Review – Fright Night (2011)

Try as I might, I couldn’t stop comparing this to the original version. To be fair, the remake does a better job in some areas. Special effects are more sophisticated now than they were in 1985, and they’re better at not overusing them. Imogen Poots is a bit better as the love interest than awkward-as-a-heterosexual Amanda Bierce. And on several points the two productions break even. But casting Colin Farrel as the bad guy was a colossal error. Chris Sarandon was suave and creepy as Jerry Dandrige, while Farrel is just a soccer hooligan with equal appetites for blood and beer. The “blue collar” approach fit better with the basement-full-of-victims approach, but then that was the problem. Mildly amusing