I’ll be honest. I didn’t have a lot of high expectations for the remake of Fright Night. I wasn’t any great fan of the original (in fact, I only barely recall seeing it once, vaguely) and as much as I like vampires, most movies about them tend to blow. (That sentence originally ended in the word suck, but I thought better of it.)

The remake of Fright Night had things going for it that I rather liked. Anton Yelchin is a fantastic actor, for one. For two, I’m a big Doctor Who fan and who doesn’t like seeing David Tennant cutting loose? Third, I really like Colin Farrell. I even liked him in Daredevil.

And I’ll be even more honest. When this movie started and it was sort of like a teen angst movie, I was on the verge of tuning out.

Then it got awesome. Fast.

It had the absolute perfect mix of comedy, suspense, tension, and fantastic scenes to not only regain my interest but get me rooting for the characters and be hanging on the edge of my seat by the end. This was movie was so damn fun that I can’t even begin to describe to you…

There were a few scenes that would, on their face, seem so innocuous that they would never be a standout, but the director was able to pull it off. Take the scene where Jerry, Anton Yelchin’s vampire neighbor, wants to borrow some beer, but he can’t enter the house uninvited. The scene dripped with all kinds of tension and dread and I was biting my fingernails. Colin Farrell (as Jerry) just oozed danger and menace, completely making my skin crawl.

And David Tennant, as soon as he comes into the movie, manages to steal every scene he’s in. It’s such an oddly different character than I’ve seen him play and it makes me want to watch more Doctor Who.

But really, the person that carries this film is Anton Yelchin. He’s one of the finest young actors of his generation. You’d remember him as Chekov in the latest Star Trek movie. He pulled me through the beginning of the film and really brought me into it.

The film was well-shot, well-edited, the music was great, the performances were fantastic. Was it a little cheesy? Yes. But it was a remake of Fright Night.

Is it worth your time? Absolutely.

You can pick it up the Blu-ray on Amazon.