It wasn't all that surprising, given how this was such a big trend throughout the 2000's, but still, the idea of a remake of
Fright Night felt so inane to me. Now, I try not to be one of those people who's immediately down on the idea of a remake just because of my love of the original, unless what I see in the trailers and TV spots doesn't impress me, but I was never enthusiastic about this one. I did think that Colin Farrell's casting was a good one, especially when he talked about how big of a fan he was of the original, but everything else I heard, particularly what they planned to do with the character of Peter Vincent, felt either ill-advised or just dumb. And when the movie came out in 2011, the word-of-mouth I heard from various reviewers wasn't good, and some of the plot details they revealed definitely definitely didn't have me in a hurry to see it. I kept to that until 2020, when, after finally watching
Fright Night Part 2, I decided that I might as well watch everything else just to say I'd seen the whole franchise. And when I watched the remake, I... didn't care for it. In fact, when I came back around to it for this review, I didn't remember much of anything about it, and having now watched it a total of three times, my initial opinion, while not as negative as it once, has only mildly improved. It's not horrible but, at best, it's just so-so. It's aided immensely by the casting of Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, and Toni Collette, the visual style, the cool different sort of setting, some well done and even suspenseful sequences, a handful of interesting twists on the original story, and a memorable music score. Unfortunately, while he was a good choice for the vampire, aside from some scattered moments, Colin Farrell doesn't get the chance to really amaze in the role, I have serious mixed feelings about David Tennant's take on Peter Vincent, and Evil Ed... well, we'll get to him. On top of that, there's an overabundance of
really bad CGI, not just for nearly all of the vampire effects but even some of the gore; visual moments which aren't very appealing; and like so many of these 2000's remakes, its tone is so serious and dark, with little-to-none of the sense of fun or effective humor of the original.
In a subdivision out in the desert near Las Vegas, Adam Johnson is attacked and killed in his house one night by a monstrous creature that has already killed his sister and parents. The next day, another local teen, Charley Brewster, talks with his mother, Jane, a real estate agent, about their new neighbor, as she's not happy about the construction dumpster he has in his front yard, feeling it dissuades others from moving to the neighborhood. She's especially confused about all the concrete it houses, as she knows he isn't putting in a swimming pool. Charley rides to school with his girlfriend, Amy, and during the roll call in class, realizes that Adam, as well as another student, is missing. After class, his former friend, Ed Lee, manages to pull Charley aside in the hallway and tell him that he's lost contact with Adam, who was also once Charley's friend. Ed asks Charley to meet him at Adam's house after school so they can check on him, and has to blackmail him into it by threatening to ruin the "cool kid" reputation he's trying to build for himself. Heading home with Amy after school, Charley finds his mother talking and flirting with their neighbor: a good-looking, fit, and charming man named Jerry. Ed then texts Charley, threatening to release an old, dorky video of the two of them and Adam if he doesn't meet up with him at Adam's house. When he meets Ed there and they sneak inside, they find the house completely empty, with no sign of Adam or his family. Ed also tells Charley that his new neighbor is a vampire, and that he and Adam have managed to trace all the recent disappearances in the neighborhood to him. Charley, naturally, doesn't believe him, but Ed insists that he has concrete proof at his house, and that they need to find Jerry's lair and stake him. The two of them then get into an argument and Charley goes home by himself, as does Ed. On his way, Ed, after getting attacked by one of Charley's new, "cool" friends, is stalked and cornered by Jerry, who manages to coerce the kid into allowing him to bite him. The next day, when Ed doesn't show up in class, Charley goes over to his house and, in his room, checks his laptop. There, he finds video files of his and Adam's surveillance on Jerry... who doesn't appear in the footage, though everything he touches and drives indicates that something is there. Horrified that Ed was right, Charley now finds that both he and his family are in serious danger, especially when Jerry gets suspicious. The only one he can turn to may be Peter Vincent, a Las Vegas magician who puts on a vampire-themed show and is said to be a master of the occult.
At some point in the 2000's, someone at DreamWorks got the idea of remaking
Fright Night, with Michael De Luca, Michael Gaeta, and Alison Rosenzweig becoming the main team spearheading the production. Development, however, stalled for a little bit when they were unable to get a screenplay that satisfied them. That was, until they approached Marti Noxon, a screenwriter and producer who was definitely no stranger to vampires, as she was a major part of the production staff behind
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, joining the show during its second season and acting as a producer for much of its run. You're also going to notice that I refer back to her repeatedly throughout this review, much more so than the actual director, as Noxon was the real creative force behind it. As far as the original movie, she's said that she really admired Tom Holland's screenplay (he gets story credit for this film, albeit only in reference to his having written the original), but felt there was room for some updating and improvement, such as in the relationships of the characters (some of that I think worked out well, other parts, not so much). She also came up with the idea of setting the movie in the suburbs near Las Vegas, as she'd spent some time there and felt it would be the perfect hunting ground for any type of monster, since people come and go all the time, and sudden disappearances wouldn't ring any alarm bells. In addition, it was her idea to make Peter Vincent a Las Vegas magician who collects occult items, feeling that horror hosts don't have the same resonance now as they did way back when.
The film's director was Sydney-born Craig Gillespie, who, as with many directors behind the 2000's horror remakes, began his career in the world of advertising, specifically commercials (he has also done a music video, namely one for a song made for this very movie). His feature directorial debut was 2007's
Mr. Woodcock, with Billy Bob Thornton, although that movie was extensively rewritten and reshot by a different director following a disastrous test screening. Immediately afterward, he made
Lars and the Real Girl, with Ryan Gosling, which was much better received critically. He also did the pilot and several first season episodes of
United States of Tara, which established a relationship between him and DreamWorks and, thus, led to him doing
Fright Night. Gillespie was initially unsure about doing it, since he had only vague memories of the original (the most vivid was the poster artwork), and remained so even after he first read the screenplay, which he's said he did like. But, when he found himself visualizing some of the scenes he'd read in his head, he figured he had to do it and signed on. Since then, he's done movies such as 2014's
Million Dollar Arm, 2016's
The Finest Hours, 2017's
I, Tonya,
Cruella, and, unfortunately for him, the massive 2026 bomb that was
Supergirl.
And here's something I definitely didn't expect to learn about the Fright Night remake: Steven Spielberg had a fairly big role in its production. While not totally shocking, seeing as how DreamWorks is his company, after all, according to Marti Noxon, he took a keen interest in this movie, adding that she was told he sometimes does that for the smaller projects the company produces, "Because they're just sort of fun for him, and a throwback to childhood favorites. He's just a mass consumer of pop culture." Specifically, he helped Gillespie in storyboarding the movie, came up with a few shots, and was particularly involved with the editing, along with his own frequent editor, Michael Kahn.
One of the changes that I think works fairly well is the character of Charley Brewster. While in the original, we don't get much of a feel of his social standing at his school, as we never see him interact with anyone other than Amy or Ed, here, the late Anton Yelchin portrays him as someone who used to be viewed as a dweeb, but has since grown to where he's in good standing with the "cool," popular kids. As a result, he's all but cut ties with his former best friends, Ed Lee and Adam Johnson, and is quite embarrassed whenever the former tries to contact him. He's especially unhappy when Ed talks with him in front of his new friends, Mark and Ben, telling him about how Adam and some other kids haven't shown up at school lately. Charley isn't too concerned, since families come and go all the time in this suburb, and is further embarrassed when Ed gets really overzealous about it and ropes him into going with him over to Adam's house in order to see if he's okay. In fact, it takes Ed threatening to spread some embarrassing videos the three of them once made to make him join him. As they later search the house, Charley is further irritated when Ed claims that his new neighbor is a vampire, that he's the cause of the recent spate of disappearances, and they have to find where he rests and kill him. In response, Charley comes up with reasonable explanations for what Ed is talking about, such as, again, how people don't live there for very long in general, and that Jerry's windows are probably blacked out because he works at night and sleeps during the day, as many there do. And when Ed persists, Charley mocks him, then declares, "Evil, this was fun when we were eight... The point is, I grew up. If you don't want to, that's fine, but don't get an attitude because I'd rather have a life than make shit up!" Things come to a boiling point when Ed starts talking trash about Amy, prompting Charley to shove him to the floor. Though he clearly regrets it as soon as he does it, when Ed asks what happened to him, Charley says, "Yeah, well, you know when my life started to get better? When I stopped being friends with you."
Come the next morning, however, Charley is regretting that, as he watches the silly videos he, Ed, and Adam used to make, smiling at the memories. In class later, he's doodling a little bit, when he realizes that Ed isn't class. Now concerned for him the way Ed was about Adam, Charley goes over to his house after school and, when his parents say he's out, goes up to his room. There, he sees how utterly obsessed Ed had become with vampires, and is initially dismissive like before. But then, he watched the video files of Ed and
Adam's surveillance of Jerry, and Charley is horrified to find that Ed was right, as Jerry doesn't appear in the footage, despite it being clear that they were filming something. And when he goes home, Charley has an unsettling interaction with Jerry, who asks to borrow some beers for a date he has. He notes how, just as Ed said, Jerry stays right outside of the kitchen door, since he hasn't been invited inside. The comments that Jerry makes about his mother and girlfriend, and his asking if he's up to protecting them, unnerve
Charley further, and he promptly locks the door when he leaves. He's further horrified when Jerry's date turns out to be Doris, a woman from the neighborhood whom he knows. Late that night, he hears a scream from next door and calls the police, but when they show up, Jerry is able to charm them to the point where they don't do anything and promptly leave. Aggravated, Charley sneaks into Jerry's house when he drives off in his pickup truck and finds that Doris is still alive but being held prisoner in a hidden
area so Jerry can repeatedly feed on her. Charley manages to get her out of there and, after seemingly avoiding being discovered by Jerry, out of the house, only for her to be vaporized by the morning sun when she walks into it. Utterly shell-shocked by this, Charley, before leaving for school, tells his mother not to invite Jerry into their house and to stay inside come nightfall. He also tries to keep Amy out of it, as he looks up Peter Vincent and goes to Las Vegas in order to meet with him and learn how to combat a vampire.
