Like a thousand tiny, little daggers stabbing me in the heart.  Repeatedly.  Yup, that is what watching Fright Night (the 2011 re-make) felt like.

I will get into the pain currently etching its way from my eyes and ears to my aorta in a moment, but first things first.  If you are one of the many people who never had the pleasure of viewing the first Fright Night 1985, and have any interest in viewing the latest Fright Night film, please — for the love of all things horror — go watch the original first.  It will enrage you to view the newest inception of the film afterward, but at least you will get some miniscule amount of enjoyment from it by remembering the first one in the process.  It also might help to go watch some old Dr. Who episodes with David Tennant as the Doctor.

In order to fully appreciate why I detest this film so very, very much I suppose you should understand why the first one worked so well.  Yes, I admit to having a rather large portion of my soul dedicated to 80’s horror movies, but that’s not the only reason.  Another reason is that the original film had great acting:  Christopher Sarandon as Jerry Dandrige (the evil, but smoking hot vampire), Roddy McDowall (Roddy McDowall!!) as Peter Vincent (a homage to Peter Cushing and Vincent Price) the “Vampire Killer”, Amanda Bearse as Amy, Stephen Geoffreys as Evil Ed, and William Ragsdale as Charlie Brewster.  Now that’s what I call a freaking cast.

It also happened to have great characters, which are almost the same as the new ones but um, well… no not really.  In the original, Charlie is actually likeable (as opposed to a douchebag in the new one, at least for the first 40 minutes of the film) as are Evil Ed, Peter Vincent and Amy.  In the new one, none of the characters are very appealing at all.

The story in both films pretty much goes like this:  a vampire moves in next to Charlie, Charlie realizes this but at the same time the vampire realizes that Charlie knows about him and a cat and mouse game ensues.  Still with me?  Good.  In the original, the vampire (Sarandon) is particularly interested in Amy, because she looks almost exactly like his long-dead love.  Sarandon knows to play coy in this role and is a sophisticated vampire simmering with a sex appeal you suspect is hidden somewhere, but your imagination does most of the work.  In the new one, the vampire (Colin Farrell) is just a freaking pervert who runs around with his shirt hanging open the whole time.  In the original, Amy looked 16 and kept trying NOT to have sex with Charlie, in the new one Amy (Imogen Poots)  looks 26 (she’s really 22) playing 16 and tries TO have sex with Charlie.  Ugh.

Oh, the madness never ends.  In the original, Peter Vincent (McDowall) is a likeable, good-hearted, yet cowardly late-night horror flick host (and aging horror film actor)  who is being forcibly kicked off TV as a new, younger audience no longer has any interest in his kind.  You can’t help but feel bad for the guy, coward or not.  Contrast that with the new one, in which Peter (Tennant) is a misogynistic, drunken, David Blaine-ish Las Vegas illusionist.  Oh.  My.  God.   Anyway, I hope you get the picture by now because frankly, it was bad enough watching what they did to a great movie but seeing it written in black and white is adding salt to my already weeping, open movie wounds.
Amy Vampire, Fright Night 1985

The truth is that I really didn’t even want to see the re-make, because I knew in my heart that the first one would be almost impossible to top.  But, when I learned that David Tennant was playing Peter Vincent I thought maybe, just maybe someone knew what they were doing.  However, in my opinion only three good decisions were made — total — in remaking this film:  1) casting David Tennant (this film aside, I adore David Tennant) 2) casting Toni Collette as Jane Brewster (Charlie’s Mom) because she is always awesome and 3) having Chris Sarandon show up in a cameo, even if he did only live for about 35 seconds.  Okay, to be totally fair, they did try to cast Charlie as a teen who actually looks like a teen with Anton Yelchin, although he is also 22 in real life.

Seriously, this film was tremendously bad.  I didn’t even get into the absurd amount of misogyny it contained (another departure from the original).  Also, it appears that IMDb and I once again are completely at odds when it comes to ratings.  IMDb gives the remake 7, yes 7 stars.  To put this in context, they gave Insidious a 6.9 and the original Fright Night a 6.9.  On this development, I have to warn you — if you have an issue with curse words you may wish to skip the next few sentences.  You’ve been warned.  ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? WHAT KIND OF CRACK ARE YOU PEOPLE SMOKING?  COLIN FARRELLS PECS ARE NOT WORTH 7 STARS YOU BRAIN DEAD SHEEPLE!!!!!  Let’s just say I strongly disagree with IMDb’s users on these ratings.

In closing, for what may be the first time ever (yes, ever) I find myself in agreement with a critic (well, mostly) instead of supposedly sane and normal people.  That’s how low this film has made me sink.  **spit**

SMALL SIDE NOTE:  This review was written prior to me reading the review I have linked above, and I was surprised to find them so similar.  I also have nothing against critics in general, I just usually feel that they don’t know what the hell they are talking about.