Posts Tagged ‘Let Me In’
Posted by Ashleigh in Latest News, Movies on May 12th, 2010
If you’ve been eagerly awaiting Overture and Hammer Films’ remake of the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, then feast your eyes on two brand-spankin’ new images from the set. Let Me In has been pegged as the revamped (heh heh heh, get it?), ‘Americanized’ version of the original, so it will be interesting to see how it compares.
Here’s a rundown of the plot as per the press release, and scroll down to check out the pictures: Twelve-year old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is viciously bullied by his classmates and neglected by his divorcing parents. Achingly lonely, Owen spends his days plotting revenge on his middle school tormentors and his evenings spying on the other inhabitants of his apartment complex. His only friend is his new neighbor Abby (Chloe Moretz), an eerily self-possessed young girl who lives next door with her silent father (Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins). A frail, troubled child about Owens’s age, Abby emerges from her heavily curtained apartment only at night and always barefoot, seemingly immune to the bitter winter elements. Recognizing a fellow outcast, Owen opens up to her and before long, the two have formed a unique bond.
When a string of grisly murders puts the town on high alert, Abby’s father disappears, and the terrified girl is left to fend for herself. Still, she repeatedly rebuffs Owen’s efforts to help her and her increasingly bizarre behavior leads the imaginative Owen to suspect she’s hiding an unthinkable secret.
Discuss this story at the Famous Monsters of Filmland Official Forum!
Posted by Jonathan in Comics, Latest News, Movies on April 16th, 2010
It was announced Thursday that Dark Horse and Hammer Films have entered a partnership to create a series of graphic novels and comic books.
Despite having an extensive catalog of 1950’s-1960’s “Hammer Horror” films, the companies revealed their first project will be based on Hammer’s new and upcoming thriller Let Me In, a remake of Swedish vampire movie, Let the Right One In. Dark Horse Comics is no stranger to the horror genre either, as they have acquired rights to make comic book adaptations to some of our favorites films such as Aliens, and Predators — needless to say, I think we can expect some good stuff to come in the future.
Not too much about the storyline has been revealed just yet, but the companies announced it “will incorporate some of the film’s characters and mythology with some fresh themes.”
Let Me In follows the story of an alienated 12-year-old boy (Kodi Smit- McPhee) who is bullied by his classmates and neglected by his parents. After meeting a mysterious new neighbor however, life begins to change. Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass) will portray his neighbor, only friend, and unsuspecting vampire.
Discuss this at the Famous Monsters of Filmland Official Forum!
Posted by Jesse in Latest News, Movies on March 17th, 2010
Speaking with FEARnet, Hammer head Simon Oakes discussed their upcoming films, including Matt Reeves’ Let Me in (a remake of the indie hit Let the Right One In), The Resident, and other films coming up in the company’s slate, as well as what classic Hammer properties/characters may be ripe for re-imagining, and the future outlook of the company in different media.
