Let Me In
Dir. Matt Reeves
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 115mins
Dir. Matt Reeves
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 115mins
Hollywood’s tradition of taking foreign-made films and remaking them for local filmgoers has been around since sound was introduced and audiences realised they had to read subtitles in order to enjoy international cinema. Let Me In is a remake of Let the Right One In, a Swedish vampire film from 2008 that gained a critical and cult following. Matt Reeves’ (Cloverfield) remake is a good one, but sadly fails to emerge out of the towering shadow of the original.
3 comments:
SPOILER ALERT warning
Help me out here, b/c I'm trying to remember. I really like Let Me In, although I do think a large bit of it is a copy of the original. But was the "father" character her old bf in the original? That was a marvelous touch in the new one that I might have missed in the Swedish one, but it made everything that much more interesting, the idea that years from now, Abby may meet another 12-year-old and Owen will become like Jenkins. I liked that. And I liked that they made the adults almost anonymous -- except the mom. That was distracting, the way they obscured her face throughout.
Anyway, can't say I disagree with your review. Well done!
Walter, I seem to remember getting that impression. She goes about recruiting her helpers whenever an old one outlives his duties.
I suspect he wasn't intended to be given that the Swedish script was adapted by the original novelist. In the book it's made queasily clear that he is a pedophile who feels less guilty about his urges around Elly because of his real age.
I think the novelist originally intended to keep this element but the director vetoed it as he didn't feel he could do justice to the material and still adequately serve the main narrative.
Of course this doesn't rule out the possibility that the final, filmed script did intend to suggest the old boyfriend interpretation rather then simply leave it as ambiguous but who knows?
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