The details of Charley's decision to meet with Peter Vincent I feel work much better here than in the original. For one, since Charley is not into horror movies or the occult in this film, it makes sense that he would need to talk to someone who is in the know to learn how to defend himself against a vampire. For another, he's only vaguely aware of who Peter even is at first, and after looking him up online and finding he performs at the Hard Rock Hotel, he goes there and manages to pass himself off as a young reporter in
order to speak with him. But the best improvement is how he approaches the subject while speaking with Peter. First, he says that he's writing an article that separates fact from fiction in regards to vampires, and when they get down to the actual "interview," he starts by saying, "I know your show's an illusion... But, say I wanted to kill a vampire... how would I go about doing that?" And, after Peter gives him some methods, and then becomes frustrated when Charley pushes further, asking if they would really work,
Charley notes that, given all of the occult items he collects, he figured he would have some real knowledge on the subject. That's a lot more plausible than Charley seeming to believe that Peter really was the character he played in the movies in the original. And he only brings up that his neighbor is a vampire and is killing people in his suburb when he gets desperate for help, proceeding to show him evidence in the form of pictures he took in Jerry's house and explain why a place with a transient population would be perfect for a vampire to prey on. Furthermore, he
says he knows how crazy it sounds and that he himself would've been derisive of such claims just a few days earlier, adding, "I don't wanna know this shit!" In any case, like in the original, Peter doesn't believe him and rebuffs him, leading Charley to try to protect his house and mother in any way he can. Speaking of which, I also like how he doesn't just come out and tell both his mother and Amy that he believes Jerry is a vampire; instead, he tries to keep them safe without telling them, and only does so when he has no other choice. And while he does call the police on Jerry, in this version, their reason for not investigating, thankfully, isn't because he acts like a moron and claims Jerry is a vampire in front of them.
Like in the original, Charley is shown to have a real moral compass, both in how he tries to protect his mother and girlfriend, as well as help others who've fallen prey to Jerry, like Doris. After Jerry chases them across the desert highway and nearly kills them, with Charley's mother ending up in the hospital afterward, Charley laments what's happened to Amy, blaming himself for it. He especially regrets what happened with Ed, saying, "Ed came to me and I turned my back on him... I mean he
begged me. He
really... he was my best friend." Amy notes how people change over time and Charley says, "Yeah, and I just changed into a dick. I figured, 'Oh,' you know, 'my dweeb pass wasn't get me very popular with the ladies...'" Later, when Charley is confronted by Ed when he's now a vampire, he, again, clearly regrets what's happened to him and doesn't want to fight him. Despite delivering a major blow during their fight in order to protect himself, Charley, initially, can't bring himself to finish him off. It's only with Amy's urging that he does stake him, and then, he has to watch Ed
disintegrate into ash, further adding to his anguish. And after Jerry abducts Amy, Charley is now determined to either kill Jerry or die trying. When Peter refuses to help him, saying he only survived his first encounter with a vampire by hiding, Charley accuses him of being a coward who bails on people and tells him, "Hey, I get it. My dad was like that. But I don't want to live to tomorrow if you're the kind of man I'm gonna be." For that matter, he also likely felt he was already becoming like that, given how he turned his back on Ed. And so, after sitting up all night with his mother to ensure her safety, Charley suits up, arms himself, and goes into Jerry's house to finish things.
I really don't have that much to say about this film's version of Amy Peterson (Imogen Poots), save for how she's definitely one of the popular kids at their school, and her being with Charley makes him more popular as a result. As Marti Noxon intended, she's also a popular girl who isn't a bitch... save for one moment where she refers to Doris as a stripper, and when Charley corrects her, that Doris is a go-go dancer, Amy remarks, "No, you take away two tiny pieces of cloth, she... is... a stripper." Other than that, she's a pretty nice girl, and has an affectionate, teasing relationship with Charley, as well as a very friendly one with his mother, Jane. While at first just annoyed when Charley begins acting strange, being more interested in spying on Jerry than doing it with her (in this case, she was the one who suggested they have sex) and missing class to look up "porn" on a computer in the library, Amy becomes concerned enough to where she shows up at his house and confronts him. Charley, in turn, tells her to forget about him, that he doesn't want her to get hurt, and right after she asks how she's going to get hurt, Jerry shows up at the door. When Charley stops Jane from letting him in, forcing him to take drastic measures to get at them, Amy, as well as Jane, quickly learn what he is. She sticks with Charley when he takes Jane to the hospital and tries to help him work through his guilt over everything. When he admits he tried to become a cool kid just to impress her, she tells him, "I knew you were a dweeb. What, you think I wanted some dude, like Mark or Ben? No. I like you, because you're different. It didn't hurt that your skin cleared up." Afterward, during a fight with the vampires at Peter Vincent's penthouse, Amy manages to shoot Jerry with silver bullets, then throws holy water in his face, which really damages him. And when Ed has Charley pinned down on the floor, Amy knocks him off with a mace and encourages Charley to take him down. But, like in the original, she's captured and turned into a vampire, this time forcibly rather than being seduced, and Jerry later sics her on Charley when he comes to destroy him.
Though Poots doesn't get to play Amy's vampire side for quite as long as Amanda Bearse, she does make the most of it. Amy initially comes off as completely innocent and victimized when Charley finds her in Jerry's cellar, but you know that's just a front, especially when she embraces him. She gradually reveals her corruption by telling him that he should've saved her, then licking her fangs and whispering into Charley's ear that Jerry is, "Inside me now." She proceeds to pin Charley to the ground and rubs herself
against him, seductively saying, "I'll be the best you ever had. The
only you'll ever have. Charley, we can be together forever." That's when she goes into full vampire mode, with a wide, toothy maw not unlike the iconic original, and a truly freakish expression on her face. Charley, however, manages to temporarily ward her off by stabbing her into her torso, though intentionally misses her heart. She removes the stake that he used, licks her own blood off her hand, and mocks his poor aim. That, unfortunately, is the extent of anything notable she does as a vampire. She does
join the others in the main chamber when Jerry has Charley and Peter dead to rights, but she does nothing there but make out with Jerry, before Charley enacts his risky plan to take him down.
I've heard that in the novelization of the original
Fright Night, there's more backstory given to the relationship between Charley and Evil Ed to explain their dynamic, describing how the two of them had been childhood friends but things had kind of soured between them when Charley began dating Amy. I don't know if Marti Noxon ever read that book, but that is very much the relationship between Charley and Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) that we have here. The two of them, along with Adam Johnson, were once inseparable, all the way up to when they were sixteen, until Charley cut ties with them because he was now obsessed with his "cool kid" image. This, understandably, has left Ed very resentful, and he really gets irritated when he tries to tell Charley about Adam's disappearance but he doesn't think it's that much of a big deal. Ed tells him to meet up with him at Adam's home after school, and when Charley initially blows him off, he threatens to spread the silly videos the three of them used to make across the internet. After they slip into the house and search it, Ed tells Charley that his new neighbor is a vampire, that he and Adam have been keeping surveillance on him, and that his house is at the center of all of the reported attacks and disappearances. Charley, however, continues to disbelieve Ed, rationalizing everything that's happened, as well as mocking him, prompting Ed to turn around and mock his new persona, which includes making fun of Amy. This leads to their confrontation getting physical, and Charley says that his life improved after he cut ties with him and Adam. That cuts Ed the deepest, and then, on the way home, he gets assaulted and chased by Mark, one of Charley's new friends. While he escapes Mark, he runs into Jerry, who reveals he's been watching him the same way Ed has been spying on him. He manages to corner him and convince him that becoming a vampire will allow him to get back at all those who've ostracized him for being different, including Charley. And when Ed appears at Peter Vincent's home as a vampire, he indulges in the chance to get revenge on his former best friend.
There is a lot to the relationship here between Charley and Ed that I do like. Besides the new backstory making their dynamic much easier to understand, it also fleshed out Ed's character, making it clear that he was really hurt by how Charley just abandoned him, and thus, giving more dramatic weight to when he allows Jerry to turn him. Speaking of which, I also thought it was an interesting twist for Ed, as the one with interest in the occult, to be the one who initially learns that Jerry is a vampire and tries to warn
Charley of it. And unlike in the original, we get a confrontation between them after Ed has become one as well, with Charley having to grasp with how he let this happen to his friend. But, as good as all of this, it's hurt by one, simple issue: I can't stand this version of Ed. I know there are people who found him to be obnoxious in the original, and I can understand that, but he's insufferable here, coming off so much like an obsessed stalker towards Charley that you actually understand why he doesn't want anything to do with
him. In the scene where he forces Charley to talk with him after class, Ed is so damn annoying in how he intentionally tries to embarrass him, yelling like a crazy person, and then resorts to blackmail, threatening to publicly humiliate him if he doesn't help him search Adam's house, that it's hard to sympathize with him, even if it is coming from some deep-seated pain. The same goes for when he keeps yammering on and acting like an idiot while they're searching the house, with no real concrete evidence on hand to back up his claims, and decides to attack
Amy, who, for all we know, hasn't really done anything to him directly. And speaking of yammering on, when Ed shows up as a vampire, he will not... shut... the... fuck... up! He says one annoying line after another: "You know, I expected more of a fight from you, Brewster. Girl's made you lazy in the head. Pussy'll do that." (To which I'm thinking, "How would you know?") "I can hear you breathing. Ha, ha. It's really fucking cool. I can feel you. I can taste you." "Not so fast, Chuck! We got some catchin' up
to do, my friend." "Oh, just you and me now, buddy. Mano a mano. Let's do this." Then, when Charley grabs an axe, "Nice weapon there, Squid Boy... Not gonna do you much good, though, because I'm a goddamn killing machine." "Come on. It's like you're not even tryin'." Even when Charley puts the axe into the side of his neck, he still won't shut up, and instead of finding it tragic, I'm more relieved when he finally gets staked and disintegrates.
