Let Me In // Let The Right One In

This is just a short and grumpy post.



Let Me In. If you've been paying attention you'll know that it's the forthcoming remake of 2008's (?) Let The Right One In, a Swedish film that is easily one of the best horror productions of recent years (maybe even the decade?) and an antidote to the sparkly fang-less prancing of the Twilight saga.

Matt Reeves, the director of the remake is reported in Empire as saying that he simply can't understand the furore around the remake, claiming it should be normal as Hollywood has been churning out remakes for years. Quite apart from the fact that the "it's happened lots of times before" argument is a completely pathetic method of avoiding the point entirely, he has also chosen to ignore that the remake culture he refers to is usually concerned with remaking films that are twenty or so years old. Not two.

As an example, the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street, although completely unnecessary, is clearly catering to an entirely new audience, a younger generation who haven't seen the original but are (perhaps unwittingly) just waiting to be shepherded in to the world of gory horror flicks.

Let Me In, however, is surely only really being made to cater to those who are too damn lazy to read subtitles. The recent Spanish zombie masterpiece [Rec] was given the same treatment and turned into Quarantine, a move almost universally condemned, and I really struggle to see how the situation will be any different here.

For anyone who's read the (fantastic) original novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, there is perhaps a glimmer of hope that they'll go back to the text and pick out some of the interesting sub-plots that were stripped in the first transition from page to screen. This is surely the only thing which could justify a re-make. It is, however, pretty unlikely as Lindqvist wrote the screenplay for the original and hasn't touched the new version (as far as I can see, anyway)

So, it's fingers crossed hoping for increased faithfulness to the text, but I'm afraid I'm entirely sceptical. I'll still watch it, but it'll have to work twice as hard to convince me that it's a worthwhile film.

Trailer for the original: