In this day of remakes and boundless intellectual property theft, it only makes sense that the brilliant and beautiful Let the Right One In would get an English-language rape just two years after its release. The Matt Reeves-directed Let Me In has been given an official release date per a press release from Overture Films, and it's October 1st, 2010.
That doesn't instill any bit of confidence about this movie that everyone should already be very wary of. “But why, Will? It's just a date.” Wrong. Releasing a film that close to Halloween means it's trying to go after the crowd who will be looking for horror that month, but they're trying to beat movies like Saw VII 3D (seriously?!) to the punch.
Here's what's wrong with that. Let the Right One In is very much NOT a horror movie. Sure, it's sprinkled with horror elements, like a flesh hungry little girl, some pretty intense death scenes, and a mildly creepy setting, but the main focus of the film is the relationship between the two kids, and their lives as outcasts. Vampirism is never the centerpiece and that's what scares me about the release date. It tells me that all the subtlety of the original will be sacrificed to make an action/horror film for the semi-retarded American masses. Yes, the original was released the week before Halloween in 2008, but who expected the Saw crowds to go see a tiny Swedish movie back then?
The press release also was a reminder that American cinema will bastardize every element of films they're ripping off, simply because the two leads are named Owen and Abby when they could have just as easily been named Oskar and Eli. Can we as a country please just start accepting foreign cinema into our lives? It'd make this whole process way less infuriating.