Charley's go-go dancer neighbor across the street, Doris (Emily Montague), is not only really hot but comes off as both nice and flirty when she talks with Charley at the beginning, calling him "Char-Char" and noting that he's really growing. She's also clearly not shy off the job, given how she walks around with a pair of pants that have "Lucky" written on their back. Unfortunately, she ends up over at Jerry's home and becomes his prey, with Jerry keeping her around to continually feed on her. When calling the police doesn't work, Charley breaks into the house and attempts to rescue her. Sadly, at one point, he can only watch helplessly as Jerry feeds on her, while she silently implores him to be quiet and not expose himself. And even though Charley does eventually manage to slip out the front door with her, because Jerry has fed on her, exposure to sunlight immediately destroys her right in front of Charley, leaving him utterly shell-shocked.
This time, however, there's another twist to that latter part: instead of being a skeptic who thinks Charley is crazy, Peter, as it turns out, knows that vampires are real, as he saw one kill his parents when he was a kid. He later tells Charley that he tried to convince himself that he imagined it to deal with the memories, saying, "
I was a kid. Figured it was easier to believe in monsters." But that didn't last, so he's since collected all of the occult items that he has in order to protect himself against any others he should encounter. At the same time, he doesn't want to get caught up in anyone else's entanglements with them, which is why he initially refused to take Charley seriously or help. He even tried to convince him that he was also inventing the scenario that Jerry is a vampire. Still, when he looks at a picture that Charley took of a symbol on Jerry's wall, and compares it to a drawing he keeps in a safe, he realizes what kind of vampire Jerry is. In a bout of conscience, he decides to warn Charley what he's dealing with, but isn't going to help him fight Jerry. Even when Charley comes to him after Jerry has abducted Amy, Peter tells him, "The only reason I survived the last time is because I had the sense to hide. Look, you want to be a dead hero, good for you. I'm out." Charley scoffs and Peter, before he can say anything, counters, "You think I'm a coward! I'm not. I'm a realist." Though, when Charley, after calling him out on his tendency to abandon people, goes to leave, Peter is good enough to give him a blade that was blessed by St. Michael, which has the power to revert those turned by Jerry if he's killed with it. He also gives Charley more advice, warning him that there's no guarantee that Jerry will be sleeping during the day and that he'll be vulnerable if he's set on fire. In the end, though, Peter does decide to help Charley, saying he's tired of being the person he was.
However, like with Evil Ed, the major stumbling block that keeps me from completely likely Peter Vincent here is that, during his first few scenes, he's such an utter asshole. Granted, Roddy McDowall's Peter wasn't the greatest guy at the start of the original
Fright Night, either, but here, he's a crude, foul-mouthed sleazebag who treats everyone around him, including his girlfriend, Ginger, like shit. When he's first introduced, he's shouting at everybody when a rehearsal of his show goes awry, and knocks
something out of the makeup girl's hand when she tries to give him a touch-up. Then, shortly after he meets Charley and is talking with him, one of the vampire women in the show walks by and hisses at Peter, and he randomly tells Charley, "I fucked her. Filthy." And when Charley claims to be a rookie reporter on his first assignment, Peter grabs his chin and comments, "Hmm. I'm gonna pop your cherry." Once Charley is up in his penthouse for the interview, Peter, after stripping down to just his leather pants
(that also includes his long hair, mustache, and goatee), complains about the latter, groaning, "Leather, it doesn't breathe, you know? Fuckin' rashes are fuckin' killing me!", while sitting down and tugging at his crotch. All the while, he's drinking, and lets out a loud belch at one point. And later, as he's sitting around, he acts like a dick again to Ginger, saying she was late during the show they just performed. As expected, when Ed shows up as a vampire, Peter only thinks of himself, running to and
locking himself inside his panic room, leaving Charley and Amy by themselves. I actually don't mind that, given how Peter was most definitely cowardly in the original, though I don't buy his horrified, anguished reaction when he sees that Ed killed Ginger, given how awful he was to her the whole time. And, while I do think there's enough build up to and emotional baggage in his decision to redeem himself by helping Charley (even if I do think it was done better before), I can't say the same about Peter's desperation to revive Charley after he's had to nearly kill himself to destroy Jerry. They didn't have nearly enough scenes together or been through enough to create a bond to warrant that kind of reaction. And speaking of Jerry, was it really necessary for him to turn out to be the vampire that killed Peter's parents? Couldn't it have just been another random one, leaving open the idea that there are more out there?
Above all else, like in the original, Peter does become a better character as the movie goes on. I like how, when he shows up at Jerry's house to help Charley, he opens up his leather jacket to reveal he's strapped full of weapons and declares, "Let's kill something." Then, upon descending through the floor-trap that leads down into Jerry's basement lair, Peter tells Charley, "See that?!
I'm like a great date. You get me drunk, I'll try anything." When Jerry confronts Peter, he flicks a little pebble at him, hitting him in the forehead, and after going, "Ow!", he looks at it and derisively asks, "Really?! A pebble? That's it?" Of course, Jerry's real purpose in doing so proves to be quite sinister. But I think my favorite moment with Peter in the whole movie is when, just when it seems like they're doomed, he realizes that Charley, who's wearing a flame-retardant suit, wants him to light him up so he can destroy Jerry with it. He asks, "That's your plan?", and Charley answers, "Actually, it's your plan," to which Peter can only quietly mutter, "Fuck." After Jerry has been vanquished and Peter has revived Charley, he kisses him right on the lips and affectionately says, "Ya little shit. Next time you're gonna use my plan, gimme a head's up first, yeah?" He then takes a swig from his flask and falls back onto the ground, going, "Hahh!" And the movie ends with Charley and Amy about to get it on in Peter's penthouse, when he walks in and exclaims, "If you're naked, I'm absolutely going to look!" As they quickly try to cover up out of embarrassment, he goes to get his phone and encourages them to continue,saying he can't see anything. Before he leaves, he tells them, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," then stops and adds, "That doesn't narrow it down. That's like... mini-golf and sushi. Carry on!" It kind of makes me wish we'd gotten a proper sequel, where Tennant could've played Peter this way for the entire movie.
Even though she spends virtually all of her screentime taking Peter's verbal abuse, at least Ginger (Sandra Vergara) can give as good as she gets, and does so right from the beginning, when he gets mad about a fire effect going wrong during their rehearsal. When she brings Charley up to the penthouse and walks him through his massive collection of occult items, Ginger tells him, "Now scholars, they call him for answers. Those books, the forgotten texts, the Agrippa? He's read them all." But just when it seems like she's talking him up, Charley goes to touch one of the objects and Ginger says, " Don't touch anything. He's PMSy today. Sensitive little girl." Pointing at a framed diploma on a wall, she adds, "That's Pete's honorary degree from LVSU. But he got it off the internet." After she guides Charley into the main room, Peter orders Ginger to, "Midori me," but she promptly tells him, "Midori yourself, douchebag." She's not bothered when he yells back, "Fuck you!", as she hits back with, "Asswipe!" That night, when he's all pissy about her performance at the show, she says, "I have something for you, look," and proceeds to "blow" into her thumb while raising her middle finger. They then have this hateful exchange: "You were early again, in the bedroom." "Fuck you!" "I will fuck myself! Someone's gotta do it!" And the last time they see each other, they flip each other off, with Ginger, again, calling him a douchebag. Unfortunately, she's killed by Ed when she lets him into the penthouse.
Though this is very much how Noxon intended for Jerry to be portrayed when she wrote the screenplay, Farrell wasn't comfortable with those sexual predator overtones and wanted them rewritten. No such changes were made and, what's more, an idea he had about Jerry speaking to Amy in Latin in order to make her fall under his spell was ultimately not used (his fake fangs completely destroyed the effect when he tried to speak with them), despite him working really hard on it with both his dialect coach and an
expert in Latin whom they hired. Farrell also said that Jerry's lack of a soul made him all the more difficult to play, and all of these issues probably came together to create the strangely uneven performance he ultimately gives. It's weird because, even though, as I'll get into, there is a lot to like about this version of Jerry, and he does have some standout moments, Farrell, despite seeming like he is trying, just feels... off sometimes. He has these strange, hesitant mannerisms and tics in some scenes, like when he's first talking with Charley, Amy, and Jane outside his
home, and the way he's constantly looking around while talking with Charley as he stands right outside the kitchen door. He's probably trying to get across how eager Jerry is to be allowed inside, but it comes off as awkward. And Farrell certainly has some moments of charisma when he really gets to speak dialogue (which isn't often, actually) and is playing with his prey, and manages to be menacing at points, but he just doesn't absolutely exude those qualities the way Sarandon did.
