Making a movie isn’t easy. Making sure, over the course of several weeks or months, depending on the scale of the film, that any one of several units of cameramen, script supervisors, gaffers, and dozens of other people, film every shot and every line that needs to be filmed or said is filmed and said, and that the end product is something that both makes sense and is entertaining, well…it isn’t an easy thing to do. For the half dozen people who might have stumbled upon this site over the last couple months, they may have noticed that we’ve slowed down on the stories and updates. This is because we at That Was Junk were stupid enough to try and do just that, and make a movie of our own, without any of the conveniences normally provided to those who attempt such a large undertaking (which include money, access, time, and industry-standard equipment, among other things). While we were fortunate enough to stumble upon some amazing actors and equipment, and have had very little trouble shooting where we need to shoot when we need to shoot there, there’s no doubt that making a movie, and making it well, is indeed a very hard thing to do. Which makes me wonder why someone would ever go through all of the hassle, all of the trouble of shooting hundred of shots over the course of several months, wasting the time and talent of hundreds of individuals, from writers to actors to editors, all in order to make a movie as incredibley unnecessary, bland, and just plain bad as Fright Night.

Remade from the 1985 cult classic film of the same name, Fright Night follows former geek turned cool kid Charley (Anton Yelchin), who suspects that his new neighbor, Jerry (Colin Farrell), might be a vampire who is picking off all of his neighbors one by one, and goes to expert magician Peter Vincent (David Tennant) to help him kill Jerry before he can take anymore victims. Unfortunately, despite this interesting premise, nothing in this updated horror-comedy has anything that is very funny, scary, logical, or even well done.

While comparing the original version of a movie to its remake should never have an effect on the judgment of the latter, there’s just no getting around all of the ineffective and poorly thought out tweaking and rethinking that has been inserted by the writers of this update that makes this version incredibly inferior to the original. Even if there were nothing to compare this movie to, the amount of poor writing and extremely forced and convenient plotting and timing, with characters knowing information they shouldn’t know and appearing in places they shouldn’t be or wouldn’t know to go to, make this movie automatically laughable. In addition to this convenience, the laziness put into the actions and behaviors of almost every character makes any kind of believability or reliability the audience might find in them impossible to find. Characters seem oblivious to what’s right in front of them until it literally explodes into flames, and, even after seeing a man killed several times over, never seem phased by the fact that the supernatural exists. It’s as if any kind of middle-ground or struggle they would have with this acceptance was completely passed over in order to move on to the next scene or poorly justified character action or behavior, making the whole movie one big, nonstop ball of nonsense hurtling at the audience, all in completely unnecessary and ineffective 3-D.

It feels like it all goes by so fast that the filmmakers and studio could’ve potentially watched a far longer version, but decided to cut out any tension, character development or humor in some sort of contemptuous act of editing, as if to say, “Let’s just get this over with already.”

There’s no reason to go any further into what makes Fright Night a bad movie, especially if after everything that’s been written here you still want to see it. In the long list of unnecessary remakes, Fright Night had a chance of improving on some of the campiness and questionable effects of its predecessor, but instead joins the ranks of hundreds of other recent, inexcusably mediocre and pointless updates of movies that didn’t need updating to begin with. While there are a few funny moments, and a half-decent performance from David Tennant, there’s nothing here worth recommending, except the original Fright Night, which surpasses its remake in almost every single way.

3 out of 10.