The second trailer for Disney's Fright Night remake went online this morning, and I still have the same problem as I did with the first trailer. Quite frankly, the film as is basically plays like Disturbia with vampires. Yes yes, I know the first Fright Night beat Disturbia by about 22 years, but this remake did not. And frankly I do not remember the original all that well (my wife loves it so I've recently added it to the queue), but the beats of this new version basically feel like well, Distburbia with vampires. And I know that Distburbia was a teen version of Rear Window, but it was still an original narrative with different character arcs than the Alfred Hitchcock picture. But Fright Night 2011 feels less a remake of Fright Night 1985 and more like a remake of the David Caruso picture. You have the nerdy kid (Anton Yelchin today, Shia LeBeouf back in April 2007) who inexplicably scores the hot blonde girlfriend (Imogen Poots vs. Sarah Roemer), the refreshingly hot mother who isn't treated like a sexless saint (Toni Collette here, Carrie-Anne Moss then), and the scary new neighbor who has a habit of murdering young women (Colin Farrell vs. David Morse). The only different beat thus advertised is the brief appearance of David Tennant as the Chris Angel-variation on Roddy McDowell's washed-up horror TV host Peter Vincent. This may very well be a decent movie (they were test-screening the hell out of it in Woodland Hills about a month ago), but I have a feeling that much of the drooling is more related to Imogen Potts in a bra than anything in the film thus being advertised. This one comes out on August 19th (same day as Conan the Barbarian... BRILLIANT!), so we'll see...
Scott Mendelson
Scott Mendelson
It's going to suck for sure. You are right though. The original "Fright Night" was "Rear Window" with a vampire, then "Disturbia" was "Fright Night" with the vampire replaced by a serial killer. Obviously this is going to exactly the same storyline, i.e. somebody sees something but they aren't believed by anyone else except by the killer... yada yada. I can see that Chris Angel thing now that I've looked it up but David Tennant is noticeably being Russell Brand a lot more. Whatever the case, this is one to miss.
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