When it was announced that the excellent Swedish film Let the Right One In was to be receive the Hollywood remake treatment it was not particularly surprising news.
The original film had been almost universally praised but not widely seen by US audiences. Since the initial announcement further information has been released, Matt Reeves signed on as the writer and director and Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-Mcphee as the young pairing at the centre of the story.
Nothing about Matt Reeves’ previous career excites me about his involvement in this project, I found Cloverfield emotionally hollow, but the two actors appear to be good choices; Kodi Smit-Mcphee recently excelled in The Road and I am quite convinced that the film world is about to go nuts for Moretz following her performance in the upcoming Kick-Ass.
Further news has recently emerged that is also quite promising. Movieline has an interview with Moretz in which she talks about Let Me In and highlights some elements of her character (renamed from Eli to Abby):
What was your spin on the character?
The character of Abby…I mean, usually a lot of movies glamorize being a vampire. It’s pretty, it’s cool, you look awesome! The way we did it was that it’s not cool to be a vampire. It’s a burden that she has to carry with her, not this fun, cool, interesting thing. It’s scary, deep, and dark, this devil inside of her. The vampire is different than Abby. It’s like her alternate personality, and when it takes her over, she has no control.
Also the producer of Let Me In spoke to Cinema Blend today and revealed further details:
Frankly, [you must] not muck about the basic tenets of the story, which is important. More than anything else, stay true to the imagery and mystique and the mythology of the original, and set it in the right time as well, not update it in terms of its timing. Set it in that [early ’80s] era.
If you call it a faithful remake, I think that’s true to say that’s what it is. It’s not a re-imagining; the same beats [are there]. Maybe the scares are a little bit more scary. We haven’t been able to ramp that up quite a lot, obviously, for budgetary reasons. We’ve played a little bit with some of the chronology, without giving too much away.
I can’t say I’m exactly excited about this one but as more information comes out about the film my original highly negative reaction is lessening somewhat.
What do you think? Could this remake turn out okay?
