(no subject)
So. I watched Let Me In today, the American remake of Let the Right One In.
Actually when I first heard about the movie, I felt like kicking something. Maybe a tiny cute little puppy. Because seriously, why do so many American filmmakers/animation companies/etc like to Americanize so many goddamned things? East Asian names have the surname and given name inversed, Cardcaptor Sakura was horrifically dubbed, and now... this.
Nevertheless I am a masochist and so I watched the film.
Despite my grievances about Americanizing, the film was not bad. It was a horror film alright, and I cannot deny that the book was in places a horror story. But as a story, without labels and genres, it definitely loses out big time to Let the Right One In. For one, I really hated that foreboding kettle drum boom whenever something bad was coming up, like Abby revealing her vampiric status to Owen; LTROI was so much better in that it allowed the silence to creep and grab you by the throat.
LTROI is poetry- LMI is creative writing class prose. If LMI can be compared to Dan Brown, then LTROI is like-- okay, I was going to say Ezra Pound, but I've only ever seen In a Station of the Metro, and one poem is not enough to judge a poet by. I say this also because though they claim LMI is an adaptation of the book and not a remake of Tomas Alfredson's movie, I find it really hard to believe. There are far too many shots where I felt as if it were simply a warm-hued re-film of the original. LTROI had a beautifully wintry, brutal yet haunting and ethereal quality to it. LMI though set in a wintry town could not begin to compare- America was too deeply entrenched in LMI for me to enjoy it. From the beginning I kept hearing phrases about God, and America, and good and evil, and-- well. It's too binary a stand for me to buy into. I liked the Swedish film because religion had nothing to do with it. There was no black or white, only shades of grey. LMI seems to try to push you into black and white, at the same time it tries to live up to the complexity of LTROI. Sorry Matt Reeves, but this just wasn't good enough. The beauty of the story from the beginning was the romance, the awfully evil things that people can be so capable of. Abby and Owen seemed a little forced at times, but Eli and Oskar danced perfectly to their own tune which no one else could perceive.
There were some shots in LMI that I did like, such as the scene of the broken skylight at the very end, though there was another glaring piece of evidence that LMI is totally a remake of LTROI- the death of the boys. Filmed exactly the same way. Say it's an adaptation of the book all you want, the is proof to contradict you, Mr. Producer. The scene with Owen advancing on his reflection in the mirror with a knife and mask was also well done, but they chickened out too fast.
Part of Oskar's appeal was his instability, the way he split between potential psychopath and vulnerable humanity. He's actually very human from the get-go, but with Conny's bullying, it's easy to see why he harbours revenge fantasies, fantasies about killing and hurting. I thought LMI did a good job of showing this, but with Kenny, the bully who torments Owen, rather than Owen himself. One of my favourite parts of the LTROI version of Eli/Abby entering Oskar/Owen's home without permission was sadly altered; Oskar taunts Eli about entering the home without explicit permission to enter, and the taunting just reminds you what a little bastard he can be, though his horrified remorse redeems him seconds later. Eli had no way of knowing whether Oskar would actually allow her to die, but she did it anyway because she had something to prove. There is an electric tension, resolved by the realization that Oskar does care, that although he is so unstable, he is still human. This doesn't happen with Owen. Abby tells him that she knew he wouldn't allow her to die. Well, whoop de doo. It's sweet, but it's unoriginal.
It's too bad that Kenny and his gang, in the scenes shown bullying Owen, don't have that insidious and carelessly cruel qualities that Conny had in LTROI. Owen is too normal here, too mundane. He's not hurt and unstable the way Oskar is, and that makes all the difference in the relationship between the two damaged children. LTROI was not, imo, just a story about whatever happened in its pages. It had a depth, it made you question even as it made you sympathize with what is usually considered abhorrent. LMI did not get it for all that it's a good horror film.
I think that's its problem. I don't believe Lindqvist set out to write a horror story at all. It's a story about people and the horrors they can inflict, not about horror.
There was a lot they left out from the original film that I missed, like Virginia and the alchoholics, the cat scene, Lacke avenging both his friend and lover, and Oskar's father's problem with alchoholism, though, LMAO at the thought that a lot of people thought Erik was gay, not alchoholic. The film was pretty ambiguous on a lot of things anyway.
There's quite a lot more I can say about the two films, but my sister totally distracted me so.
