Will The New “Fright Night” Suck…In A Bad Or Good Way?

Yet another classic ’80s flick, in this case the vampire horror-comedy Fright Night, has become grist for the Hollywood remake mill. I’m personally getting sick of remakes, reboots or whatever they’re being passed off as these days. This trailer for the new Fright Night at least points to it being a slick retread, but will this version have fangs?

In the original, a young high school student named Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale) discovers that his dashing neighbor (Chris Sarandon) is a bloodsucker, but nobody will believe him. So he convinces the skeptical local horror TV host Peter Vincent (the late, legendary Roddy McDowall) to help him in his quest to purge his suburban hood of the undead. From the looks of the remake trailer, Charlie (Anton Yelchin) is convinced by a high school peep that his neighbor (Colin Farrell) is a vampire, and that he needs to be stopped. Doctor Who‘s David Tennant takes over the Peter Vincent role.

According to producer Mike De Luca, this Fright Night focuses a bit more on the horror than the comedy, but there is no comedy evident in this trailer. And since the romantic kind of vampire that Sarandon deviously played has become defanged by the likes of the tween-oriented Twilight franchise and plenty of young adult literary series in recent years, the filmmakers sought to make Farrell’s incarnation a more brutal killing machine. Which essentially takes away from the Victorian horror-meets-’80s camp vibe of the original. Then again, to be fair, the trailer for the original was dark and intense as well.