I found it refreshing for multiple reasons. Don't get me wrong, I love the original (and it will remain very near and dear to me), but this new one couldn't have arrived to audiences at a better time. The short reason is that it counteracts the Twilight craze, giving viewers vampires that are "cool" again, both suave and threatening. There's also something else I found buried within the sacred Earth of the film.
It's established in the film that the vampire, Jerry, has been around for 400 years, spending his time preying on humans and feeding off of them. In every sense of the word, he's a camouflaged predator that takes root in the modern culture, blending in with his food in order to avoid raising alarm. Sure, there may be an occasional scream erupting from inside his house that slices through the night like a sharpened meat cleaver, but to both the police and neighbors alike, he's a nice, attractive man. Respectful, pleasant, happy, good-looking, and a man who works with his hands for a living, there was no way this apple-eating magazine model was going to cause any trouble. He was everything consumers thought was normal in a Las Vegas suburb. He was the idol of an ad-frenzied culture. At least, that was the case until his neighbor, Charlie Brewster, finds out that Jerry is a non-living bloodsucker.
Normally, I wouldn't read into this awakening scenario as it's the basis for a whole slew of movies. An ignorant, oblivious individual realizes a dark, horrible truth. Yeah, and? However, there was something biting to the film, slithering under the current of a standard action/horror flick.
Much like Jerry's undercurrent to his camouflaging persona, this subtext only revealed its true self publicly once. It was so quick, I almost didn't catch it either, and this is where the spoilers may come into play.
During one of the scenes when Charlie has clarified that Jerry is, indeed, a vampire, the audience is given this thrilling scenario where our hero is escorting one of the vampire's victims out of the house. Together, the hero and victim are creeping along the floor, in the shadows, to avoid alerting their presence to the villain as he grabs a beer from the fridge, devours an apple, and watches TV. This sounds pretty standard at first, but previous to this scene, we were shown another sequence of Jerry watching television that struck me as odd. In regards to furthering the plot or character development, this sequence did neither. It set up the following scene by alerting the audience what the vampire was doing, but there was something more, something humorous and unsettling.
The vampire is watching a reality television show somewhat akin to The Biggest Loser. The scene leaves viewers as quickly as it appeared, but the noise from the idiot box sounded like women squabbling over weight issues, looking sexy, and being healthy for superficial means. Watching this, Jerry seems to smirk or let loose a quiet chuckle, but it's hard to tell, as he is sitting in the dark in a dingy, rather empty house.
In the context of this scene alone, this is more funny than anything else, but consider this - the relationship between Charlie and Ed.
In the beginning of the film, the audience learns that Ed has been tracking Jerry for some time with another friend who has "gone missing." Ed, a former best friend of Charlie, tries to present this information to Charlie who seems to shrug it off, more concerned about other things in his life (girls, cars, the hip crowd). In fact, Charlie doesn't even want to talk to Ed, acknowledging that Ed is a fringe nerd ripe for being picked on and therefore uncool. The only reason why he agrees to even grace his presence to his former best friend was because Ed threatened to flood the Internet with videos chronicling Charlie's nerdy/geeky past as a superhero junkie.
This dynamic is quite interesting in that Ed clearly is aware of what is going on. This isn't a fantasy he's living out of loneliness as Charlie suggests. This is the real deal. He is alerted to a dark presence that's feeding off his consumerist peers like a Morlock feeding off the Elloi.
Why are they consumerist? Charlie exemplifies that notion, as his entire goal within the first half hour of the film is to disconnect with Ed completely, so as to ensure his status amongst the hip, titans of the school. He conforms to whatever prospects he needs to in order to maintain his attractive, preppy girlfriend, Amy, and roll with her friends, all of which (both male and female) clearly are depicted as wearing the latest trends. In this little clique, they couldn't be happier either. Sure, they're oblivious to the world around them, particularly the fact that Charlie's classmates keep "disappearing," but who cares, right?
WRONG.
Films often reflect the time period in which they are made. With regard to modern affairs, there is a strong breeze billowing across the United States about the true, dark nature of our government officials and corporate masters. Information and opinions about an Illuminati or centralized club of wealthy bankers and business tycoons working to enslave us through debt are coursing through the free media circuits like wildfire, inspiring different movements of thoughts and grass root political bodies such as the Tea Party. Like the cursed disease of a vampire, it's in our veins, weighing heavily on the minds of many as we enter potentially a new era of revolution. The economy's crumbling, and there are those who would beckon the call to embrace these notions and ideas.
I'm not going to comment on whether they are right or wrong, but I will say I feel the remake of Fright Night is born out of this. The underlying theme about a young boy shaking off his Elloi roots to battle the deadly Morlock and become "aware" jives quite well with this sense, as this new trend in thought results in a backlash of media dope and docile consumer culture. After all, why were we seen the vampire sitting in his home in the dark, watching dull, mindless reality programming, chuckling to himself?
