Fright Night (2011): B+

A remake that justifies its own conceptually redundant existence, Craig Gillespie's Fright Night might even surpass the gnarly 1985 original. The drill: a vampire, Jerry (Colin Farrell, brooding in all the right ways) moves into a community in the barren outskirts of Las Vegas, and for a time, only a neighboring teenager - one Charlie Brewster (Anton Yelchin) - knows the truth. Too bad his single mom (a perfectly game Toni Collette) has the hots for the new stud next door. Classroom politics figure in the mix when Charlie's former best friend (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, valiantly trying to distance himself from McLovin) finds himself confronted with the choice of death or becoming a creature of the night, and in these ways and more, the film is a touching consideration of what we sacrifice in the name of normalcy. Genre thrills need satiation, however, and when it becomes clear to Jerry that he won't be invited inside Charlie's house, he positively does not fuck around on the matter. Engaging, nasty, economic, violent and funny (especially the end credits), this Fright Night is a great summer joint.