Again, that's not to say Jerry isn't an effective villain, because he certainly is. The opening, where he kills Adam Johnson after slaughtering his entire family, shows how ferocious and deadly he is, and it's also soon revealed he did it because he knew that Adam and Ed had been spying on him. As he tells Ed, "
You've been watching me. I've been watching you. It seems fair." Naturally, that also serves as an early indication of how dangerously intelligent he is, which you later see when Charley finds various types of uniforms and work clothes in his
closet, hinting at the various professions he's posed in over the
years in order to get at his victims. You can also guess that he puts
whatever knowledge he gains from said professions to good use, like when he forces
Charley, Amy, and Jane out of the Brewster house by digging up and then igniting its gas line, noting that he doesn't need an invitation if there's no house. By extension, he sends Ed to Peter Vincent's penthouse ahead of him, disguised as a deliveryman, and once he's
inside, he paves the way for Jerry himself by inviting him in over the cellphone. Above all else, you can't help but admire Jerry's swagger
and confidence in himself, such as how he casually whistles while
chasing Ed through the abandoned house, before suddenly showing up outside when Ed climbs out there through a window, and how he knows from virtually the beginning that Charley has sneaked into his house, prompting him to play a cat and mouse game with him when he tries to escape with Doris.
Some of Farrell's best moments come when Jerry has Charley, Amy, and Jane cornered in the middle of the desert highway following the car
crash. Charley tells Amy and Jane to run for it, and as they appear to do so, Jerry
just waves and says, "Catcha later." Then, in a similar vein to when Peter tried to repel him with one in the original, when Charley, holding a big, wooden cross, declares, "
I repel you with the power of Christ the Lord," Jerry derisively asks, "Do you? Really?" When Charley comes at him with it, Jerry initially acts like it's working, hissing and saying, "Charley, not the cross. Charley...", only to grab it, setting it aflame from his touch, and push Charley against
the wrecked car, saying, "Not the cross, Charley," in a tone that says,
"Give it a rest." He casually blows the flame out before tossing the cross aside, then tosses Charley over to the side of his mother's wrecked van. He asks,
"You ever get a stake in the chest, Charley? I have. It hurts. But they missed the heart." He runs his finger across Charley's chest to emphasize his point and adds, "It's right here, Charley. Easy measurement." And later, when Jerry arrives at Peter's penthouse, Amy shoots him with a gun loaded with silver bullets. He acts like each one affected him, only to then pull one out and comment, "Werewolves." And even when she throws some holy water in his face and it badly burns him, he quickly heals and just laughs at her tenacity.
During the climax in his lair below his house, Jerry does have some more awesome moments, such as when Charley fires an arrow at him, but he catches it in midair and snaps it with his fingers. He then closes the door to that room, leaving him at the mercy of the now vampiric Amy, telling him , "She's all yours." He next confronts Peter, revealing that he was the vampire who killed his parents by menacingly saying, "Look at you, all grown up," before saying the classic line, "Welcome to Fright Night... for real." As Peter
desperately tries to blast him with a shotgun, Jerry comments, "You've got your mother's eyes," and when he misses for the second time in a row, he adds, "And your father's aim." I also like how he utterly trolls Peter when he has him cornered by flicking a pebble into his forehead hard enough to cause him to bleed, only for its purpose to be so the blood awakens the other vampires lurking down there. And when Charley gets trapped in the main chamber as well,
Jerry is just kicking back, humming to himself, and says, "What were you thinking,
Charley? That you were just going to walk in here with your little
crossbow and put to bed four hundred years of survival? No, Charley. Not likely." He proceeds to walk around the room, dramatically avoiding the rays of sunlight coming through the holes that Charley blasted into the ceiling, and continues, "You smell that? It's your fear. It's intoxicating. It's a very... specific scent, Charley." And even though Charley is currently just out of reach, sitting in one of the beams of sunlight, Jerry taunts him by crouching down in front of him, putting his left index finger slightly into it, and when it starts to burn, pulls it back and blows it out. He tells him, "You can't stay there forever, Charley. The sun's gotta go down. We can wait."
There's a bit of world-building with Jerry in that, according to Peter Vincent, he's of a particularly powerful species of vampire, one which originates from the Mediterranean and, instead of coffins, rests in the earth itself, which explains all of the construction work and removal of concrete, as his basement area has several rooms with no floors. His species' prowess not only explains his own superior strength and agility, but also why he's particularly hard to kill, as he's shown to be able to regenerate from any damage inflicted upon him (an ability his underlings don't seem to possess, at least not right away, as Ed loses his arm and it never regenerates). Furthermore, it explains why crosses don't repel him, and that he's not affected when one bursts into flames when he touches it. Although he asks Charley if he has faith in the cross, it's possible that, with him, it wouldn't matter anyway. He never shape-shifts, but, again, makes up for it with speed and agility, as well as enhanced senses of smell and hearing. Despite never turning into one, he is able to hang from the ceiling like a bat in order to get the drop on his prey, and can seemingly teleport supernaturally. Though, he does have some limitations and needs to resort to vehicles to chase prey over great distances. Also, like in the original, Jerry likes to have himself an apple here and there, suggesting he also has some fruit bat in him, and has a taste for beer, too. And rather than traditional hypnosis, Jerry simply uses his seductive manner and mental manipulation to make people do as he wants. According to Peter, it's also the nature of Jerry's species to slowly feed on his victims over several days, and he further suggests that these particular vampires are tribal by nature, meaning he's possibly intent on turning as many as he can. This proves to be true, given the numerous other vampires lurking down in his basement. He typically turns them through his bites but, in Amy's case, he also forces her to taste some of his blood to begin her corruption. Of course, he also just flat-out kills those he considers to be a nuisance, like Adam Johnson and his family, and was also likely planning to do so to Charley. And when he feeds, he's often absolutely ravenous, ferociously biting into his victims' necks, while wrenching his head back and forth like a hungry dog.
Like in the original, Jerry's human form covers up a far more monstrous one that he's able to bring out in bits, notably in how his fingernails become long, nasty claws and how, when he feeds, his mouth becomes a wide maw full of sharp teeth. You only really see Jerry in full-on monster mode a handful of times, like when he crawls out from under Jane's car at the end of the chase and kills the guy who slammed into them, and at the end, when he struggles with
Charley while he's lit on fire. Unfortunately, while KNB did create some vampire makeups for both Colin Farrell and the others who are vampirized, most of what they did was augmented by really bad CGI. That's especially true when Jerry is in full vampire mode, which is probably why they didn't have him look like that for the majority of the climax this time, as it looks awful. Really, the only makeups that were left intact were some pale flesh coloring, some fake fangs (and even those are often augmented), and possibly some contact lenses for their eyes. The one instance where I feel the digital augmentation worked is when Amy develops her classic big, toothy maw when she prepares to attack Charley, as the Uncanny Valley effect it has on her face is really freaky. But, otherwise, these moments are just one example of the many instances of bad digital work that severely hurts the movie's effectiveness.
Finally, the original Jerry himself, Chris Sarandon, has a brief cameo as a motorist (in the credits, he's called "Jay Dee," and I'll bet you can guess what that's a reference to) who crashes into Jane's van when Jerry forces them to stop in the middle of the highway. He gets out and admonishes them for stopping in the middle of the road, when Jerry emerges from beneath the van and decides to make a meal out of him. Jay Dee gets back into his own car and tries to escape, but Jerry yanks him out and bites into his neck, killing him almost instantly. Sarandon was a good sport in not only agreeing to appear in the movie but also in this role, which he saw as a passing of the baton, but while it was probably meant to be playful, given how much I love the original and don't particularly care for this, the notion of the new Jerry killing the old kind of rubs me the wrong way.
At the beginning of the movie, Aguirresarobe and Craig Gillespie create some truly inspired instances of cinematography, with the camera dipping down through the clouds and traveling above the landscape to reveal this big, sweeping shot of the subdivision at dusk, framed in the desert landscape, with a storm raging in the distance. You get another one when it cuts to the following morning, and both of them establish how isolated it is. There's also a very high overhead shot looking straight down at the
neighborhood and panning along the houses (it reminds me of a similar shot you see early on in Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead), showing how uniform and identical they are. There are plenty of other well done wide shots of the neighborhood throughout the movie, including some that nicely juxtapose the Brewster house with Jerry's, and of the surrounding landscape, like in the scene where Charley, Amy, and Jane flee from Jerry down the highway, which shows how alone they are out there. And after Charley has been rebuffed by Peter Vincent, there's a memorable shot
of him going down a glass elevator, his back to the camera, as he faces
the setting sun in the background, followed by a reverse shot where the
sunset is now reflected in the glass. Going back to the opening, the establishing scene inside the Johnson house is well-directed, with everything seeming normal at first, only to reveal that the family is in the midst of being massacred by Jerry, with Adam running as the vampire feeds on his sister, then hiding in his parents' bedroom, where he finds their bodies. When
he hides beneath the bed, right next to where his father's body is
lying on the floor, there's a nice bit of framing where you see him
fish some bullets out of his father's pants pocket, while his mother's body is lying across the bed above him. Then, with the camera fixated on him as he tries to load a gun, you see his dad's body get pulled out of frame behind Adam, before it cuts to the opposite angle as the action continues. And Jerry, who's implied to be in full monster form, is kept almost completely offscreen, save for a split-second shot of him right before he kills Adam. Speaking
of Jerry, there are some well done instances where he's shot in a
peripheral manner, like when you briefly see his silhouette outside the door to
the Johnson house when Charley and Ed first sneak inside, or when he
suddenly appears in the kitchen area in the background when Charley and Amy are trying to
escape through the Hard Rock Hotel's nightclub. And when he first arrives at the hotel in order to make his way up to Peter's penthouse, only to be accosted by a security guard, it's done in one shot where the camera follows him as he walks past the security station, the guard gets up and stops him, he attacks the guard, and the camera pans down to one of the monitors, where the guard is being attacked by nothing.
