Fright Night (2011)

Just saw the remake of my favorite all time flick, Fright Night. Now the original 1985 movie I can recite the entire movie from start to finish. I just love it that much and have seen it 100s of times. I expected the new movie to be a cheap remake in which I would end up quitting half way through the movie and throwing something at the screen. Instead I was pleasantly surprised. The 2011 remake was not as bad as I expected.


The good: Tons of references to the original movie. Evil Ed still says the line "Oh your so cool Brewster" but for different reason than in the original. They exactly duplicated the scene in which Jerry Dandrige is coming down the central staircase (he still has one in the new movie) while digging his nail into the handrail and says "Welcome to Fright Night...for real." The characters are all named the same and those who lived and died in the original are met with the same fate.


The bad: Even though I would say that the new movie was an exact copy of the original there were quite a few things that were completely different. As expected the actors are different, the setting is different, but there were some things that were completely changed for the sake of originality perhaps? Colin Farrell versus Chris Sarandon as Jerry. Colin has the good looks while Chris Sarandon had the looks and the seduction. They skipped the seductive scenes between Jerry and Amy in the remake. The original Jerry seemed more suave where the new Jerry is more like an animal. The other big change was Ed being the one finding out about Jerry the vampire and not Charlie. Jerry doesn't even live next to Charlie so no window peeping scenes like in the original. They also skipped one of my favorite scenes in which Evil visits Peter Vincent and Peter marks his forehead with a cross. *sigh*


Overall the movie was better than I had expected mostly because of the amount of similarities to the original. Lots of one-liners taken from the original and some scenes (Amy abducted by Jerry from the nightclub. Jerry's central staircase) were such throwbacks to the original. The differences were expected and some were not, but they did a great job with them. Specially a scene with one of Jerry's victims in which she helps out Charlie. Amazing enough to give you shivers.


Verdict: Great remake of my favorite classic. Check it out. (3 out of 5)