Let Me In

[socketlevel]

Elias Koteas is amazing. i hope they do this one justice

[MacGuffin]

Let Me In Coming October 1st
Source: ComingSoon

Overture Films has announced an October 1st release date for Cloverfield director Matt Reeves' Let Me In, starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, Cara Buono and Sasha Barrese. The film is based on the Swedish novel "Lat den Ratte Komma In" ("Let the Right One In") by John Ajvide Lindqvist and the movie of the same name. The following is the synopsis released by the studio:

An alienated 12-year-old boy befriends a mysterious young newcomer in his small New Mexico town, and discovers an unconventional path to adulthood in "Let Me In," a haunting and provocative thriller written and directed by filmmaker Matt Reeves ("Cloverfield").

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 (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.

The gifted cast of "Let Me In" takes audiences straight to the troubled heart of adolescent longing and loneliness in an astonishing coming-of-age story based on the best-selling Swedish novel "Lat den Ratte Komma In" ("Let the Right One In") by John Ajvide Lindqvist, and the highly-acclaimed film of the same name.

[MacGuffin]

Hammer Film's Simon Oakes Promises Scary, Accessible 'Let Me In'
Source: Cinematical

Film producer Simon Oakes knows the challenges he faces in remaking the cult film Let the Right One In, the 2008 vampire tale about two lonely kids who turn to each other in 1980s Sweden. Fan skepticism aside, his English language remake (titled Let Me In) isn't just aiming to become a successful mainstream genre film – intended, as he says, to make the core story by author John Ajvide Lindqvist more accessible to a wider audience – it will also effectively relaunch the renowned Hammer Films, the iconic British studio once known for '50s Gothic horror classics like The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Mummy that all but disappeared during the '80s.

Speaking with journalists in Los Angeles, Oakes spoke at length about Let Me In, the lead-off film that will inaugurate this new reboot of the genre-focused studio. While he suspects that Let Me In will probably garner an R-rating ("I think this will be an R-rated picture," he said, but also noted that he'd like it to reach the widest possible audience), Oakes emphasized that story, rather than gore, is what's truly key to the Hammer philosophy. Despite Let Me In's mature content and boosted effects and scares, don't expect director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) to go overboard like many modern horror flicks do. "The only thing on my watch that we won't do," Oakes promised, "is we won't make slasher pictures."

So why was Reeves the right director for the job? Which story elements have changed, and which remain the same? What made young actors Chloë Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee right to portray Owen and Abby, the Americanized versions of Let the Right One In's Oskar and Eli? Most importantly for fans of the original, why did anyone need to remake Let the Right One In at all?

Did you feel like the public at large is not familiar with Let the Right One In, and that's why it needed to be remade in an English-language version?
Simon Oakes: That's a very good question, and the right one to ask. We saw [Let the Right One In] very early; I'm English, I'm European, and I see a lot of pictures coming out of Scandinavia, France and Germany as you can imagine. So we saw it very, very early on and we thought it was astonishing because it was a love story -- Stand By Me meets The Exorcist -- and we thought it was just special and wonderful. We never in a million years could have guessed it would get the critical acclaim that it did, particularly in the United Kingdom, where it was actually a hit movie. It did great grosses. But at the same time, the reality is that only 22-23 percent of its entire box office in the U.S. came from one theater.

I was always of the view that this was a beautiful story. I knew the original book, which was a lot harder as you guys would know, a lot more risqué if you like, more controversial. But the story was so great, so beautiful, that it should be seen by a bigger audience. So I was always saying to myself, people in Manhattan have seen it, guys like you [genre journalists/fans] because it's in your wheelhouse, in New York, in Chicago, in Chelsea, in Notting Hill, in London... but no one in Glasgow or Edinburgh or Bristol or Idaho or Pittsburgh have seen this film. It's a story that needs to be seen by a wider audience. Then it came down to [the question], how do you achieve that? By paying homage to the original. Number one, get a very sensitive, smart director -- we got it in Matt [Reeves]. Frankly, [you must] not muck about the basic tenets of the story, which is important. More than anything else, stay true to the imagery and mystique and the mythology of the original, and set it in the right time as well, not update it in terms of its timing. Set it in that [early '80s] era.

So it's still going to have the Rubik's cube?
Simon Oakes: Yes, exactly! [The film will include] the Rubik's cube, which is great. And then, find kids who can stand up to -- and, I hate to say it -- be as good as or better than the wonderful children that were in the original. And we did do that. It's quite interesting; had we not done that, it would have been a very difficult thing. Could two kids pull it off with the sort of knowingness that those two children had, that sort of quiet knowingness that Oskar and [Eli] had? Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee are absolutely amazing.

