Fright Night

Craig Gillespie's 2011 remake of Fright Night takes Tom Holland's 1985 cult favorite and drops it into the sun-bleached sprawl of Las Vegas, where a teenager named Charley Brewster has spent years burying the monster-obsessed kid he used to be. Anton Yelchin plays Charley, now running with the popular crowd and dating Amy (Imogen Poots), while his former best friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) still chases vampires. When a charming stranger named Jerry Dandrige moves in next door, Charley's old paranoia turns out to be dead right.

Colin Farrell plays Jerry with a relaxed, predatory charisma that makes him feel less like a gothic count and more like the neighbor you'd actually lend a ladder to. Toni Collette brings warmth and steel to Charley's mother Jane, and David Tennant steals every scene he's in as Peter Vincent, a Criss Angel-style Vegas illusionist whose vampire-hunter act is pure theater. Marti Noxon, a veteran of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, wrote the screenplay, and her feel for teen horror comedy shows in the film's brisk, funny, occasionally nasty tone.

Released in 3D on August 19, 2011, the film earned $41 million worldwide against a $30 million budget, a modest return that ended any sequel plans. Critics were kinder than the box office suggested, praising Farrell and Tennant and calling it one of the better 1980s horror remakes of its wave. It remains a favorite Halloween-season watch, and a bittersweet one for fans of Yelchin, who died in 2016. [edit]

Charley Brewster has a system. At school he keeps his head down, dates Amy Petersen, and hangs with the popular kids. At home he helps his mom Jane, a real-estate agent, and tries not to think about the kid he used to be. That kid, the one who spent hours reading about vampires and hunting monsters with his best friend Ed Thompson, is someone Charley would rather forget. Ed has not forgotten. He corners Charley in the school parking lot with a wild story: people are disappearing from their neighborhood, and the new guy next door is responsible.

The new guy is Jerry Dandrige, a contractor who moved in recently and keeps odd hours. He's friendly in a way that feels practiced. Charley dismisses Ed's warning, but then Ed himself vanishes, and Charley starts noticing things. A classmate named Adam goes missing. Jerry's house is always dark. Charley's mother mentions that Jerry came by to introduce himself and seemed to take an interest in her. Charley begins to watch the house next door, and what he sees through the windows is enough to convince him that Ed was right.

When Charley breaks into Jerry's house with a friend, he finds evidence he can't explain away: a hidden room, personal items belonging to the missing, and a vampire who is very much awake. Jerry catches him, and the confrontation that follows is brief and terrifying. Charley escapes, but Jerry now knows that Charley knows. The rules of the game change immediately. Jerry can't enter a home without an invitation, so Charley's house becomes a kind of fortress, but Jerry is patient and inventive, and the people around Charley are vulnerable.

Charley tries the obvious routes. He calls the police, who find nothing. He tries to warn his mother, who thinks he's acting out. He reaches out to Amy, who wants to believe him but can't quite. The film tightens into a siege: Jerry circling the Brewster home at night, Charley barricading doors and windows, and the awful realization that no adult in his life is going to save him. The only person who might help is a celebrity.

Peter Vincent hosts a Vegas stage show built on the persona of a fearless vampire hunter. In person he is vain, jumpy, and entirely a showman. Charley tracks him down and tries to hire him, and Vincent's first instinct is to throw him out. But Jerry's reach extends further than Charley expected, and Vincent gets pulled into the mess whether he likes it or not. The film's middle act becomes a series of escalating set pieces: a chase through the desert night, a confrontation in Vincent's apartment, and a growing sense that Jerry is not just a monster but a strategist who enjoys the hunt.

What Charley has going for him is the knowledge he tried to leave behind. The old books, the old rules, the old instincts all come back. He has to protect Jane and Amy, convince Vincent to stop performing and start fighting, and find a way to kill something that has had centuries to learn how to survive. The film builds toward a final stand at Jerry's house, with sunlight as the only real weapon and the clock running down.[edit]