[photo grabbed from IMDB]
This is a remake of an old movie I grew up with although I can’t really recall who the main characters in the original cast were but I got interested in this remake because it featured one of my fave actors – Colin Farell. The story starts with a scene of a murder being perpetrated by a faceless monster on a family living in a Las Vegas suburb. The only surviving member of the family is a teenage boy who was then hiding under the bed in his parents’ bedroom and beside him on the floor is his father with his neck slashed open, while his mom lay dead on top of the bed. He tries to fumble with his dad’s gun but the creature arrives and kills him too.
Next, the main protagonist of the story is introduced in the person of Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin), a classic, all-American teen, with a motor bike he's trying to fix and an inexplicably hot girlfriend named Amy (Imogen Poots) who drives around in a lime green Volkswagon Beetle. Charley's mother, Jane (Toni Collette), is a Nevada real estate agent, and since people in Las Vegas are transient by nature few stay in Vegas for long. A new neighbor, named Jerry, started renovating the place, Jane sees a lot of concrete being removed from the house, though he doesn't seem to be installing a pool.
Jerry, their neighbor works night construction downtown. Charley attend class and the teacher takes morning roll and several students are missing including Adam, who used to be good friends with both Charley and "Evil Ed" Lee (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Charley doesn't seem to care that Adam is missing, but Ed looks incredibly concerned. After class, Ed pulls Charley away from Mark and Ben long enough to tell him that he's worried about Adam and the other kids who have gone missing lately. Charley doesn't want to talk to Ed, and so Ed has to threaten to release all the videos they made together dressed up as superheroes in tights if Charley won't meet him at Adam's house after school.
Charley, reluctantly agrees to meet Ed. Charley goes home sees his mom flirting heavily with Jerry. Charley is uncomfortable and goes off to Adam's house to meet Ed. Ed explains that he believes Adam was killed by vampires, and that in fact Charley's new neighbor Jerry is a vampire. Charley thinks he's insane, but they break into Adam's house. It seems that the house is the same one from the opening of the movie, because they use the pet door to gain entry. Ed carries with him a satchel that has crosses, holy water, stakes, and other vampire-fighting gear in it. They go through the house looking for signs of Adam and his family, but finds nothing. He explains to Charley that he and Adam were doing surveillance and have deduced that all the disappearances of late are localized to Charley's neighborhood, rather, from the house next door to Charley's. Ed says that he and Adam had been following Jerry for a while and that they just need to figure out how to defeat him.
Ed leaves as well, and is accosted by a bully, Mark on the street while riding his skate board. He runs away from the bully, loses his satchel with all the vampire fighting gear in it, jumps from yard to yard and eventually lands in a yard where Jerry's waiting for him. Jerry confronts Ed and asks him why he's nosing around and spying on him. Ed runs away and walks into an abandoned place Jerry then bites him, and pulls him under the water to drink his blood. The next day at school, Charley notices that Ed is missing. When he gets home from school that night, Charley is surprised by Jerry outside on his front lawn, who wants to borrow some beer for a hot date coming whom he wants to get drunk. Charley says he will loan Jerry a six pack and goes to get it. He leaves Charley to supposedly have drinks with his mystery date.
Soon Charley hears a scream so he calls the police, and a squad car comes to investigate. As soon as the squad car leaves, Jerry also gets in his big black pickup truck and drives away. Charley decides to break into Jerry's house to investigate. Once inside, Charley sees that Jerry's kitchen is totally empty, and the house is a giant mess except for a giant screen TV in the living room. Jerry returns and Charley hears him outside so he hides in the closet. Inside the closet he sees there are small rooms like the dressing rooms in a department store. Charley looks through peep holes in the rooms and saw that Doris is being held prisoner in one of them. Charley had to hide in one of the other, empty rooms. Jerry walks right over to where Doris is kept and takes her out of the room to feed on her. Charley watches as Doris motioned Charley to stay quiet. When Jerry is done, he locks Doris back up in the room and then leaves.
Charley then leads Doris out of the house safely. The two of them wait awhile (probably for hours) and start sneaking down the stairs into Jerry's living room. Finally, they make their dash to freedom and at this moment it seems Jerry knew they were there the whole time and was just playing games because when Doris walked out into the sun she bursts into flames. Charley is stunned and races back to his house leaving Jerry inside, laughing. Charley knows he's dealing with a vampire now, and decides to fortify his house with garlic, crosses, and everything else he can find to ward off all the evil.
Charley insists his mother not invite Jerry into the house or have anything to do with him, though Charley did not say that Jerry is a vampire. He leaves for school, and on the way stops at Ed's house. Ed's parents haven't realized their son is missing, since he kept odd hours and did strange things. He lied to Ed’s mom and goes up to Ed’s room, where he sees Ed's computer with tons of videos of Ed, Adam, and Charley playing "Squid Man versus the Knights". Charley also finds all the videos that Ed and Adam took where they were spying on Jerry but Jerry never appeared on the film because he is a vampire.
Charley decides to get serious about learning to fight vampires, so he heads to the Hard Rock Hotel and grabs a Las Vegas newspaper on his way in. He talks with Vincent of the "Fright Night" show but at first he doesn't want to do it, but then agrees, and takes Charley upstairs to his penthouse home somewhere in the hotel tower. There, Charley sees the immense collection of occult objects that Vincent has collected --- axes, swords, guns with silver bullets, chalices of sacred holy water, and more stakes and sharp things. Charley proceeds to ask him how to kill vampires for real but Vincent admits none of this stuff is real. Crestfallen, Charley heads home.