On Let Me In:
“…If you call it a faithful remake, I think that’s true to say that’s what it is. It’s not a reimagining; the same beats [are there], maybe the scares are a little bit more scary. We haven’t been able to ramp that up quite a lot, obviously, for budgetary reasons. We’ve played a little bit with some of the chronology, without giving too much away. Fundamentally, that’s what. High production values… [We had a] longer shooting period, more coverage, more effects…”
On Christopher Lee’s appearance in The Resident:
“It’s a cameo. Chris plays Max’s father, which is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and it’s funny actually – when we were looking at the cast list, I was saying, we’ve got to get Christopher to be in the first Hammer picture in 37 years or whatever. 35 years or something like that. He’s called August, and it’s a small part, but it’s not stunt casting. It’s a proper part. He plays Max’s grandfather, he lives in the building in the apartment with him, and it’s great… actually I don’t want to give it away, but the reveal when you first see him is fantastic. People are going to go crazy, particularly in England…”
On the company’s direction, and other upcoming Hammer projects:
“…When I bought Hammer, this venerable British studio, which sort of invented the modern horror film in a way. And then got taken over by the urban myth films of the ‘70s like The Exorcist and The Omen, etc. I thought to myself okay, we’re going to reboot this baby. And we’re going to make it sort of relevant now for a modern audience. But what we’re going to do is we’re going to take the traits that the Hammer was famous for… In fact, with Hammer you have noticed I don’t call it “Hammer Horror”, I just call it Hammer. So it gives a, the breath to sort of do stuff that maybe we couldn’t do otherwise. And then The Woman in Black would be like The Walking Dead and The Mummy and all of that stuff that you can see in the book… we have a film called The Quiet Ones, which is about a group of scientists in the 70s, based in Cambridge. Do you remember that picture of Bill Gates with all the really crazy-brilliant people behind him, all with beards and he’s there going, ‘I don’t know,’ and that sort of incredibly iconic photograph of him with Al and all the guys. Imagine that group of people in Cambridge in the early 70s and they’re brilliant and they’re supposed to be working on DNA and working on computers and they said: ‘We’re not going to do this anymore were going to create a poltergeist.’ That’s what we are going to do. Because we are so god damn clever, we are going to do something that no one else has ever done before, and that fits into another part of Hammer’s sort of supernatural sci-fi history through Quatermass and all of those sorts of films.”
On reinventing established Hammer properties:
“…we would never remake; we might reimagine. One of the first questions that I was asked when we bought the company was are you going to remake all of those old Hammer films? Why would you do that? Because in a sense, they almost were of their time, and they sort of, almost became old-fashioned as they came up to the end of that period of time when they were making those pictures… But there were some amazing characters in here that we want to reimagine like Quatermass. Like Kronos. We’re going to do Kronos, a sort of what would he be like today? What would he look like today? Because the great thing about him of course is that he is a vampire, but not a vampire. He has all the traits of a vampire, he never ages, but he’s not a vampire. So there are so many things that you can do with that. So we have some characters in here that we are going to sort of reboot. And those are two of them. And then we’ve got a couple of other titles like The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires that we are working on; a reimagining of that. But a straight remake, no…”
On Hammer in other media:
“What we’ve done is we’ve created this new part of our business called Exclusive Labs, and what it is, it’s a part of our business, which is focusing on creating content for digital platforms, and we’re working on a couple of ideas right now. I’d love to be able to tell you, and I will make a promise that when we announce two projects very shortly, I’ll make sure that you guys get it, along with our site first, because I think it should be disseminated in our environment before it goes into what I call the traditional press. And the reason I can’t is that I’ve got a partner who wouldn’t thank me if I said something right now. But very soon, we will; we’re all trying to find out what does it mean, a digital strategy. On digital there are two things; one is distribution and one is content creation. Digital distribution is a product of the things of like the windows, VOD, television. When do you go digital? How does it cannibalize your income streams and so forth, and that’s sort of interesting and boring in equal measure. And then there’s digital content creation, which is what I’m interested in and what we’re about…”
There’s a whole lot more over at FEARnet, including Oakes’ thoughts on “torture porn,” the Twilight phenomenon, and the current ratings system. Visit the link above for the full interview!
Posted by Jesse in Latest News, Movies on January 7th, 2010
Let Me In, the American produced remake of the Swedish horror film Let The Right One In, will be released on October 1st, 2010, announced production company Overture Films Wednesday.
The film is directed by Matt Reeves, director of 2008’s monster hit Cloverfield.
The film is, like the Swedish original, based on the novel by John Adjvide Lindqvist. That original film, directed by Tomas Alfredson and released in Sweden and the US in 2008, has been hailed as a genre masterpiece.
The remake stars Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloë Moretz, Elias Koteas and Richard Jenkins. Shooting is still underway in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Posted by sean in Movies on September 25th, 2009
All news regarding the American remake of Let The Right One In are strictly placed in the “rumor” category. But /film’s latest report of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Chloe Moretz’s presence in the film, which will be entitled Let Me In, is the most concrete casting info yet.
