Eoraptor1
October 6th, 2010, 17:16
Okay, I've been wanting to see this for a few days now, because I wanted to see how it would conpare to the original Swedish version, Let the Right One In. This will probably be the last movie I go to for a while; it now costs eight dollars to see a matinee, and I could get a six-pack for what the theater wanted for one small soft drink. To be fair, the "small" drinks are really pretty big, but still...a six-pack.
First off, it was a real horror movie, not a Harlequin Romance masquerading as a horror movie. People die unpleasantly. The movie earns its "R" rating. There's an air of pervy creepiness over everything, even when no one's being killed. I suspect the director is a fan of Roman Polanski's work. Secondly, it was a Hammer film, like the Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing movies I used to watch on Creature Feature when I was a kid. I didn't know they were still in business. I suspect a big multi bought the rights to the name, but mention it anyway. The film was VERY similar to the Swedish original. The setting was moved to the Southwest US, and the names Anglicized, but the only other major difference was in the SFX budget. They spent some coin on CGI and makeup effects. The police are also smarter than usual for a horror movie. The officer investigating the string of "cult" killings actually follows a chain of evidence. I don't much care for movie vampires glamoring their way out of everything; that smacks to me of the writer cutting corners. In the average vampire opera, I'm wondering why the whole world doesn't know about vampires. The parental figures, however, display their usual horror genre cluelessness, but the film is really about the world of the children, and something else I always wondered about when I was a little kid watching classic Hammer horror: What motivates the vampire's minion? The realistic dilemna of a bullied child is graphically represented, and I personally found that more disturbing than the vampirism. If you have the special edition DVD of An American Werewolf in London, in the special features, John Landis recalls an incident in Central Europe while filming Kelly's Heroes. According to Landis, a group of gypsies (I'm not making this up) was burying someone upright in the grave. When Landis asked their driver why they were doing this, the driver had a great laugh and explained the gypsies were doing so in case the person they were burying got up and caused trouble. Landis laughed as well, but later asked himself what everyone would do if the dead person did get up, how completely unprepared everyone would be... I don't know about that, however; on the guitar forum where I'm a contributor, there was a lively thread on how to deal with the zombie apocalypse when and if it came.
In short, the stars of Let Me In are children, but I wouldn't bring a small child to this one.
JAMES
First off, it was a real horror movie, not a Harlequin Romance masquerading as a horror movie. People die unpleasantly. The movie earns its "R" rating. There's an air of pervy creepiness over everything, even when no one's being killed. I suspect the director is a fan of Roman Polanski's work. Secondly, it was a Hammer film, like the Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing movies I used to watch on Creature Feature when I was a kid. I didn't know they were still in business. I suspect a big multi bought the rights to the name, but mention it anyway. The film was VERY similar to the Swedish original. The setting was moved to the Southwest US, and the names Anglicized, but the only other major difference was in the SFX budget. They spent some coin on CGI and makeup effects. The police are also smarter than usual for a horror movie. The officer investigating the string of "cult" killings actually follows a chain of evidence. I don't much care for movie vampires glamoring their way out of everything; that smacks to me of the writer cutting corners. In the average vampire opera, I'm wondering why the whole world doesn't know about vampires. The parental figures, however, display their usual horror genre cluelessness, but the film is really about the world of the children, and something else I always wondered about when I was a little kid watching classic Hammer horror: What motivates the vampire's minion? The realistic dilemna of a bullied child is graphically represented, and I personally found that more disturbing than the vampirism. If you have the special edition DVD of An American Werewolf in London, in the special features, John Landis recalls an incident in Central Europe while filming Kelly's Heroes. According to Landis, a group of gypsies (I'm not making this up) was burying someone upright in the grave. When Landis asked their driver why they were doing this, the driver had a great laugh and explained the gypsies were doing so in case the person they were burying got up and caused trouble. Landis laughed as well, but later asked himself what everyone would do if the dead person did get up, how completely unprepared everyone would be... I don't know about that, however; on the guitar forum where I'm a contributor, there was a lively thread on how to deal with the zombie apocalypse when and if it came.
In short, the stars of Let Me In are children, but I wouldn't bring a small child to this one.
JAMES