The sequence where Charley tries to get Doris out of Jerry's house is, like the opening, another well-directed setpiece, and the most genuinely suspenseful part of the whole movie. It's very skillfully constructed, with a slow, ominous first part where Charley, after first breaking in, wanders around the dark downstairs area, quietly calling for Doris, and then, has to hide in Jerry's bedroom closet when he comes back from wherever he went. That's when he finds the hidden area where Jerry keeps his victims,
and while looking through one's peephole, which is a shot done through his POV, there's a jumpscare where Doris suddenly pops up into view. Charley tries to pick the lock, but has to hide in an empty cell when Jerry comes up there to feed on Doris. There's a really sad moment where, as he does, Doris sees Charley hiding through the edge of the one cell's door and, in another shot from his POV, shushes him not to do anything to expose himself, while he can only watch helplessly. Following that, he manages to get her out of there and downstairs, leading into that very nerve-wracking back and forth as they desperately try to avoid being spotted by Jerry, as he walks to and from the living room and the kitchen. I won't lie, I was really tense during that sequence, and the payoff, where Charley does manage to get Doris outside, only for the sun to instantly destroy her, made for quite a dramatic wallop.
Unfortunately, the most ambitious bit of filmmaking in the whole movie, in the end, didn't come off that well. When Jerry forces Charley, Amy, and Jane to flee in the latter's van after blowing up the Brewster house's gas line, it leads into an unbroken shot that goes on for well over a full minute. As they drive away, he throws Charley's motorbike across the street and it smashes through the van's back window, its engine still going and wheels still spinning. It nearly hits Amy, but Charley manages to kick it out the
back, and as they drive out onto the desert, the camera pans around inside the van, with Charley asking Amy if she's okay, while Jane demands to know what's going on and Charley, again, tries to make her understand that Jerry is a vampire. They try to call the police, but find they can't get any cell signal out there, and then see that Jerry is chasing them in his pickup truck. He floors it and slams into their van's backside, then drives around to their right, slams into the passenger side, and pulls ahead them. He turns and stops in the middle of the road, with his truck
perpendicular to them, and steps out into the road. Charley tells Jane to just run him down, and when she's reluctant to do that, he hits the gas for her, speeding right at Jerry. He instantly drops out of sight, and that's where the shot clearly cuts. Ambitious, yes, and in interviews in the book, Welcome To Fright Night, visual effects artist Joe Bauer and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe describe how that shot was not only very technically complicated, involving motion control, a two-camera system, and cutting the van into sections, but that it was also thought up of at the last second. But, it still comes off as really fake-looking, with the difference in quality between everything inside the van and everything outside. As if that weren't bad enough, shortly afterward, when they get rear-ended by Jay Dee, that same visual aesthetic is employed again.
I've heard some people say that a problem they have with this film is that they can't relate to a subdivision out in the middle of the Nevada desert as much as they could the Middle America town in the original, and I can understand that. However, I really enjoy it, both for the superficial reasons I gave earlier and also because I tend to love isolated settings in horror films in general, and the desert is a particular favorite of mine. Plus, as Marti Noxon noted, it makes sense why a vampire would set up shop here, since not many
people would really notice any disappearances or question why Jerry has his windows blacked out, especially since he claims to work on the Las Vegas Strip at night. And if you didn't know it was out in the desert, you could think this was just some small town anywhere in the country, and that it's bright and sunny because it's set in spring transitioning into summer. The homes all look virtually the same, both on the outside and the inside, and are very average, middle-class houses, such as the Brewster, Lee, and Johnson homes. Of course, there are personal touches, like how, when Charley goes up into Ed's room, he sees how he's seemingly become obsessed with the occult and research on vampires, with weird drawings covering the walls and ominous books strewn across the furniture. Meanwhile, Charley's room is, initially, much more that of an average teenager, with photos and posters on the wall that allude to stuff like motorbiking and skateboarding. But, once he knows that Jerry is coming for him, he puts a bunch of crosses and garlic plants across his windows, which all also have the curtains drawn. Going back to the town itself, the number of empty houses does give the nighttime exteriors something of an eerie vibe, notably in the sequence where Jerry chases and corners Ed. The same also goes for when Charley and Ed investigate the Johnson house, and when Ed hides in the one abandoned house; it's just the idea of places like that, where you expect to see people, only for them to be completely dark and empty, are often creepy in general, and give off a feeling that, even though you should be safe in a neighborhood like this, you're actually not.
Unlike the Gothic mansion in the original movie, Jerry's home is, naturally, as innocuous-looking as all of the other houses in this neighborhood. It's so normal, in fact, that he even has a key to his back door hidden in a fake rock in the yard. On the inside, it initially looks like the house of a single guy who does landscaping and construction work, with wooden boards, boxes, and various other supplies lying around, and with little real furnishings, save for a few chairs and a widescreen TV. The blacked out windows are unsettling but, again, it's not uncommon
The movie was primarily shot in the Rio Rancho area of Albuquerque, although some of the scenes set in the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas were actually shot there. Specifically, when Charley first goes to meet Peter Vincent, I'm sure that's the real hotel lobby he walks through, decked out with all sorts of promotions for Peter's show, and the real casino. The nightclub that Charley and Amy make their way through while trying to escape from Jerry was actually shot there as well, and they also combined
some location footage of Las Vegas with the material they shot in New Mexico to make it seem as if their neighborhood wasn't actually that far from Sin City. By far, the most notable settings at the hotel have to do with Peter. You initially get a glimpse of his stage show in both advertisements playing on TV and on the internet, but see it in person during the rehearsal when Charley first arrives to speak with him. It's a really cool, classically Gothic set, with low-hanging mist on the floor, candelabras, and a pentagram on the wall meant to simulate the interior of some creepy castle, with vampire women crawling about. And then, there's Peter's penthouse, with the elevator opening up into his massive collection of occult items, housed in glass cases throughout this big chamber, and there's another part of this place off to the side. Beyond that is his living area, with this fireplace in the middle of some black, leather chairs situated in front of a big window overlooking Vegas, and more strange objects and decorations found throughout. There's a bar area off to the left, with the shelves
housing the glasses arranged in a pattern sort of similar to an
inverted cross, and the whole place has this cool color palette, with the walls and some of the furniture carved from black marble, while a lot of the other stuff in there has a deep, gold color. Off to the right of this area is the bedroom, which we only see once, but also has an interesting look, with a zebra stripe pattern to the wallpaper and gold lamps on either side of the bed, which itself has a large headboard with cloth stretched across it. And in a corner by the bar area is a panic room that Peter ducks into when confronted by Ed.
I think I've made it clear by this point that I do think Marti Noxon came up with a lot of inspired choices in writing the screenplay, from the twists on some of the character relationships and scenarios, and expanding on things that were, admittedly, a tad underwritten or weren't as well done in the original as they could've been, to the setting. Also, I appreciate how, like me, she didn't seem to be a fan of Twilight, given how it gets utterly skewered by Ed when Charley accuses him of reading it, exclaiming, "That's fiction! This thing
is for real! He's a real monster and he's not brooding, or lovesick, or
noble. He's the fucking shark from Jaws. He kills, he feeds, and he
doesn't stop until everybody around him is dead." In an interview she did around the time of the film's release, Noxon said that, while she did enjoy the work of Anne Rice and was certainly no stranger to sympathetic vampires herself, given her work on Buffy, "I was hungering for the more vicious predator... I really like a badass
vampire. I like kind of the idea that they're just basically soulless
hunters. So that was definitely the idea behind the Jerry character.
There's no humanity to appeal to... We didn't lean into the idea that
he's got a very romantic soul. Not this one." And just like how Tom Holland brought many of the age-old vampire tropes into the 80's, Noxon does the same here, but also adds some tweaks that acknowledge how, by this point, they're common knowledge. One way she did that was by having Jerry himself be savvy about how nerds like Ed probably think they know all the rules, only to show him that he's wrong, like when he reveals that he doesn't need
an invitation to enter an abandoned house. Another is that moment where Charley tries to repel Jerry with the cross and he plays with him, acting like it affects him, before revealing it doesn't. And also in how Jerry doesn't come off as obvious, but instead poses as an average, blue-collar worker whom know one would suspect is a literal monster, bringing back those uncomfortable and very real serial killer vibes.
While Noxon doesn't make a big deal of it in the long run, there is something of a theme of toxic masculinity throughout the film, both in how much of an utter predator Jerry is towards his female victims and his disgusting, misogynistic feelings about them, and how he's far from the only one. You have him sharing a laugh with the cops about how he made Doris "scream"; Peter's utterly disrespectful and nasty attitude towards Ginger; a moment in the scene in the nightclub where he picks up Amy, throws her over his shoulder, and carries her off amid the oblivious
crowd, with one guy even shouting, "Now, that is what I'm talkin' about!"; and how, when Charley tries to warn a security guard that Jerry is attacking Amy but, from where he's standing, the guard doesn't think she's hating the attention. Also, keep in mind that, in that scenario, the guard is questioning Charley about being underage in the club, but he ignores what's happening to a woman who's the same age. Again, it's not a major statement or anything, but it is something I noticed recently.
