Director Matt Reeves will follow Let Me In with an adaptation of the short story which was the inspiration for the 1988 John Carpenter film They Live, the one starring Rowdy Roddy Piper who came to kick ass and chew bubblegum.
Reeves, who has signed on to write and direct the film, will not remake this version of the Ray Nelson story 8’O Clock in the Morning, and this is where it gets interesting. Speaking to Deadline, Reeves outlines how the film will differentiate itself from Carpenter’s film,
I saw an opportunity to do a movie that was very point-of-view driven, a psychological science fiction thriller that explores this guy’s nightmare…There could be a desperate love story at the center of this. Carpenter took a satirical view of the material and the larger political implication that we’re being controlled.
I am very drawn to the emotional side, the nightmare experience with the paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or a Roman Polanski-style film.
Speaking as part of the press tour for Let Me In Reeves talked about the Spielbergian influence as his main reason to retell the story of Let the Right One In, and I considered his handling of the emotional journey of the two young characters to be the high point of the film.
I’m not sure exactly how legal this is, but searching for Ray Nelson led me to this page, where the short story is available to read in its entirety.
