school and popularized it.

However, I can say that it is now the dominant image of vampires in popular culture which is why a throwback like Fright Night bombed. Nobody wants to see vampire movies where the vampires are monsters anymore. And that's a shame, because they're much better stories in most cases.

 

[DACrowe]

Having watched orignial Imogen Poots made a far better Amy than the 80s one who I found annoying and not a very good actress. Charlie in the orginal and the remake was a *****e but I found Yelchin much more likable as his character arc was better written and handled.

I like that all the changes actually serviced the story. I also like how the location of setting it in nevada really played into the story. You don't see many films in Hollywood these days really think through stuff like that.

Modern Vampire movies have been on trend from moving away from the traditional vampire things for the past few decades. I don't think the Twilight fad has much to do with it

Movies like From Dusk Till Dawn, The Forsaken and Near Dark have done the modern American desert vampire thing already.

40 Days Of Night done the vicious Shark vampires.

The Vampires in Fright Night 2011 are like the Vampire from Let The Right One In which are still closer to tradional vampires than the more scientific approach vampires from Blade, Ultraviolet, Underworld, The Thirst, ect

There are not a huge amount of vampire movies these days that have Vampires that can turn into Bats/Wolves/Fog or hypnotise people and so on. Those type of old school vampire references would be lost on most modern audiences because alot of vampire movies the last 30 years have been moving away from that kind of stuff.

Indeed, since Anne Rice wrote the (brilliant) Interview with the Vampire, the genre has been building to a Twilight type revision. From Dusk Till Dawn and 30 Days of Night are more counterculture retakes on that. Fright NIght modernized the classic vampire (which is in LTROI and LMI, as you pointed out), but the original FN is better if for nothing more than it felt like an old school horror movie in the 1980s. But again, FN and LMI bombed...so, don't expect too many more of those.

 

[chamber-music]

The 2008 Near Dark remake never even got released too.

 

[Sith Scotti]

Wasn't terrible . I do wish that they had Jerry seduce Amy a bit more than just have him take her like a cavemam and hyponotize her . There should have been some sort of seduction/attraction there imo . I thought Colin Farwell was pretty good . Stiarted off pretty sdlow but by the end I enjoyed it enough 7.0 out of 10

 

[UltimateJustin]

I don't think I ever saw a less likable protagonist. He's introduced as a crappy friend, goes on to show no personality throughout the movie and lets his gf get turned into a vampire because he is too weak and feeble to push through a crowd to get to her. Then, he doesn't even seek a solution to that but just says "I don't know if Amy is alive or not" and is luckily handed a free script-fixing artifact by Vincent. It happens all the time in movies that for story purposes, characters have to fail to maintain rationality when explaining themselves, but here when Charlie was reacting to his mom's one simple question, his outburst of "I can't answer a million questions right now. I just can't answer a million questions right now" felt contrived.

 

[bullets]

I think that's the point. He's just an average kid who has to fight a vampire.

 

[Spider-ManHero12]

Just got back form seeing this, and my god, this remake was fantastic! Just all aroudn good fun and it kicks off the halloween season perfectly, if you ask me. Anton was relaly convincing as Charlie, Collin Farell REALLY made me beleive he was a vmapire and David Tennant's performance was hilarious. I'll write a full review later, but I REALLY enjoyed this remake.

Was it as good as the original? No, but it was damn good.

 

[UltimateJustin]

I think that's the point. He's just an average kid who has to fight a vampire.

I wish that had been the case, but while I might know some people as unlikable, I don't know an average anybody as dull and passionless as the protagonist.

Check out this great review (not sure if someone posted it yet) re: how the remake missed the point by not paying homage to the previous generations' horror films, and was just essentially a grab bag of ideas from the original.

http://www.badassdigest.com/2011/08/23/terror-tuesday-fright-night-3d-sucked-but-it-didnt-have-to

 

[The Dark Defender]

I also loved how Peter Vincent was Charlie's hero in the original, it made the relationship alot more meaningful.

In this he didn't give two s**** about him, he's just some magician that apparently has some knowledge of vampires.

There's less and less that I like about this film the more I think about it. It's lacking just about everything that made me love the original.

 

[Mike_D202]

Mainly the characters, they didn't interest me as much as the first film's did. I thought the Ghoul in FN2 was a lot less interesting than Billy, who pleasantly surprised me in the first FN when he came back to life after being shot down(What a gruesome scene!). The hairy and wolf-like vampire seemed like a *****ebag and his library scene had some cheap scares. There's also something about a rollerskating Vampire that just isn't scary to me... As a matter of fact, the scene where he's skating out of the fog towards that girl had me laughing at how silly it looked. The movie didn't have great "frightful" moments like the original did, and I didn't really understand what was going on with Charlie after he was bitten. Was he slowly undergoing the transformation over a course of days or something? Is that even possible? Also, when I heard Regine say "Welcome to Fright Night" like Jerry did in the first one it lost it's significance to me. The sequel also seemed like it had a cheaper budget than the first one did; along with feeling like it lacked the classic horror movie components of the original.

Well to be fair, she didnt really "bite" him. She more or less was sucking off of his neck cut like a leech.

 

[Spider-ManHero12]

On of my favorite scenes was

Spoiler

the club scene because it was actually pretty emotional yet awesome seeing Charlie helpess as he watches his girlfriend being bitten by Jerry.

Btw, Chris Sarandon's cameo rocked!

 

[CelticPredator]

If you think Charlie was a tool, you clearly have never been to high school.

Now, I, thankfully didnt have to deal with cliques and ****, but still. If you want friends, you have to be...cool. Or chill. Or whatever expression you want to use to suggest you have to be a "Decent person to be around".

Charlie did what he had to, to survive. Oh yes...it's a dick move. But, you can't look at it only from Ed's perspective. Look at it from both sides.

Ed is a nerd. Not the fun nerd who can get along with people, but the nerd that is just weird, and doesnt get along with people. I knew kids like that. Not bad people. They just needed to work on themselves.

And for someone like Charlie to get a girl that fine, he had to make changes to himself. And that did mean dumping the people that brought him down. Bold, selfish move....but High School is a selfish place. If you dont keep a decent image of yourself, it's hard for you to get along.

And that made this Charlie Brewster 100% more realistic then the originals. He was smart. He felt things. He wasn't a ****ing idiot like the original's. He KNEW not to tell the cops the truth. He knew how ******ed it sounded. You can see the change in his character by the end of the movie. He became a hero.

So yeah...I liked Charlie in this one. .

 

[def28]

Charlie was a ***** for the first act and Ed wasnt weird enough. We didnt even have time to figure out his character since hes absent for over half the movie. Non of the school stuff had enough screen time to really add to the characters. It just labeled them quick. Flick didnt get good until Jerry brought the go-go next door and **** started goen down.

Great flick though!

Also...
Did Peter Vincents chick show up after the finale? Someone said she did but I dont remember it.

 

[DACrowe]

I just think Charlie didn't really show he was truly guilty or ashamed of his shallowness. Perhaps, if he couldn't kill Ed because he felt responsible and Amy or Peter did it, it would have shown some growth. But he made a dick move and that is kind of dropped other than one pity party scene when his mom's in the hospital in the middle of the movie. Otherwise, he's the same character.

I do like how he wasn't dumb enough to tell the cops that Jerry was a vampire and wasn't spazzing out all the time like in the original. Still, I liked the original Charlie and this one was so boring.