Un-fuckin'-believable

A month or so ago, I did a little writing here about this amazing horror/fantasy/subtle-romance flick from Sweden called Let The Right One In. And how I saw it during the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the overall top prize. And how it'll easily make my year-end top ten films of 2008 list. And how its this truly-stunning blend of scares, thrills, drama, and heartfelt love developing between two little kids, no older than 12 years old, one being an undead vampire.



[how awesome is this poster, by the way. I love it]

So, that being reminded, read this crock of shit:

---from Shock Til You Drop:
"Cloverfield's Matt Reeves has been hired by Overture Films and Hammer Films to write and direct a remake of Let the Right One In.

Tomas Alfredson's original film, hailing from Sweden and opening on U.S. shores in limited release October 24th, tells of a young boy who befriends a young vampire pal. Hammer acquired the English-language remake rights when Alfredson's picture won rave reviews at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Overture will release the redo sometime in 2009."
---

This isn't exactly news to me; I did hear about Hammer buying the American remake rights immediately following the flick's Tribeca triumph. But I guess I'd just pushed it out of my mind in hopes that the talk would die down, or that the news would end up being a bit of a farce.

But nope, its legit as shit. "Shit" being the operative word there. But my question is, why in the fuck? Let The Right One In is such a unique and uncompromising film, pretty much flawless already, so how in the hell will an American remake possibly top it? I understand how allowing the Swedish version to stand on its own two here is far from a financial smash-of-an-idea, because US audiences are fucking lame sheep who can't "take" subtitles, whether in a theater or on DVD. So instead, this'll now become an inferior English-language waste of time. Great.

I'm not a full-blown hater of remakes, now. Quarantine, a flick I've been geeked about for months now, is an Americanized version of a stellar foreign flick itself, but what makes [Rec] different than Let The Right One In is that [Rec]'s central plot and tricks aren't incredibly fresh or unique; they're just done really well. And seeing how an American filmmaker can spin the standard story is somewhat welcome to me.

Let The Right One In, though, is different beast altogether, a strikingly original piece of Gothic cinema. The way it is shot....the performances from the little kids....the way it touches your heart one moment and then shock your system the next. Just so many little gems of details on their job in the film, and I'm nowhere near convinced that the dude behind Cloverfield is partially, let alone fully, capable of bettering it. I loved Cloverfield, mind you, but Let The Right One In couldn't be further from Cloverfield in excellence.



Do yourselves a favor....scratch, claw, and dig through showtimes to find a theater playing Let The Right One In when its released for a limited run in late October. Hell, I'll see it with you, if that's inspiration at all.