Amy comes over to Charley's house, and not long after that Jerry pops up by the door, trying to get invited in. Jane almost lets him in, but Charley begs her not to. Jerry tells Jane that Charley broke into his house and has been harassing him, and he says that either he comes in to talk about it or he calls the authorities. Jerry storms away coming back with a shovel and a blow torch, and starts digging into the ground to reach the gas line. Jerry takes the blow torch and sends some fire through the line and into the house making it EXPLODE. Jane, Charley, and Amy leap over the couch to avoid the blast and then escaped into the garage as the house burns down around them. They get into Jane's SUV and flee the scene. Jerry follows them in his truck and tries to run them off the road. Charley slams his foot on the accelerator and they run him over and keep driving but Jerry is still alive to claw his way through the metal to get at Jane or Charley. Jane impales Jerry with a street sign, getting him all the way through his body, though missing his heart. Jerry is in immense pain but the wooden post that runs through his body is too long for him to remove. Jane, Charley, and Amy pile into the other car and drive away.
They proceed to the hospital where they tell the doctors that Jane has been in a car accident, and leave out the part about vampires. Charley hangs a bunch of crosses all over Jane's hospital room, telling the nurses she is very religious. Meanwhile, Vincent, changes his mind and tells Charley to come meet him immediately. Amy and Charley then head to Vincent's penthouse. When they get there, Vincent tells them the tapestry is the emblem of an ancient kind of vampire tribe from the Mediterranean from more than 400 years ago, and that this particular vampire nested and created a sort of tribe of vampires. Then the security guard downstairs rings him to let him know there is a package delivery. But when the delivery arrives, Charley sees it's Ed, dressed as a delivery man, with a fake package for Peter Vincent.
Ed calls Jerry on his cell phone to tell him that Charley and Amy are at Vincent's place. Jerry makes his way there too. Ed and Charley battle with Charley knocking various things out of Vincent's display cases to use as weapons, including knives, battle axes, swords, etc. Meanwhile, Amy is running through the Penthouse trying to escape but Jerry confronts Amy just as she finished loading up a gun and shoots him. Jerry, unfazed, just plucks the bullets out saying silver is for werewolves. Charley and Amy run out of Vincent's penthouse and walk into the Hard Rock's nightclub. They see Jerry following them, but Amy thinks he can't do anything to them in a room full of people, but Charley countered that no one would notice if he killed them right there.
Jerry reaches Amy first and bites her neck, right in the middle of a crowd of people, with no one paying attention. Charley then heads back up to Peter Vincent's penthouse and tells him that he has to rescue Amy. Vincent says that he is too scared to follow him, but will give him a special stake that was blessed by Saint Michael and has the power to not only destroy a vampire, but also to free everyone from vampirism who was turned by that vampire. Vincent also relates to Charley that years ago he had an encounter with vampires and that is what made him start collecting all of this stuff. It turns out that Vincent's parents were attacked by a vampire, and that Vincent only survived because he successfully hid from the creature. Charley says he doesn't want to hide anymore, so he is going to take down Jerry. Vincent advices him to set Jerry on fire so that he is distracted, and then he could get close enough to stake him.
Charlie proceeds to a sporting goods store where he buys all sorts of materials like a crossbow and fire retardant clothes. Charley then heads to Jerry's house, smashing all of Jerry's windows to let sunlight in. Vincent soon arrives, who decided to man up and help take down Jerry. Vincent is outfitted with all the vampire-killing gear he had been buying through the years on eBay. The two of them search the house, coming to the secret hallway with all the little rooms Jerry carved out for his victims. Amy's in one of them, but slides down a trap door in the floor. Charley and Vincent head down and end up in Jerry's basement, where a giant mound of dirt is on the floor. The walls of the basement have been chiseled away to make it look like a catacombs cemetery. This is clearly what Jerry has been doing in his basement and not a pool.
Jerry appears locking Charley into a cave room with Amy, who is now a vampire. Vincent is left to fight Jerry, and Jerry just throws a small pebble at Vincent's face. It draws just a tiny drop of blood, which falls to the ground. Vincent laughs at Jerry at first, until he sees the blood has summoned vampires from the mounds of dirt all around the basement. Jerry has turned all the people he drank from into vampires too, and the blood has called them all to life. Vince uses a stake-gun to shoot wooden stakes at the vamps, and manages to kill one of them, with the vamp turning to ash. He also uses his shotgun to try to blow holes in the floor above, to let in light to keep the vamps at bay.
Upstairs, Charley outsmarts Amy by staking her with the St. Michael stake just as she was about to bite him. It wounded her enough that he can get away, but does not kill her. Charley then heads to the main room of the basement to fight Jerry and rescue Vincent. He discovers that Vincent is starting to smoke in sunlight, which means that he is turning into a vampire himself. Jerry gloats that all they have to do is wait until the sun goes down, and then Charley will be theirs, so there's no hope for Charley to escape. Charley then starts putting a hood, mask, and glasses on himself and sets HIMSELF on fire and then runs towards Jerry. Meanwhile, Vincent starts shooting more holes into the floor above so that the sun can come in. The combination of the fire and the sun is too much for him, and he starts to melt away, just as Charley jabs the stake right through his exposed heart. Jerry turns to dust and drifts away and out of all the other vamps, an evil black spirit appears leaving their bodies and flying away. Soon they turn back into people with absolutely no memory of how they got in the basement.
Some time later, Charley's house is rebuilt and his mother is back to doing real estate. Everything seems back to normal, and Charley and Amy seem to be good friends with Vincent, who lets them hang out in his penthouse at the hotel. The movie ends there and all is well after they successfully vanquish the evil vampires after all. It was an OK movie and though most of it was dark (or maybe my video copy wasn’t really good) it was fun enough to watch with the whole family – not too gory and neither was it filled with much explicit sex scenes as horror movies are wont to do, just right for a movie with the kids.
