They Sleep In Earth, They're Tribal/No Winning, Just Survival

Because sovay asked, I thought I'd say a bit about the Fright Night remake, which Steve and I finally got to see (not in 3D, thankfully) on Friday night. Short story short, it's really good--corrects what I thought were some problems with the original, the biggest one being that it was a stunning example of that thing I hear everybody else complaining about all the time but rarely suffer from myself (except here), a narrative in which I literally found everybody interesting except for the nominal protagonist, Charlie Brewster, who's a whiny, date-rapey annoyance-hound who doesn't deserve A) his friends, B) his girlfriend or C) to get out alive. (I can also never quite get over the lingering memory of Skipp and Spector's creepy tie-in novelization, which took pains to point that although she'd been de-vampirized by the end, Amanda Bierce's character nevertheless retained her Hammer Horror leer-worthy monster rack.)

Anton Yelchin's version of Charlie, OTOH, is genuinely smart and genuinely engaged--you can see everything that's going on inside of him, how stuff hurts. You understand why he's made the douche-y decision to cut his two best friends (Adam, killed in the teaser, and Evil Ed) out of his life, because he mistakenly thinks the cool girl he's currently with didn't know he was a massive nerd before she asked him out. Thing is, though, she did, and likes him because he's different (though it didn't hurt that his skin cleared up, or that he doesn't talk through his nose like Evil). And unlike original Charlie, he's not the one harassing her to have sex with him all the time, either: Call me new-fashioned, but I really like that particular twist. Here, both of them want it, and her essentially saying: "Hey-oh, let's get busy" just happens to unfortunately coincide with him figuring out that the dude next door is a shark in a man-suit who's learned to be minimally charming.

Oh yeah, and remember the half hour or so of the original where Charlie constantly tells people Jerry's a vampire, only to have them mock, dismiss and deride him, until he's finally proven right (but even then, the only people who know it are his dead vampire ex BFF, his former vampire GF, and some washed-up actor)? Here, that whole process takes about five minutes, by the end of which Jerry may not have exactly blown away Charlie's Mom's "vampires, WTF?" reaction, but has certainly proven himself to be a guy who A) shouldn't be trusted and B) needs to be gotten away from ASAP. I like that, too.

Colin Farrell's Jerry is wonderfully dead-eyed, full of feral cunning, and not even slightly human, for all he retains an interest in beer, apples and reality TV shows that mention the word "boobies". His tract-house is tricked out like a combination of spider-hole and serial killer's lair, with occasional caches of really old shit he presumably uses to make himself feel comfortable, in and amongst all this transient, high-tech mortal bullshit. He also "makes" new friends like other people make dirty tissues, but as Evil later says, "He's surprisingly untraditional--none of this 'Master' shit". You get the feeling he probably answers direct questions pretty easily, once neither of you have a pulse anymore, and he does seem to be equal-opportunity. And yes, most of his rampant vampire moments are CGI, which is annoying. I do love how pain and rage cause him to lose control of his body, though; there's this great moment where Charlie yells at him while he's eating a guy's throat (Chris Sarandon, in a very funny cameo), and he takes the time to shrug his face back together until he can look at least a bit "presentable" when he turns around, smiles mildly at the massive cross Charlie's brandishing at him, and says: "Hey, guy."

Now: I'm not saying there are no flaws. For example, much as I like David Tennant, I prefer Roddy MacDowell's version of Peter Vincent, who at least doesn't have to be constantly drunk in order to get it up in terms of moral bravery. I'd also love Evil's vamping to be at least as gay as the original, but no, though Christopher Mintz-Plasse does his best to project a sort of angry "nerd pride, and okay maybe gay pride too, not that it's any of your fuckin' buisness, Brewster" vibe. They've also completely removed the whole "gotta have faith" subplot--in fact, the only person in this film who seems to have faith is, weirdly enough, Jerry Dandridge...at least, I assume he does, because it's not like crosses and holy water don't hurt him. It's just that at 400 years old, he can play through the pain.

But overall, yeah: You did good, Marti Noxon. I'll even give you the fakey vamp-reversal thing at the end, because after all, I'll do the same for Katherine Bigelow. When it works, it works.

(Best overall special effects, though? Toni Collette's smarts, along with Imogen Poots' overbite.)