It was interesting that you found a counterpoint in the Southwest setting in the U.S. to the desolate landscape in the first film. But then, as you mentioned, there's a quietness in the two leads; one thing that's intriguing about Chloe is that she seems to be a different take, because she's known for the screen persona she generates for being a little [bold]...
Simon Oakes: Not when you see her in the film. If you think about her in Kick-Ass, of course you'd think that quite naturally. But she has the same stillness, the same quietness, the same control. When it comes to the setting, the outskirts of Stockholm, we thought about that town from nowhere. Do you remember the scene in E.T. when suddenly this quiet environment has been shattered, when the government guys come in their suits and suddenly this small little house has got this huge white tunnel they're all coming in? It's the juxtaposition of the strangeness of that and the very ordinariness of the home environment that the kids lived in. We wanted to create the same idea that within this very ordinary Southwest situation, extraordinary things are happening. This girl, this vampire, comes into this world and affects a kid and his daily life and relationship with his peers, or his bullies. We tried to find what that match would be; rather than just setting it in some snowy environment somewhere, we'll try and place it in that juxtaposition.

You mentioned the provocative elements of the original. What adjustments did you have to make in adapting it for this version?
Simon Oakes: [We had to do it] without being so pretentious in English, for a start. But frankly, not that much to be honest with you. If you call it a faithful remake, I think that's true to say that's what it is. It's not a re-imagining; 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. [Let the Right One In director] Tomas Alfredson did a phenomenal job; I have actually no idea what his budget was in Sweden, but I can imagine what it was, so go figure. [We had a] longer shooting period, more coverage, more effects.

Was there ever any thought to put back in some of the more challenging elements of the book?
Simon Oakes: I think I know what you mean, and absolutely not. I think in the book it's very disturbing, the implications, and I think they should be left in the book, which is astonishing. John Ajvide Lindqvist is an amazing writer. I don't know if you've read Handling the Undead, which is the book following this; he's an original thinker. But I don't think it actually lends anything to the movie. In fact, it detracts from it. I mean, I think there are implications and suggestions [in the film]; the famous line, "Will you go steady with me?" "I'm not a girl." Well, that could mean a million things. What does she mean? Does she mean she's not a girl, she's a vampire? Does it mean she's not a girl, she was a girl? Or was a boy? I think you leave ambiguity there. I think also, you don't talk down and spoon feed the audience that is going to see this movie. You, in a sense, are the bellwether for fan boys and so forth and you've had a lot of inbound on this film. And I think to start with, a lot of people were sort of quite negative about this happening because they love the movie so much. Gradually, as Matt came onboard, and Kodi and Chloe, people started to move towards the middle saying, you know what, this is good, this is great, let's see what happens. Let's reserve judgment until we see the final product. I think that's what's happening now. There's a bigger audience out there as well who will never see the picture anyway. So I'm not too worried about that.

What made Matt Reeves the right director for Let Me In?
Simon Oakes: Sometimes in the process of making movies and producing and financing movies, you can get what we call in England, "our knickers in a twist" by having 17 options and going round in circles, going back to the person you thought should do it first. We immediately fell in love with Matt and his take; he loved the original, so we felt that he was going to honor it, which is very important. Secondly, I think there's something, and I don't know if he'd like me saying this, quite autobiographical of his own life in the life of Owen, in some respect -- where he came from, and his background and so forth. That was important. We didn't go out to get multiple takes from people because this movie did not need a "take," if you know what I mean. It needed someone to say, I love this film, I want to remake this film now, and I want it to be seen by a bigger audience. And I know how I'm going to do it. I have a feel for the material. He's astonishing. He has a fantastic intellect, a great imagination.

His pedigree, obviously because of Cloverfield, has that sort of found footage aesthetic. Was this an opportunity for him to do something different? Or do you find that the movie has an aesthetically-similar approach?
Simon Oakes: It's a very different aesthetic. At the end of the day, you could make this movie and never use the word "vampire." You could say this is a love story between two kids. I think an understanding of genre helps, because there are obviously some big set piece-genre moments in it. You know that he's got the chops to do it. But really, I think it's because he's a storyteller, he knows how to tell a story. If you think of Cloverfield and you think of the technical difficulty in maintaining the focus of story in a film like that, the way he shot it, that was brilliant – to be able to do that, to keep us there, to keep us watching and engaged. I think one of Matt's great qualities is that he's a genuinely great storyteller.

