FILM

Hollywood’s irritating habit of remaking and frequently ruining decent European movies shows no sign of abating. Thankfully, Matt Reeves’ reworking (and renaming) of classic Swedish vampire flick ‘Let the Right One In’ is worth a second look. Robin Askew reports on the making of ‘Let Me In’.

The American director remaking a classic or foreign language film is on a hiding to nothing. Stick too closely to the original and you’ll be accused of timidity and conducting an exercise in pointlessness (see Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot ‘Psycho’ remake, for example). Attempt to tweak or – oh dear – ‘reboot’ a much-loved film and you’re left open to claims that you’ve betrayed the source material. Not that this seems to deter anyone. Rare successes like Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Departed’ and, let’s be honest here, the creative bankruptcy of mainstream Hollywood mean that cannibalisation remains an attractive option.

Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 adaptation of Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist’s bestseller ‘Let the Right One In’ was rightly acclaimed as one of the greatest vampire flicks of all time, its skilful use of genre to explore the traumas of early adolescence proving a necessary corrective to those sulky emo bloodsuckers of the rotten ‘Twilight’ franchise. ‘Cloverfield’ director Matt Reeves’ version vies with David Fincher’s upcoming bash at Stieg Larsson’s ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ as the remake most likely to get purists frothing. Alfredson himself has been vocal in opposition to the idea of a remake. Despite initially promising that his film would be very different, Reeves has opted for the reverent approach, retaining the snowbound ‘80s setting as he relocates to a chilly New Mexico town the story of a lonely, bullied boy who befriends the rather unusual, nocturnal new girl next door.

So why not try to do something novel with the material? “I thought there was something beautiful about virgin snow and blood,” he says immediately, clearly used to being asked this question. “It seemed like a very good metaphor for what the film was about. I fell in love with that coming of age story and I wanted to remain faithful to it. I think that when you’re remaking something you can come in in a sort of arrogant way to put your stamp on it randomly or you can put the things in that you feel genuinely connected to. And that story I felt very passionately and genuinely connected to. The change I tried to make was to put it even more into the boy’s point of view – filmicly trying to do a more intimate, almost Hitchcockian suspense style, where you saw the world as he saw it.”

Returning to the source novel, Reeves bonded with Lindqvist when he observed that the attraction of the story was not so much that it was an excellent genre piece but that it contained strong echoes of his own childhood. He’s unusually frank about the nature of this connection. “Well, I was bullied. And I grew up at that time [the early 80s] and my parents went through a very painful divorce. I just identified with that sense of being incredibly confused and the sense of humiliation and the sense of isolation. There’s tremendous shame with being bullied. I think there’s a level at which you think there’s a reason that you’re being singled out, that you’ve been chosen. There were details like, as a kid, I was always mistaken for a girl. Because before you reach that age where your sexuality starts to display itself, kids can look very androgynous. I guess I leaned more towards the feminine. All of those things are very hard growing up, because you’re trying to create an identity.”

The title change was nothing more than an accident. In the US, the first edition of the novel was published as ‘Let Me In’ (“They felt the other title was, I don’t know, too unusual or obscure”) and Reeves stuck with it to distinguish his version from Alfredson’s. Perhaps inevitably, ‘Let Me In’ is more explicit in some regards and less so in others, presumably to cater to US sensibilities. There’s additional gore, notably in the swimming pool finale, but the androgyny of the ‘female’ vampire is referred to only obliquely and the revealing shot from the original film is absent.

Nonetheless, Reeves has succeeded in retaining its perverse elements. “Well, what I liked about the book is that it didn’t shy away from any particular aspect of the humanity of the story. So it allowed for light and dark and perversity and innocence. It was that mix. It really blew me away, this sense of this innocent child who also is having fantasies about serial killers and revenge, and there being this tender love story juxtaposed with a really quite violent and disturbing vampire story. I just think that the book has tremendous empathy for the characters. There’s also a moral relativism about it as well. The actions aren’t excusable. There are horrendous things that happen, but he doesn’t allow you to lose sight of their humanity. And that makes it more complex, more provocative, more disturbing, but more beautiful.”

Although the project attracted understandable cynicism, US reviews have been generally positive, with some critics even asserting that this is the superior adaptation of Lindqvist’s novel. Much of the praise has been heaped upon the slender shoulders of Reeves’ two young leads: Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz. Reeves had resisted pressure to make the characters older, but the film’s production schedule meant that he had to cast his young actors without seeing the roles in which they both made their names: the kid in ‘The Road’ and sweary Hit-Girl in ‘Kick-Ass’ respectively. Instead he relied on the casting skills of Avy Kaufman, who has a proven track record in finding great child actors for the likes of ‘The Sixth Sense’, ‘The Ice Storm’ and ‘Little Man Tate’.

“I was really worried because it’s such an adult story,” Reeves confesses. “Will I be able to find young actors who can handle this kind of emotional complexity? Adults have to be able to relate to what’s going on with them, which means they have to express themselves in a way that’s really quite advanced for their age. The most important quality was someone who could feel real. Because although it was a vampire tale, the power of it is that it’s very believable, it’s very naturalistic.”

Nose around online and you’ll find a deleted scene revealing in flashback the origin of the girl’s vampirism, which some have interpreted as rape. The obvious suspicion is that this must have been thought too strong for mainstream audiences. Not so, insists Reeves, who says he leaked the scene himself. “I cut that scene because it didn’t work in the flow of the movie. I was really disappointed to have to do that. One of the reasons why I put it on the internet is because I thought they were so great in the scene and I wanted people to see that. But it absolutely wasn’t because it wasn’t palatable to an audience. There was no attempt to soften it.”

The film’s first great thrill comes during the opening credits, when we see the Hammer logo. This is the debut feature released under the recently revived Hammer banner (next up: a remake of ‘The Woman in Black’ starring Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe). “It’s odd that I make genre films now because Hammer films, in particular, scared me,” laughs the director, who names Terence Fisher’s ‘Dracula’ as his fave. “My relationship with them was that they would be on late night television and I would be peeking through my fingers at the lurid scenes of Christopher Lee and bright red blood. They gave me nightmares. So there’s a kind of pleasure in knowing cyclically that maybe years from now there’ll be somebody watching through their fingers who decides to go into films and make movies.”

Does he feel the great weight of expectation, though? “I just was really honoured. I thought it was so cool. Those movies are so stylised and they’re very gothic. This movie is more naturalistic. I thought it was rather fun that it was being relaunched with something that’s in the tradition of Hammer – it’s a vampire film – but with a tone that’s hopefully different.”

'LET ME IN' OPENED ON 5 NOV. FOR REVIEW, CLICK HERE.
 

Copyright Robin Askew 2010

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