“The kids today,” complains Roddy McDowall in the 1985 original version of Fright Night, “don’t have the patience for vampires. They want to see some mad slasher running around and chopping off heads.”
Well, 26 years later and it’s a somewhat different market. The slashers need to slice your skin off in a series of increasingly elaborate traps and vampires have never been more in vogue, with seemingly every single channel showing some sporty Scandinavian sucking Sookie’s sanguine assets, while on the silver screen Edward gets busy with the body glitter and pre-marital chastity. It makes director Craig (Lars and the Real Girl) Gillespie’s remake all the more ironic, really, given that the running joke behind the Tom Holland original was that vampires weren’t all that cool anymore, so nobody would believe you when you told them that one was your neighbour. These days, if there were Cullens in the cul de sac, it would presumably increase the market value of your home.
