Capitalizing on America’s rabid obsession with both vampires and remakes, Dreamworks and Film4 took on the 80’s horror classic Fright Night. In theatres this August, the Fright Night reboot will star Colin Farrell as a uber-vampire Jerry Dandridge and Anton Yelchin as geeky teen hero Charley.
Ok, I know why the original Fright Night caught Hollywood’s attention as a potential remake candidate. It’s a great, cheesy, 80’s horror flick with bad special effects, lots of boobs and bad jokes, and a cult following. But the cheese and camp is what makes it so lasting. The reboot will follow the same story, roughly, but it will be sleeker and sexier. No sparkling, romantic vampires here (yay).
Yelchin (Terminator Salvation) will play Charley Brewster, a geeky teen who discovers a vampire living next door. In the original, Charley enlists the help of his friends and cinematic vampire hunter Peter Vincent (played with great over-the-top camp by Roddy McDowall) to destroy his new vampire neighbor, Jerry Dandridge. In the remake, the Peter Vincent character will be a younger, sleeker magician type (think Criss Angel). His joker friend ‘Evil’ Ed will be played by funnyman Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Kick-Ass), and girlfriend Amy by relative newcomer Imogen Poots (28 Weeks Later).
In what seems a strange bit of casting, Farrell is playing suave-but-deadly Dandridge. In an interview with MTV last month Farrell said he loved the original Fright Night, and was worried about a remake:
“I mean, I loved the original, and I hope the film is–on it’s own–entertaining and works. Because I really did love the original, so much so that I was hoping I wouldn’t like the remake when I read it, because I didn’t want to have to answer questions about remakes and lack of originality and all that shit. I didn’t want to think of myself in those terms either, so I was hoping that I didn’t like it. But I read it and I’m an actor and I loved it and I went, ‘OK, let’s go to work.'”
Farrell also said the remake is true to the original in story and structure but it has been put in a very contemporary setting, and there are some changes. Can he be talking about the Las Vegas setting? The original was set in small-town America. Hmmm…
Craig Gillespie directed the screenplay by Marti Noxon (a regular scribe on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and most recently I Am Number Four). The updated screenplay is based on Tom Holland‘s story. Holland wrote a whole slew of great 80s horror films, from the original Fright Night to Child‘s Play). It will be interesting to see the remake, though what made the original so good was that hard-to-capture 80s camp. Seeing Fright Night turn into a reboot travesty will be like a stake through the heart.
The film opens August 19th
