Fright Night

A teenager (Anton Yelchin) realizes that his new neighbor (Colin Farrell) is a vampire, and enlists the aid of a bogus vampire expert (David Tennant) to fight the undead menace. This remake of the 1985 cult flick has a few good scares and some passable suspense, but it’s too poorly written (by Marti Noxon) to amount to much—too jokey to work as a horror movie, too clumsily paced (by director Craig Gillespie) for comedy, and too badly lit for the 3-D to be any help. The movie seems to be simply a make-work project for makeup and special-effects artists with time on their hands and too few job offers. Farrell gives an interesting performance for the first 20 minutes or so (until the CGI kicks in), and Tennant’s jolly hamming livens up the second half. Toni Collette has the thankless role of Yelchin’s mother.