In short, LMI was kinda CMI.
Actually when I first heard about the movie, I felt like kicking something. Maybe a tiny cute little puppy. Because seriously, why do so many American filmmakers/animation companies/etc like to Americanize so many goddamned things? East Asian names have the surname and given name inversed, Cardcaptor Sakura was horrifically dubbed, and now... this.
Nevertheless I am a masochist and so I watched the film.
Despite my grievances about Americanizing, the film was not bad. It was a horror film alright, and I cannot deny that the book was in places a horror story. But as a story, without labels and genres, it definitely loses out big time to Let the Right One In. For one, I really hated that foreboding kettle drum boom whenever something bad was coming up, like Abby revealing her vampiric status to Owen; LTROI was so much better in that it allowed the silence to creep and grab you by the throat.
LTROI is poetry- LMI is creative writing class prose. If LMI can be compared to Dan Brown, then LTROI is like-- okay, I was going to say Ezra Pound, but I've only ever seen In a Station of the Metro, and one poem is not enough to judge a poet by. I say this also because though they claim LMI is an adaptation of the book and not a remake of Tomas Alfredson's movie, I find it really hard to believe. There are far too many shots where I felt as if it were simply a warm-hued re-film of the original. LTROI had a beautifully wintry, brutal yet haunting and ethereal quality to it. LMI though set in a wintry town could not begin to compare- America was too deeply entrenched in LMI for me to enjoy it. From the beginning I kept hearing phrases about God, and America, and good and evil, and-- well. It's too binary a stand for me to buy into. I liked the Swedish film because religion had nothing to do with it. There was no black or white, only shades of grey. LMI seems to try to push you into black and white, at the same time it tries to live up to the complexity of LTROI. Sorry Matt Reeves, but this just wasn't good enough. The beauty of the story from the beginning was the romance, the awfully evil things that people can be so capable of. Abby and Owen seemed a little forced at times, but Eli and Oskar danced perfectly to their own tune which no one else could perceive.
There were some shots in LMI that I did like, such as the scene of the broken skylight at the very end, though there was another glaring piece of evidence that LMI is totally a remake of LTROI- the death of the boys. Filmed exactly the same way. Say it's an adaptation of the book all you want, the is proof to contradict you, Mr. Producer. The scene with Owen advancing on his reflection in the mirror with a knife and mask was also well done, but they chickened out too fast.
Part of Oskar's appeal was his instability, the way he split between potential psychopath and vulnerable humanity. He's actually very human from the get-go, but with Conny's bullying, it's easy to see why he harbours revenge fantasies, fantasies about killing and hurting. I thought LMI did a good job of showing this, but with Kenny, the bully who torments Owen, rather than Owen himself. One of my favourite parts of the LTROI version of Eli/Abby entering Oskar/Owen's home without permission was sadly altered; Oskar taunts Eli about entering the home without explicit permission to enter, and the taunting just reminds you what a little bastard he can be, though his horrified remorse redeems him seconds later. Eli had no way of knowing whether Oskar would actually allow her to die, but she did it anyway because she had something to prove. There is an electric tension, resolved by the realization that Oskar does care, that although he is so unstable, he is still human. This doesn't happen with Owen. Abby tells him that she knew he wouldn't allow her to die. Well, whoop de doo. It's sweet, but it's unoriginal.
It's too bad that Kenny and his gang, in the scenes shown bullying Owen, don't have that insidious and carelessly cruel qualities that Conny had in LTROI. Owen is too normal here, too mundane. He's not hurt and unstable the way Oskar is, and that makes all the difference in the relationship between the two damaged children. LTROI was not, imo, just a story about whatever happened in its pages. It had a depth, it made you question even as it made you sympathize with what is usually considered abhorrent. LMI did not get it for all that it's a good horror film.
I think that's its problem. I don't believe Lindqvist set out to write a horror story at all. It's a story about people and the horrors they can inflict, not about horror.
There was a lot they left out from the original film that I missed, like Virginia and the alchoholics, the cat scene, Lacke avenging both his friend and lover, and Oskar's father's problem with alchoholism, though, LMAO at the thought that a lot of people thought Erik was gay, not alchoholic. The film was pretty ambiguous on a lot of things anyway.
There's quite a lot more I can say about the two films, but my sister totally distracted me so.
In short, LMI was kinda CMI.