[film] Let Me In

[inulro]

So, a couple weeks ago Lovefilm finally sent us the remake of Let The Right One In.  I always have to watch the English-language remakes of foreign films I like, just to see what gets done with them.

The good news is, it hasn't been all Hollywood-ized and glammed up.  It's very faithful to the Swedish version, to the extent that some of the playground outside the apartment block shots could be frame-for-frame.  It's a bit shorter, so that the minor characters are really nothing but vampire food, but that's not a big quibble.

In fact, it's so close to the original, that I ended up just feeling "why did they bother?"  Aside from people who won't watch anything with subtitles, but most of those people wouldn't watch something this "art-cinema" anyway.

Comments

[badnewswade.livejournal.com]

This is why I don't bother with remakes. Either it's been fucked with and Hollywood-ized, or it's exactly the same as the original. Either way, a complete waste of time. Although I have got the remake of Insomnia, in my defence I haven't watched it and I only got it because it had Al Pacino in it.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

The remake of Insomnia isn't bad. It's pretty close to the original, but different enough that it's not a complete waste of time, and not completely Hollywoodized (well, a bit, but not completely glamorous and shallow).

Unfortunately it omits my favourite part of the original, the "I don't speak Swedish" in-joke.

[girfan.livejournal.com]

This is why I have little interest in seeing the remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Though, the author of the book said he liked a lot of the US version of his book, though not as much as the Swedish version.

[naturalbornkaos.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna go against my usual raging hatred of remakes and say I actually preferred Let Me In's treatment of the story than the original Swedish film. I thought the Swedish one, by trying to (and failing to successfully IMHO) introduce many characters from the book into it ended up with too many loose ends and half-starts. I liked how the US one really pared down all the story arcs from the book and just focused on the "love" (!) story. For once, I thought it did this skillfully instead of "dumbing down" and I (to my surprise/horror) loved the visual style too which was very different to the Swedish one. Normally I hate the teal and orange look of Hollywood horror films but I thought they did a great job of justifying those colours with all the fire/ice motifs and it felt thoughtful and effective.

It was weird because a lot of the things I would normally criticise a Hollywood film for (ie: simplification, teal/orange photography) I actually found was done so well in Let Me In that these became elements I actively praised about the film. Plus, I felt it captured the emotional side of the book far more effectively than the Swedish version which just left me a bit cold.

Neither film comes close to the book but I did really like Let Me In and felt it had enough of its own take on the source material and enough of its own visual ideas and identity to warrant being made.

Unlike any other horror remake I can name from the last decade. :/