October is here! Where did September go? Well, this is the month for horror films so we here at The Reel Place would like to give you a good helping of horror films to get you through the month. Our 13 Days of Horror will run the gamut of horror legends, to guilty pleasures we like to stick in every year.
Aaron's Take
I had a hard time picking the exact movie I wanted to start this feature out with. There’s so many good, fun horror films out there that can fill your time as you wait for Halloween to approach. After a good deal of deliberation, I don’t think I’m ready to leave the Let the Right One In debate die. Let the Right One In was just remade by director Matt Reeves into an American version called Let Me In. As evidenced in my review, I thought while the movie was well made, it still took too much from the original. So much so that there wasn’t much suspense building. If you’ve seen the original you can see everything coming before it happens.
Fresh off Let Me In being released in theaters I want to revisit the Swedish original, which is based off of a novel. When I saw Let the Right One In, I said to myself, finally a movie about vampires that shows us exactly how much it really sucks (pun intended) to be a vampire. It’s a dirty life, filled with regret, misery, and endless hunger pangs.
Let the Right One In, is a slowly paced, film about a bullied boy who would like nothing more than to get back at his attackers. He meets a young girl who he later finds out is a vampire. She has a caretaker of sorts that goes out and "gathers"meals for her if you catch my drift. Instead of flashy, in your face scares, Let the Right One In plays out almost like a melodrama. It’s sweet and touching, but at times downright brutal. It’s creepy, but satisfying if you’re looking for a horror movie that will not so much jump out and scare you as it will make you feel uneasy and unsettled.
Since you’re bound to watch quite a few slasher flicks over
the course of the weeks leading up to Halloween, why don’t you sit down with
this foreign horror film and get creeped out in a different way?
Luke's Take
Having seen Let Me In just a week ago, I decided it would be fitting to watch Let The Right One In again before this write-up. I said it in my review of Let Me In and I will say it again, Let Me In is far superior to Let The Right One In. Here’ s why:
Let The Right One In has a severe lack of focus and tone. Although I really enjoyed it, the first time I watched I fell asleep because there were so many excessive repetitious scenes involving neighbor side characters. Every one of their scenes is BORING. All they do it whine and complain about how much they miss their friend that little Eli drained. Let Me In, while still achieving the same end-goal with these characters, managed to reduce their parts so that we never got inside their apartments. I don’ t think we even had to hear them utter a single line of dialogue. Adding their abbreviated characters with a new one, the sheriff, they eventually come to the exact same place in a much more efficient manner.
The most unsettling thing that Let Me In changed for the better was the alluded to idea that Oskar was a serial killer in the making, that he was already en route to becoming the Swedish Dexter. When that idea is hinted to in the end of Let The Right One In, it comes out of left field. Before that scene, he was just a kid who owned a knife that would save him in his fantasy fight backs. I believe that he never would have used it. Let Me In never hints at the idea that he will, no matter what, eventually be for his own enjoyment. That decision is a lot more fitting than the prior.
And those who complain about the digital effects of Let Me In need to rewatch Let The Right One In. Tell me the digital cat attack is better than the CG Abby. You can’ t. It is awful.
Even though I am a bigger fan of Let Me In, it is impossible to ignore the fact that it wouldn’ t exist without Let The Right One In. Let The Right One In proudly paved the way for what I deem the most realistic vampire film of all time.
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