But, as much as I may not care for the way some of the principle characters are written, nor do I like how utterly stereotypical Mark and Ben are, I think the biggest failing of
Fright Night 2011 in the writing department is that it doesn't have that balance of old-fashioned spookiness and atmosphere, along with that sense of fun. It does have humor, sure, and some of it is funny, like the absurd visual of Jerry impaled by a Century 21 sign; when Charley tells Amy why it probably wouldn't do them any good to tell the police that there's a vampire stalking them; when he puts a
bunch of crosses up in his mother's hospital room and tells a flabbergasted nurse that she's very religious, and when he loads up at the weapon store, freely tells the clerk he's going to kill a vampire, and the guy just says, "Good for you." A lot of humor also comes from either Ed's obnoxious dorkiness or how crude and vulgar Peter Vincent is, and some of the latter is funny, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't give off that feeling of childlike innocence of the original. Moreover, as I said in the intro, like virtually all of the horror remakes that proliferated the 2000's and
into the 2010's, this is a dark, serious, and sometimes brutal and disturbing movie. Not only are the vampire attacks far bloodier and more ferocious than what you see in either of the first two
Fright Nights, with the vampires down in Jerry's basement acting like rabid animals, not unlike those in
30 Days of Night, but, as effective as it may be, that notion of Jerry holding Doris hostage is skin-crawling to say the least, and the scene where he feeds on her while Charley watches helplessly is gut-wrenching and downright
sad. And when combined with how utterly evil and remorseless this
version of the character is, it gives off a dark, unpleasant vibe that, may have made for a decent modern day vampire movie, but doesn't gel with what Holland originally intended for Fright Night. Call me old-fashioned, but this flick is really missing the original's very unique heart and soul.
Speaking of the blood and gore effects, as you might expect from work by KNB, they are well done, but they're nothing amazing. The bites themselves do involve a fair amount of blood, particularly when Jerry kills Jay Dee, and the opening scene in Adam Johnson's house is definitely the most gruesome moment in the entire movie, but, while it is, again, much bloodier overall than either of the original
Fright Nights, it's not as gruesome as other vampire movies around that time, like
30 Days of Night, or later ones like
Abigail. Unfortunately, any
practical work that KNB did is typically offset by all of the truly dire-looking CGI that pollutes the movie, including some blatant instances of digital blood, which I rarely ever care for. So many of the vampire effects, like the transitions they go through from human to monster, their rapid, inhuman movements, and especially whenever they're destroyed by burning up and combusting, be it when they're exposed to sunlight or after being staked, look
horrendous. Seriously, does that one image of Jerry burning not look like it's from a video game? And like I said,
even though KNB did create vampire makeups for Colin Farrell and the others, with Farrell himself apparently going through several different stages, they're all noticeably digitally augmented, killing their effectiveness. I've already mentioned how the visual effects for that long, continuous shot in the van don't look right, and the use of 3-D, with clearly digital stuff occasionally coming at the camera, or those moments during the climax where Jerry's CGI vampire form gets right up on the screen, doesn't
help in those instances, either. Heck, it even makes the few opening credits that we get, including the title itself, come off as off-putting. It really is flabbergasting to think that the filmmakers felt that any of this was passable and didn't need some more work (and it's not that they didn't have time, since the movie wasn't released until a couple of years after it was shot). Some of it is okay, like when they make Jerry invisible in the surveillance footage and reflections in a window in one instance, but otherwise, this is really shoddy stuff for a movie with a budget that was more than twice that of the original two combined.
As I said, the movie opens strong, with a big, wide shot of the neighborhood at night, followed by several in a row at street-level, establishing the Johnson house. Cutting to the inside, everything seems normal, with the TV playing away, showing a commercial for Peter Vincent's stage show, and the family dog snacking on some leftover food on a coffee table over to the right. The TV then goes to a news report about a woman in the area who claims that someone attempted to bite her while she was
leaving the grocery store, as the camera turns and heads down the nearby hallway, towards a room whose door is ajar. The dog stands at the end of the hallway, panting heavily while looking at it, when suddenly, Adam Johnson is tossed out of it. Inside, you see just a glimpse of his sister's flailing arm as she's being attacked from just offscreen. Adam runs down the hall but trips, and when he hears his sister's attacker snarl, he quickly rushes upstairs, while the dog bolts for it out the kitchen door's pet flap.
Upstairs, Adam finds both his mom and dad dead in their bedroom, and is forced to hide under the bed, parallel to his dad's brutalized body. He reaches under the mattress, retrieving the gun he knew his dad kept there, then into his pants' pocket, removing some bullets. As he loads the gun, his dad's body suddenly slides out of sight behind him, and a piece of the gun tumbles out from under the bed and into the pool of blood the body left behind him. Just as he notices that his dad's body is gone, a pale, clawed hand reaches down and takes the piece that he dropped. Frightened
out of his mind, Adam lies under there, breathing heavily, when he hears a growl. That's when you first get a very brief look at Jerry's monster form, before he yanks the bed away and pulls Adam to his death offscreen.
Following the scene where Charley and Ed search Adam's now empty house, and the two of them have a truly nasty falling out, Ed is rolling home on his skateboard, when he gets knocked off it and tumbles across the hood of a parked car by Mark. After a brief standoff, Ed ducks when Mark swings at him and runs for it, jumping and climbing across the top of a wooden fence. He attempts to throw his duffel bag of vampire repelling equipment over it as well, but it instead hits the edge and falls to the ground. While
Mark looks through the bag, amused at what he finds, Ed runs through an alleyway and climbs over another fence, ending up in a backyard. There, he finds himself confronted by Jerry, and scrambles to his feet, desperately trying to get through the door behind him. He bangs on it and yells for help, but when it becomes clear that the house is unoccupied, Ed smashes its window with a nearby paint bucket (which then flies at the camera in a 3-D shot) and walks in. He thinks he's safe from Jerry due to the
"invitation" rule, but Jerry steps through the doorway with no issues, explaining that an abandoned residence doesn't require an invitation. He reveals that he knows Ed has been spying on him, which sends him running upstairs and down the hallway to the left of the landing. Jerry casually follows after him, whistling to himself, while Ed runs into a room, closes and locks the door, and then climbs through an open window. He walks across a small section of roof, then crawls over the edge and drops down onto a patio area in the backyard. However, he badly injures
his foot in the process, and then finds Jerry sitting in front of him, commenting on how painful that looked. Ed falls backwards over the patio furniture and ends up in the swimming pool. As Jerry approaches the pool, Ed pulls out a crucifix and tries to repel him, only for Jerry to use his manipulation to allow himself to be turned into a vampire. The two of them go beneath the water as Jerry bites his neck, and down there, Ed lets go of his crucifix.
After he goes over to Ed's house and sees the surveillance footage that proves he was right about Jerry, Charley has his unsettling encounter with the vampire when he walks back home. Jerry says he has a date but is out of beer, and asks Charley to help him out. Clearly uneasy, Charley walks around to the back door that leads into the kitchen and goes to the refrigerator, while Jerry stands right outside the doorway. Inside, he puts together a pack of Budweiser, but accidentally drops one of the bottles.
Jerry, looking for an invitation, offers to help clean it up, but Charley panics and tells him to stay there, as he gets rid of the biggest chunk of glass. He then walks over to the doorway with the pack and tests to see where the line is, briefly holding it just beyond the threshold, and notices how Jerry doesn't reach all the way for it. He then gives him the pack and, following the uncomfortable conversation he was with him about women, Charley closes and locks the door. He joins Amy upstairs in his room and, while she's
offering to have sex with him, he gets distracted when he looks out the window and sees that Jerry's date is Doris. And when Jerry glances up at him as he leads Doris inside, Charley panics to duck out of sight and accidentally pushes Amy onto the bed. That makes her loses her patience with him and she storms out. Later that night, Charley is woken up by the sound of a scream at Jerry's house and calls the police. When that doesn't work out the way he planned, he decides to take matters into his own hands when Jerry takes off in his pickup truck after the police leave. He
sneaks into the backyard and, initially, looks up how to pick a lock on his smartphone, but when that doesn't work, he just looks for a spare key hidden somewhere on the property and finds it in a fake rock nearby.
Once inside, Charley makes his way upstairs, silently calling for Doris (I don't know why he whispers, since Jerry's not there). He finds his way into Jerry's room and looks inside the closet, finding the different types of uniforms hanging up inside. He then hears something and looks out the window to see that Jerry has returned. As he pulls his truck into the garage and closes the door, Charley tries to quickly go back downstairs and slip out, but Jerry's back inside before he can even make it down there. With nowhere to go,
he ducks and hides inside the closet, as Jerry mills around downstairs. That's when he discovers the hidden door in the closet's back, and the space behind it housing the cells. Looking through one's peephole, he finds Doris and tries to pick her cell's lock with a small screwdriver and a hairpin. But then, he hears the bedroom door open outside and has to hide in one of the empty cells. Looking out through the door, he can only watch helplessly as Jerry walks in, unlocks Doris' cell, grabs and pulls her out, and feeds on her blood, as she motions for Charley not to do anything
to expose himself. Once Jerry has satisfied his appetite, he shoves Doris back inside the cell and locks the door again. On his way out, there's a moment where he sharply turns around, appearing to sense something, but leaves the space, regardless. He goes back downstairs and starts watching TV (he watches one of those
Real Housewives shows, which I mistook for
Keeping Up With the Kardashians, but, either way, he definitely has lax taste in entertainment), while Charley, after some struggling, manages to pick the lock to Doris' cell. He opens it, gets her to her feet, and the two of them quietly make their way downstairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, they look over to where the TV is still playing, only to see that Jerry isn't there. They then hear his footsteps on the other side of the room, and in the window, they see the fridge door seemingly open by itself. Charley then looks around to the right and sees Jerry walking back towards the living area, chugging some beer. The two of them try to move towards the kitchen door that Charley came in earlier, when Jerry suddenly stops and looks back in the kitchen's direction. He walks backs that way,
forcing Charley and Doris to crawl back towards the bottom of the stairs. In the kitchen, he merely takes an apple from the counter, and after looking up at the ceiling, finally heads back to his chair in the living room. This gives Charley and Doris the chance they've been looking for, and they quickly head towards the back door. However, it's then revealed that Jerry knew they were there the whole time, and watches as they seemingly make it to freedom. Outside, Charley tries to get Doris somewhere safe, only for her to be instantly destroyed by the rising sun
(which sure rose fast, given how it still looked completely dark outside just seconds earlier). He stands there completely shocked at what just happened, while inside, Jerry smiles evilly and takes a bite from his apple.
