Let The Right One In (The HOLLYWOOD Version!)

[Perversion]

Re: Let The Right One In (The HOLLYWOOD Version!)

Just finished watching opening night...phone battery's about to die...but, oh, my god. More later.

[Magus]

Re: Let The Right One In (The HOLLYWOOD Version!)

****'s going down.

[Perversion]

Re: Let The Right One In (The HOLLYWOOD Version!)

Seriously, as much as I hate to say this, the American remake was very, very close to being better than the original. As I expected, Chloe Moretz could not pull off what needed to be done with Eli (Abby). Her range just was not there. Lina Leandersson's performance had hints of despair, longing, resignation, and being old before her time, with a slight hint of childlike wonder and innocence. Chloe Moretz looked the part to some extent (dark circles under the eyes and sorta boyish-looking), but her performace was a bit perfunctory. And Kodi Smit-McPhee's performace was almost equal to Kåre Hedebrant's in the original, but played completely differently. Oskar in the original came across as constantly being in a daze of sorts, whereas Owen in this version came across as a bit more wounded, and a bit more vulnerable.

The main thing that made the film just about the equal of the original, though, is the direction, shot composition, and the screenplay, surprisingly. Whereas the original had a lot of blue, white, and gray in almost every shot, this one had that as well, but alternated with a lot of scenes bathed in a sickly, jaundiced yellow. And right from the opening (which began halfway through the story), all non-essential characters are either always out of focus, or their faces are almost never shown.

As for the screenplay, as much as I have to contradict what I said earlier in the thread, I actually prefer this over the original author's. It may be because Matt Reeves is distanced from the novel, but a LOT of "fat" was trimmed, and the screenplay is much tighter.

For emotional resonance, the original is still the better film. But for atmosphere, tension, and a constantly forward-moving narrative (even though there's a lot more silence than dialogue throughout, the film never drags as the original sometimes did when it got away from the two leads), this film is superior.

Even though not all that many changes were made from the original, in some senses, this version hews closer to the novel.


Closing thoughts: I read beforehand, and have to agree...the CGI was atrociously bad. Like, LOST bad. And surprisingly enough, I actually prefer the score of the original over Michael Giacchino's here. It was a BIT too epic-sounding for a small-scale story, and was a bit...not overwrought, but...let's put it like this: certain scenes were scored to let the audience know how to feel, or to build tension. With the Life and Death theme in LOST, as an example, it worked perfectly. Here, I feel as if the score was manipulating me into feeling something that I should have felt from the performances or the scene alone, which I really wasn't. So I guess it's not the score's fault, per se, but it seemed as if it was covering up some deficiencies in the acting in key scenes. The original did not need to resort to this, as the acting (especially on Lina Leandersson's part) carried its own weight, and did not need a piece of music to tell me how to feel.