You know Hoffman if you have been conscious for most of the last ten years and even remotely enjoy film. Those of you who have seen the Comic-Con footage for the Kick-Ass movie will recognize Moretz as the young actress playing Hit Girl, the ten-year-old, duel-katana-wielding assassin/superhero. Logic would dictate that Moretz will play the film’s lead vampire – Eli in the novel and original movie – who will be renamed Abby for the American version. Hoffman, meanwhile, will most likely portray Haken, the adult who protects and hunts for Eli, who will doubtless have some as-yet-unrevealed Americanized name in the remake.
The name change from Eli to Abby marks one of my main issues with the idea of this remake. In the book, the vampiric lead is always referred to using gender-neutral pronouns (for which English doesn’t have equivalents), and there are ominous references to castration and a bending of traditional relationship gender/power roles that gives the character a very unique androgyny. Even the name, especially in Swedish, could be either a boy’s or a girl’s name. In other words: Maybe Eli’s a boy, maybe Eli’s a girl. It’s an interesting element to the novel, and one that’s carried over very well in the original movie.
Of course, Abby isn’t an androgynous name. It’s a girl’s 
name. And the recent concept posters show the little vampire in tights. So, basically, you can already be sure that all that doubt over gender’s being thrown right out the window. Maybe a little he-she vampire is a little too much controversy for Hollywood… in any case, it really does sorta strip away one of the story’s most interesting elements.
More directly, I’m a little pissed that this movie’s getting made at all. Remakes are always kind of annoying; remakes of films that are perfect in their original version are downright maddening. And that’s exactly what Let The Right One In is. And it’s not like you’re exposing a foreign film to an audience who has no other chance to see it. The film had an American release, though not a super-wide one – I know, I saw it. And it’s been out on DVD for a few months now, with pretty strong sales.
The above concept poster does look like it keeps the snowbound, eerie visual feel of the original, at least. But there was something about Swedish that really underscored the whole thing. It’s such a foreign, eerie – but beautiful – language, especially to American ears, which emphasized the gorgeous-yet-uncomfortable feeling one gets through the whole thing. But, hell, who cares about that? Foreign films mean subtitles. And subtitles mean reading. And, as we all know, reading is like Kryptonite to the American moviegoing audience.
All that said, it probably won’t be terrible. Hoffman’s proved himself as an acting powerhouse time and again, and Moretz, while unknown for now, is in Kick-Ass, which already has me pumped enough that the above Hit Girl picture has been my desktop wallpaper since it first surfaced. And the story itself is just really, really good. So, it should actually be pretty good. But it’ll also be totally unnecessary. My serious plea: Go rent the original. Right now. It’s worth the reading, trust me.
Posted by dominie in Movies on March 3rd, 2009
According to Production Weekly, Cloverfield director Matt Reeves’ (recently dubbed) Let Me In, a remake of Swedish director Tomas Alfredson’s vampire drama Let The Right One In, begins shooting in May. Overture Films has slated the remake for release on January 15, 2010.
Based on a best selling book from Sweden, the film is about “Oscar, an overlooked and bullied boy, finds love and revenge through Eli, a beautiful but peculiar girl who turns out to be a vampire feasting on his neighbours.”
Speaking of Cloverfield, Comingsoon.net rallied fans of the film together again over the weekend when they revealed there will be a sequel to the box office hit. The site spoke with producer J.J. Abrams of the film at the Wondercon in San Francisco who confirms they’re actually working on a second entry right now. Imagine my surprise because when the movie hit theaters, Abrams and director Matt Reeves rejected the idea of a potential sequel altogether. Read below or see Comingsoon.net for all the details.
“We’re actually working on an idea right now,” Abrams told the packed crowd. “The key obviously at doing any kind of sequel, certainly this film included, is that it better not be a business decision. If you’re going to do something, it should be because you’re really inspired to do it. It doesn’t really have to mean anything, doesn’t mean it will work, but it means we did it because we cared, not because we thought we could get the bucks. We have an idea that we thought was pretty cool that we’re playing with, which means there will be something that’s connected to ‘Cloverfield,’ but I hope it happens sooner than later because the idea is pretty sweet.”