Following Charley's disastrous meeting with Peter Vincent, he returns home and, as night falls, begins putting crosses and garlic up around his bedroom windows. Mark and Ben watch this as they're parked on a nearby curb, getting high, and panic when someone taps on the driver's side window. They quickly hide their joints and Mark rolls down his window, finding himself confronted by Jerry. He proceeds to quickly shift into his monster form and attacks Mark, with Ben barely having time to react
before he's attacked and fed upon as well. Once he's done, Jerry greedily licks their blood off of his fingers, before preparing to deal with Charley. Shortly afterward, as Charley is being confronted by both Jane and Amy about his strange behavior lately, Jerry shows up on the Brewsters' doorstep. He tells Jane that he needs to talk to her about Charley, saying he's been harassing him and threatens to take it to the police. But when Jane refuses to let him in, Jerry decides to take drastic steps in order to get at them.
He briefly walks back over to his property, only to promptly return, carrying a shovel and a small saw. He walks around the side of the Brewster house, with Charley keeping an eye on him from inside, as Amy and Jane wonder what's going on. Entering the backyard, Jerry begins digging through the sod with the shovel, and quickly reaches the gas-line. With his inhuman strength, he pulls the line up through the ground and rips it loose from the kitchen stove, filling the house with gas. He then saws through the line, as Amy begins to smell the gas. He flicks a lighter and
puts it to the hole in the gas line. The flame then travels through it and explodes out of the fireplace, from behind the stove, and the water heater. All three of those inside have to dive for cover behind the furniture to avoid getting blasted as well, and once the explosion settles down, they look around the side of a chair, as Jerry walks up to the shattered window. He tells them, "Don't need an invitation if there's no house." They scramble into the garage, pile into Jane's van, and peel out of there, knocking over Charley's motorbike, as another explosion rips
through the house right behind them. Jerry attempts to use the motorbike to chase after them, but it can't run because of its damaged front tire. That's when he throws it at them instead, beginning the long, continuous shot as he chases them out onto the desert.
After Charley has forced Jane to run Jerry down, they drive on, only to hear an ominous thumping on the van's underside. They realize he's beneath them, and he then punches up through the floorboard, before reaching in with his clawed vampire hand. Charley kicks at him, only for him to reach around and press down on the brake. Once they've stopped in the middle of the road, they're suddenly rear-ended by another vehicle. As they try to compose themselves, Jay Dee gets out of his car and walks towards them,
admonishing them for stopping in the middle of the road, with a tail-light out, while they warn him to stay back. That's when Jerry emerges from beneath the van, lifting it up on his shoulders and then walking out from under it. With his monster face on full display, he sends Jay Dee scrambling back into his car. However, Jerry smashes his window, reaches in, pulls Jay Dee out, and bites into his neck. Charley gets out of the van and walks around the back, brandishing a large cross. He attempts to repel Jerry
with it, as he finishes feeding on Jay Dee and reverts back to his human form. Charley tries to send Amy and Jane off, but while they appear to do as he says and head down the road, they actually hide on the other side of the wrecked van. Good thing, too, as the cross doesn't work on Jerry at all, and after he gets rid of it, he throws Charley across the road, slamming him into the side of the van. He then pins him up against it and prepares to stab him through the heart, when Jane grabs one of her Century 21 signs and stabs him through the shoulder. Jerry screeches and
flails around nearby, as Jane passes out. Charley and Amy get her into Jay Dee's car, which is still drivable, as Jerry continues wildly rolling and crawling across the ground, trying to remove the sign. Charley, at the car's wheel, aims right at the van when Jerry crawls in front of it. He hits it with enough force to send it flying off the road, as well as seriously injuring Jerry, fracturing his arm. But, as they drive away, his arm quickly heals itself.
While Charley and Amy are speaking with Peter Vincent about Jerry at his penthouse, they're interrupted when he gets a call from the security guard downstairs. He's told he has a delivery and tells the guard to send it up, before yelling at Ginger to let the deliveryman in. But Charley then asks Peter if he gets deliveries that late at night and he realizes that he doesn't. Just as Charley realizes he likely invited a vampire into the penthouse, Ed, now one himself, shows up, wearing a parcel deliveryman's uniform. He tosses Peter's package at him, then gets a call on
his cellphone. Naturally, it's Jerry, and Ed clears the way for him to come up as well. Peter grabs a crucifix with a nail on its end and tries to repel Ed with it, but when Ed reminds him that he'll have to get close in order to use it, Peter remotely opens and bolts for his panic room. Ed chases after him, while Charley and Amy make a run for it as well. Ed reaches for Peter through the panic room's closing door, which closes completely and slices off his entire arm. Though shocked at this, it's not enough to deter Ed, who mocks Peter for his cowardice. Charley and Amy,
meanwhile, run to the elevator, only to come across Ginger lying dead in the middle of it. Moreover, they find that Ed ripped out the controls, making them unable to use it. Though Amy starts to panic at this, Charley assures her that they can find another way out, and that they also have plenty of potential weapons around them. However, when they run to another part of Peter's huge collection, they find a dead end. They hear Ed coming for them, while down in the lobby, Jerry enters the hotel and, ignoring the
security guard telling him to sign in, heads towards the elevator. The guard gets up and rushes at him, only for Jerry to promptly jump him, pinning him to the floor and ripping his throat out, as the security monitor at the bottom of the screen makes it seem as though he's being killed by nothing.
Ed stalks the one room where Charley and Amy are hiding, going on about how he can hear and smell them. The two of them are hiding behind a glass cabinet filled with occult objects, and when Ed steps in front of it, they push it on top of him. They then try to flee, but he gets out from under it and challenges Charley. Grabbing a dagger, Charley tells Amy to run for it, but as soon as she does, Ed grabs him by the throat and flings him across the floor. Getting up, Charley runs and smashes open a case housing an axe. However, his hesitation to use it gets him slashed
across the chest, and Ed easily dodges him when he does swing. He next jumps up onto a high ledge in the room's corner when Charley tries to bring the axe straight down on him. Charley then tries to get him on the ledge, only for Ed to jump down and land behind him. He repeatedly swings at Ed, but he dodges him repeatedly, and then jumps straight above and lands behind him. But this time, Charley manages to swing around and get Ed right in the side of the neck. In the main collection hall, Amy smashes open a glass case containing a revolver and a set of silver bullets. She
loads them up, when Jerry appears behind her. When she sees him, she unloads all of them into him, but they have no affect on him at all, since, as he explains, he's not a werewolf. Fortunately for her, she finds a glass case housing a chalice full of holy water and throws it in his face. This causes him extreme pain and he grabs at his face, screeching as it burns him. Meanwhile, it turns out that halfway decapitating Ed isn't enough to kill him, as he literally straightens his head back up and prepares to attack again.
Charley swings the axe, only for the blade to get jammed into the floor, giving Ed the opportunity to snap the handle with his foot. He then sweeps Charley's legs out from under him and pins him down to the floor. He attempts to bite into Charley's neck, but Charley is able to keep him just far enough away to where his bites don't reach. Amy quickly comes in and whacks Ed off of Charley with a mace. Both of the guys stagger to their feet, as Amy warns Charley that Jerry has arrived. Ed prepares to attack again and
she implores Charley to kill him. After some hesitation, he reluctantly, rushes at Ed and stakes him through the heart with the dagger he grabbed earlier. He then watches as Ed immediately disintegrates into ash in front of him, his last words being, "It's okay, Charley." He collapses to the floor and disintegrates completely, leaving Charley devastated. Amy tells him that she found the stairs and pulls him away. The two of them run back through the collection hall, as Jerry finally manages to heal himself from the effects of the holy water. Once he does, he can't help but laugh, and continues the pursuit.
Charley and Amy head down the stairs, which lead into the kitchen outside of the hotel's nightclub, which is absolutely jumping with people. Though Amy thinks they may be safe in the crowd, Charley figures nobody there will notice if Jerry does anything. They then see him back in the kitchen and try to make their way through the crowd. He manages to quickly get above the dance floor and jumps down amid everyone, as they're all too busy dancing or getting excited when the DJ starts tossing prizes into the crowd to notice. In the smothering throngs, Charley
loses his grip on Amy's hand. Jerry promptly hones in on her through the crowd and appears in front of her. He grabs her by the neck, then picks her up, puts her over his shoulder, and walks through the crowd with her. Once he's outside the main dance floor, he forces her to drink some of his blood by cutting his finger, rubbing the blood around his lips, and kissing her. Before Charley can intervene, he's stopped by a security guard, who doesn't take his warnings about Jerry seriously. As he's dragged away by the guard, Jerry, having fused his blood with Amy's, bites into her neck.
