Hear Me Out is a column dedicated to earnest reevaluations of those cast-off bits of pop-cultural ephemera that deserve a second look. Whether they’re films, TV series, albums, comedy specials, videogames or even cocktails, Hear Me Out is ready to go to bat for any underappreciated subject.
By most metrics one could choose to employ, 2011 really wasn’t all that long ago. In that year, the iPhone was already well on its way to its fifth generation. Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring was a decade in the rearview mirror. The Twilight film series was nearing its conclusion, as Robert Pattinson eyed the tantalizing freedom of a post-Edwardian existence. And at the same time, a more modest vampire cult classic was ticketed for its own modern remake, in the form of director Craig Gillespie’s rendition of Fright Night.
And yet, looking today at how 2011’s Fright Night was made, what it immediately calls to mind is how differently this same material would no doubt be approached now, a little more than a decade later. This is an unabashed 1980s Hollywood remake, sure, but one that hails from well before the totemic dominance of the legacy sequel/remake model, and as a result it lacks the slavish reverence for the sanctity of even the most mundane IP that has now become so commonplace that we barely even acknowledge it. It feels like a strangely novel concept: What, you’re telling me the film is just a new reimagining of a familiar story, rather than a ceaseless parade of 1:1 callbacks to specific elements or entire moments/scenes in a prior film? Are we sure that’s even allowed?
But that novelty, present in approaching the film today, was nowhere to be found back in 2011 when it was discarded fairly quickly (and cynically) as just another bit of summer studio churn. In the process, audiences unfortunately overlooked a slickly shot and impressively acted little potboiler, one featuring a deliciously committed central performance from erstwhile Hollywood pretty boy turned critical darling Colin Farrell as the villainous vampire. This Fright Night may indeed have been conceived with the making of a quick buck in mind, but the charms of its craft and its cast make it well worth revisiting now, especially in an era where appreciation for Mr. Farrell is now closer to the rule than the exception.
The original 1985 Fright Night was the brainchild of writer/director Thomas Lee Holland (also of Child’s Play), a man who for several decades would have been the go-to answer in Hollywood for “Tom Holland” name association, until a certain webslinger went and muddied up those Google results. It’s based around a perfect 1980s high-concept elevator pitch: What would you do if a vampire moved in next door and you were the only one who could recognize what he really was? The obvious answer is of course “Venture into his home with a washed-up horror movie actor in an ill-advised attempt to destroy the monster.” The film is a perfectly charming ‘80s adventure that manages the delicate tightrope act of portraying Chris Sarandon’s “Jerry the vampire” as both debonair–in an insufferable, late ‘80s yuppie sort of way–and demonic in equal measure. It’s a neat trick, to take a movie monster indelibly associated with crumbling gothic castles on the edge of civilization and then insert him into the unassuming, banal façade of a modern suburbia that would make Steven Spielberg or Joe Dante proud. Which is more soulless: The undead bloodsucker or the HOA’s lawn maintenance regulations? The fusion of old-timey monster and modern setting gives Fright Night a sense of vitality that keeps it from ever feeling dated. Per the tagline: “You can’t run from evil when it lives next door.”
Gillespie’s update on the material, meanwhile, stars the tragically gone-too-soon Anton Yelchin as sympathetic high school everyboy Charley Brewster, while less successfully reprising Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse (still very much in McLovin’ mode) as his irritating friend “Evil” Ed. Yelchin, on the other hand, is an ideal anchor for the story, a bundle of nervous energy who quickly begins to unravel after noticing a series of suspicious events involving the mysterious lothario next door. Women enter the dwelling of Jerry Dandrige (Farrell), but they don’t ever seem to exit. But who can the frazzled Charley approach with these suspicions, when his girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots) and mother Jane (Toni Collette) seem so immediately smitten with the charming new neighbor, a man hinting he might like an invitation into their home? Perhaps Las Vegas magician/actor Peter Vincent (David Tennant), a supposed expert on vampires, could lend a little assistance and knowledge in how to take down such a beast? Tennant, fresh off his Doctor Who run, proves to be another highlight in the film as he mirrors Yelchin’s exasperated energy with a more cowardly streak, even if his sleazier take on the Peter Vincent character–no posh aristocrat like Roddy McDowall in the original–feels like it may have been written with someone more like Russell Brand in mind.
