Film Friday: Fright Night (1985) & (2011)

Remakes are all the rage these days because they come with a built-in audience. You take a film property with an existing fan base, you repeat the story with some twist to make the film feel fresh, you use new special effects or new story-telling techniques, and you’re guaranteed at least a minor hit. Add in a top-named actor like Colin Farrell and you should be looking at quite a moneymaker. That is unless you really screw it up. Welcome to Fright Night 2011!

** spoiler alert **

Release in 1985, the original Fright Night proved to be quite a hit. It starred William Ragsdale as Charley Brewster, a fan of horror films, who discovers that his neighbor (Chris Sarandon) is an actual vampire. Naturally, no one believes him, not his mother, his best friend or his girlfriend. He finally seeks out Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), a washed up actor who plays a vampire hunter in horror movies and has his own local show hosting classic horror movies. Vincent doesn’t believe him either and thinks he’s a crazed fan. But Vincent soon discovers the truth and then he and Charlie set out to hunt down Sarandon and to free Charley’s girlfriend.

All in all, this film wasn’t great by any stretch of the imagination, but it was original and it was entertaining. It also became a surprise hit, out-earning every other horror film of that year. What made the film work was the characters. Charley was likable as the determined teen who intends to protect his family even if they can’t see the danger. Vincent was enjoyable as the washed up cynic, who rises to the challenge of a fight with something he never truly believed existed. And Chris Sarandon was smarmy, condescending and so unlikable that you really couldn’t wait to see him get his comeuppance. This drew you in and made you pull for the heroes to get their act together to take out the bad guy that you had personally come to despise.

In 2011, Fright Night was remade. This time Colin Farrell took the place of Chris Sarandon, Doctor Who’s David Tennant took the place of Roddy McDowall, and some other people replaced the other actors. And that’s kind of where the problem begin with the remake. William Ragsdale is not a good actor. But he came across as a genuine teen who was both out of his league and yet determined to prevail. His replacement, Anton Yelchin, comes across as a very smooth actor who reads his lines with the right amount of emotion but with no believability that he is this person you see on screen. Amanda Bearse, who plays Charlie’s girlfriend in the original, is not attractive nor is she slavishly devoted to Charlie, and that makes her a very real girl for the type of woman who would date Charlie. Her replacement, Imogen Poots, is too attractive and too compliant with Charlie’s script needs.

David Tennant is a poor replacement for Roddy McDowall as well, though more in the writing than in acting ability. McDowall’s Vincent was washed up and tired. He didn’t believe in vampires and when he found out the truth, he was overcome with fear. Watching him get up the courage to fight was rather inspiring. Tennant’s Vincent, by comparison, knows the vampires are real and is basically just a coward and a waster. He’s comic relief as an unlikeable drunken womanizer who runs from danger in an almost melodramatic way. McDowall was someone you could look up to eventually, Tennant is a joke you want gone.

Then there are Sarandon and Farrell. Normally, I’m impressed with Farrell, but not here. Sarandon played the vampire as a true bad guy. You loathed his smugness and you genuinely worried that his power was too strong for the good guys to overcome. Indeed, even though you knew how the film would end, you never felt really sure. And as his victories built up, you worried that he might actually win. Farrell, on the other hand, plays an annoyance. There is nothing about him to suggest an all-powerful creature, he’s more like an animal. And he doesn’t get under your skin like the smug Sarandon, he annoys you more like a skateboarder who won’t leave your driveway. Moreover, there seems to be no real plan for Farrell. When you try to imagine him winning the film, it’s never clear what his victory would even look like. So he’s just never menacing.

So the film starts poorly in the area that matters most – the characters. And it goes downhill from there. Indeed, this film fails dramatically in something that any remake should be able to achieve: it doesn’t live up to the story of the original. The original story moved confidently from plot point to plot point, with each building on the prior plot points. The order of the action made sense, the characters’ actions made sense, and the story became progressively more tense. The remake doesn’t. The remake seems like a jumble of uninteresting moments until the lengthy fight scene at the end. There is little continuity and no tension. Not to mention, the entire film is so dark in the way it’s filmed and the effects so dull that it's hard to follow.

What makes this worse is that the film lacks any sort of intermediate level of danger. In other words, throughout the original, there were many bad things which could happen at any moment, but the remake only offers two results: dead or survives. Thus, since you know the movie isn’t over, you know that Charlie will survive each scene to make it unscathed to the next, and that means there is no tension. By comparison, you were never sure what could happen in any scene in the original because there were so many more alternatives.

Beyond this, there is nothing you could call a twist or a new slant on the original. There is no unexpected revelation, no attempt to make the story bigger or take it in new directions, and nothing to give you a fresh look at the story.

In effect, this remake failed on all levels. It offered less story than the original, its effects were worse, it had no interesting take on the original, and its characters lost all the quirkiness which made the originals so interesting to watch. That’s why this bombed and why the original out-earned it domestically by about a third on a much smaller budget. The moral here is simple. Even if you’re going to remake a film, you still have to make a good film.