After talking with Peter again, receiving the dagger that's blessed by St. Michael, and staying with Jane in the hospital until the sun comes up, Charley goes to a local weapons shop and stocks up, notably buying a crossbow and a fire-proof suit. He drives Jay Dee's car back to his neighborhood, and after suiting and arming himself up, walks down the street, past his house's burning husk, and towards Jerry's house. He kicks in the door, armed with the crossbow, which he's attached a flashlight to, and smashes all of the blacked out windows on the first floor. He then heads
upstairs and into the cell area behind the closet. He calls for Amy and gets a response from behind one door to his right. Looking through the peephole, he sees Amy there and prepares to break the door down. But then, she's suddenly yanked out of sight and he rips the door open to find that she's just disappeared. He rushes back downstairs, calling for her, and runs into Peter, who's now had a change of heart. Now working together, the two of them head back upstairs to the cell, where Peter finds a floor-trap. They climb down through the open hatch and drop into the large
basement area. Getting to their feet, they see a section of wall with a door across from them, from which they hear Amy call for Charley. They slowly and cautiously creep their way towards the door, finding a narrow corridor beyond it, with a storage area on one wall and a large chunk ripped out of the other. Peter finds and turns on an overhead light, when they hear Amy's calls again, coming from the hallway beyond the large hole in the one wall. It leads to another door, beyond which Charley finds another chamber with a
dirt floor, this one smaller than the main one. He walks on in, while Peter stands in the doorway, watching. That's when Jerry hangs down from the ceiling behind him, grabs his shoulder, and throws him back down the corridor. Jerry hops down to the floor, as Charley wheels around and shoots his crossbow. Jerry catches the arrow in midair, snaps it like a twig, and tells him, "She's all yours," before closing and locking the door. He then faces Peter, revealing he was the vampire who killed his parents decades before.
While Peter fires his shotgun repeatedly at Jerry as he backs out of the corridor, missing him the first two times but managing to graze his left shoulder on the third, Charley finds Amy in the chamber. The two of them embrace, while Peter falls back into the main chamber. There, Jerry picks up a pebble and flicks it at Peter's head, hard enough to where it draws a little bit of blood. At first thinking it was some kind of joke, after the blood drips onto the ground, he realizes its purpose, as a horde of hungry vampires smell the blood and emerge from within the dug out wall
behind him. Meanwhile, Amy reveals that she's now a vampire, too, telling Charley, "He's inside me now," while Peter, surrounded by vampires, wields a special gun that fires stakes. He actually manages to score some hits, getting one in the leg and killing another instantly, only for the weapon to short out when he tries to take a shot at Jerry. He angirly yells, "Fuckin' eBay!", while Charley gets pinned to the ground by Amy, who promises to give him an experience that he'll never forget. She throws her head back, opens her mouth, and transforms into her monstrous
vampire form, complete with the iconic wide, shark-like mouth. Looking down at Charley (and, like I said before, seriously freaking me out), she goes in for the bite, only for him to stab her in the torso. She shrieks and pulls back, falling onto the ground, while Charley gets up and runs for the door, using a crowbar to wrench it open. Amy removes the dagger, licks her own blood off of her hand, and notes that he missed her heart, which he admits he did on purpose. He grabs his crossbow and runs back out to the main
chamber, where he finds Peter being fed upon by the vampires. He then spots his discarded shotgun and, grabbing it, shoots up at the ceiling, blowing huge holes through the living room floor and, in turn, allowing the light coming through the smashed windows up there to stream in. He manages to destroy the vampire who's right on top of Peter this way, and also prompts the others to back off. But when he runs to help Peter, he gets shoved down next to him and his shotgun yanked away. He scrambles into the shaft
of light, just out of the vampires' reach, and then sees that the one tripped him up was none other than Mark. With Charley and Peter trapped, Jerry lets Charley know that he had no chance and that, sooner or later, they will be able to get at him. He also mocks him by bragging about Amy, who joins the group, and Peter feels himself burning, realizing he's starting to turn as well.
As Jerry and Amy passionately make out, Charley gets an idea when he sees Peter lighting a cigarette. Putting his mask and goggles on, he asks Peter if he has a light. Peter, realizing what he's planning, lights him up, as Charley rushes at and tackles Jerry to the ground. He ties the vampire to him with a cable and buckle, as Jerry, just as Peter earlier said, goes frantic from the fire. He drops his human form and the two of them violently struggle with each other, Jerry flinging himself and Charley against the wall, then rolling across the ground. They fly through the air
again, knocking over a metal support pole, fall back down to the ground, and fly right up to the ceiling, nearly smashing a hole through the living room floor. They fall back to the ground, with Jerry pinning Charley, who pulls out the blessed dagger. As the fight continues, Peter crawls over to his shotgun and, after knocking away another vampire who tries to stop him, does what Charley did earlier and starts blowing holes through the ceiling. Sunlight streams in and Charley rolls Jerry into one of the beams. It immediately begins to affect him, and Peter tosses
Charley the dagger, yelling for him to get Jerry in the heart. Said heart is now exposed due to the burning and disintegrating effects of the sunlight, and Charley is easily able to stake Jerry. He lets out a horrific shriek, and at the same time, his corruption leaves the other vampires' bodies, as well as Peter's. Jerry is able to get right in Charley's face and snarl one last time, before his body burns away to a charred husk and explodes. Chunks of him fly across the room, and burning bits of ash float down to the ground, before
all that's left is Charley lying there, parts of his suit still flaming. Peter quickly extinguishes the fire and, after some doing, manages to revive him. The movie ends shortly afterward, though the initial part of the credits plays over a montage of moments from the movie, which is something I've always seen as a bit pointless in any movie, as if you're not going to remember what you just saw (they even show the title again, not once but twice, during this montage, meaning you see it three times altogether).
The music score was composed by Iranian-German composer Ramin Djawadi, who started out working with Hans Zimmer and Klaus Badelt, and had scored both Open Season and Open Season 2, Mr. Brooks, The Unborn, and, most notably, Clash of the Titans and the first Iron Man. Funnily enough, Djawadi has also scored a number of vampire-related stuff throughout his career: Blade: Trinity, Blade: The Series, Dracula Untold, and The Strain. In any case, while his score for the remake is different than what Brad Fiedel did before (although he does make use of electric violins), it's still an enjoyable one, with a memorable, European-flavored main theme that has something of a bounce to its melody, and which is reorchestrated here and there to sound grander and more dramatic whenever the need arises. Speaking of dramatic, there are some really big and grand orchestral parts of the score that are very similar to Wojciech Kilar's work for Bram Stoker's Dracula, specifically this one theme you first hear when Jerry turns Ed into a vampire, hinting at the tragedy that's just befallen him. There are some other well done emotional parts of the score as well, like when Charley sees Jerry feeding on Doris, when he kills Ed, and when he's reunited with Amy after her abduction, before realizing that she's now a vampire, and the music for the more thrilling, fast-paced sections does its job very well, too. I don't think this score will ever live rent free in my head the way Fiedel's does, but it's still good music.
And there are plenty of songs on the soundtrack, too, such as Alexander Ebert's Bad, Bad Love, which you hear in the scene following the opening; Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People, which plays over Amy's car radio when she's first introduced; Velvet Coat by Ceramic, which plays when Charley and Amy first meet Jerry; Cough Syrup by Young the Giant during the scene with Charley and Amy in his bedroom; Pursuit of Happiness by Kid Cudi is hear in the background when Charley talks with Peter Vincent; Letting Go by Lupe Fiasco in the scene between Peter and Ginger in the penthouse later; I Was Once A Glass of Tang by Jet Horns and Restless by Unkle are heard in the nightclub scene; I'm a Man by The Blue Van in the final scene with Charley and Amy in the penthouse; 99 Problems by Hugo, which plays during the initial part of the ending credits; and No One Believes Me, another song by Kid Cudi, which was made specifically for the movie, featuring some sound clips from it, and as I mentioned at the beginning, even had a music video directed by Craig Gillespie, with Cudi himself appearing as a vampire. And here's a bizarre vampire music connection: during the rehearsal of Peter's show, the music you hear is from BloodRayne, i.e. the notorious Uwe Boll movie. Desperate for material there, guys?
2011 is certainly not a horrible movie, and, in fact, has a lot going for it. That includes some good actors, with Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, and Toni Collette in particular doing nice work; accomplished direction and an appealing visual style; some inspired twists on the original movie, particularly some of the character relationships and the setting; a handful of well done and even really suspenseful setpieces; and an enjoyable music score. Unfortunately, fan favorite characters like Peter
Vincent and Evil Ed are portrayed in ways that range from mixed to insufferable; Colin Farrell, who should've been ideal for the role of the vampire, isn't nearly as great as he should've been; there's a lot of truly horrendous and distracting digital work, even when it comes to some of the gore effects, some awkward 3-D moments, and its most technically ambitious scene ultimately ends up as a major letdown; and, while not humorless, it doesn't have the same sense of fun that the original did, instead often coming off as too dark and serious, gory, and disturbing at some points. While I would put it slightly on the better end of the scale for the horror remakes we got throughout the 2000's, it really has no reason to exist and is not something I ever see myself revisiting now that this is done.
