Let The Wrong One In?

Something has been troubling me for some time now.

I'm referring to Let Me In, the completely unnecessary Hollywood remake of my favourite film of 2009, Let The Right One In, but has worryingly now become one of my most highly anticipated films of the year.

When I first heard of the news of the remake, my reaction was similar to everyone else:

"How dare they remake this film! Yet another example of Hollywood remaking a great foreign language film because most Brits and Americans are too lazy and/or dumb to read subtitles."

In fact at Empire Movie-Con back in August (in a very smart move by the producers), the adorable Chloe Moretz introduced two scenes from the film. She was so lovely that it stopped any bad feeling towards the remake... well almost! During a quick Q&A afterwards someone who shall remain nameless (sorry Neil ;) ) expressed his anger at the remake. Unwise since it wasn't her idea, or maybe it was:

Producer - "After the success of Kick-Ass you can do any movie you want. What will it be?"

Chloe - "You know what? I'd love to remake that Swedish vampire movie"

Plus she is Hit-Girl. I wouldn't provoke a 13 year old girl who can kill you with a butterfly knife!

I myself am usually the first person to get up on his high horse about Hollywood having such a lack of ideas that all they can do is remake other films, or moan about how people are missing out on superior quality films by rejecting any film just because it has subtitles.

For every good remake like The Departed or The Ring, we also get the bad (Dinner For Schmucks, The Eye, Pulse, any J-Horror remake really), to the pointless (Funny Games, Quarantine).

My overall feelings on the final film could depend on the handling of certain aspects of the story from both the original film and the book, but having liked what I have seen so far I am willing to approach it with an open mind.

Below are the top five reasons why I am actually looking forward to Let Me In.

1. The cast. Great character actors like Elias Koteas and Richard Jenkins alongside two of the best child actors working today. Smit-McPhee was great in The Road and Moretz has the ability to be as good as Natalie Portman or Jodie Foster.

2. At no point does it look like Twilight.

3. I'm sure that I saw Abby wearing a KISS T-Shirt at one point in the trailer

4. I have just discovered that Michael Giacchino (who won an Oscar for Up) is doing the score for the film.

5. I can pretty much guarantee that Let Me In won't have such ridiculous CGI cats in it.

I must state that my feelings towards the film have in no way been affected by the fact I have a Let Me In poster signed by Chloe Moretz hanging on my wall. Honest!

P.S. You can probably expect a similar post just before David Fincher is ready to release his version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.