"Felicity" was about young people in love, and Cloverfield was a thriller. Combining those two elements should work for Let Me In.
Simon Oakes: Truthfully, subliminally, he must have tipped the boxes in my head and my colleagues. But to be honest, we didn't think about it in such a drilled out and rational way. I think he understands the audience for the movie and that sort of thing. I think he has a sort of a natural understanding of what an audience would expect from this film and how to make it accessible to a wider audience.

What is the audience that you are going for?
Simon Oakes: As big as possible, I think. The fan boy base. The people that you guys interact with on a daily and weekly basis, they will all come and see this movie. They will all come with preconceptions --some good, some bad. I think this will be an R-rated picture. I'm thinking it's a pretty young demographic, but we are only at the beginning stage of our marketing, because part of it is marketing it as a love story, a redemptive love story.

Is there still a chance that it might be cut down to a PG-13 rating?
Simon Oakes: I don't know. I mean, we are literally in the first week of post. There are some different rules in the states. It's amazing that they would give Kick-Ass a 12 rating. [Note: Kick-Ass earned a '15' certificate in the UK.] It is unbelievable, where we have a 12-year-old girl using the C-word and cutting people's heads off. How did that happen? Well, that's England for you. I think in this country it slightly more difficult to get the rating that you would like to get, but we'll get there.

When you guys were shooting the action violence and intense stuff, was Matt sort of free to do whatever he wanted or how choreographed was it?
Simon Oakes: He could do what he wanted. I think it is a mistake to sort of manufacturer the scares and stuff. I think the story lends itself to the right type of action in the right type of scares. We have a picture that we are making this year called The Woman in Black, which was a famous novella, and then a play. It's been on forever. Jane Goldman, who did Kick-Ass and so forth, is writing it for us. And when you are dealing with something like that, which is sort of a classic ghost story, and you're dealing with the supernatural in a sense, you can sort of get away with more. You can get a better rating for your movie, because there is the suspension of disbelief. When you are dealing with a story like this, although it is a vampire story in part, it is so realistic. Then you are always going to have a problem with the rating because it just crosses the boundary.

How will you balance Hammer's pedigree of personal, character-driven stories with the spectacle of today's horror?
Simon Oakes: I think that movies find their own feet in a sense, and I think The Resident, for example, is a commercial psychological thriller. I think Let Me In is interesting. I've said it's Stand By Me meets The Exorcist; it's got art house credentials but it's got a commercial filmmaker at the helm, and it's also got a great story. And I don't want to speak for our US distributor, Overture, but I think there will be a wide release -- but it's not going to be three and a half thousand screens. But nor is it necessarily going to be platformed, either. I think it will be a film that will find its feet and I think there will be gradual platform release over time, but I don't really know yet. It's too early to say, but it's story-driven like the Hammer films of old – character-driven, story driven. But with an extraordinary central premise at the heart of it, which is that [Abby] is a vampire. And it's a very touching story as well; do you remember when he says, "What if they do this and what if they do that?" She tries to get him to really look after himself, and he eventually says, "But what if I can't?" And she says, "Well, if you can't, then I'll look after you."

[RegularKarate]

We saw [Let the Right One In]...we thought it was astonishing because it was a love story-- Stand By Me meets The Exorcist --

Didn't make it past this. 
Has this guy any of these three movies?

[MacGuffin]

Spielberg helps Americanize that Swedish vampire movie
Source: SciFi Wire

Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) at first didn't want to direct the Americanized version of the acclaimed Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In, then decided he'd remain faithful, and now defends "Americanizing" the story of a young boy who befriends a girl who happens to be a 200-year-old bloodsucker. And he got help from none other than Steven Spielberg.

At the South by Southwest film festival panel "Directing the Dead," featuring four notable horror directors, Reeves assured fans that he defended the integrity of the Swedish film as soon as he got the gig.

"It's funny, the people who gave me the film to look at in the first place, they said, 'Take a look at this film. We think you might respond to it,'" Reeves said. "'We want to try and get the rights from the Swedish producers. Maybe you'll want to make the kids older. Who knows what you want to do?'" Reeves recalled for the audience on Saturday in Austin, Texas. "I watched it and said, 'Well, here's my response. Number one, if you make the kids older, you literally ruin the film. So please don't do that. Number two, I'm not sure you should remake this film' was my response."

Reeves ultimately did decide there was a good reason to "Americanize" the film. Coming out of the Cold War '80s, he felt, the time is right to challenge the country's political views, as represented by vampires.

"Reagan was talking about the evil empire at that time, and the idea that the evil is outside of us," Reeves said. "I became very drawn to the idea that evil is within us and that whole thing. It's details like that. People think an Americanization means you're going to come in and add lots of gratuitous stuff. In my case it was much more about context and how to honor the original story and find a way that it applies to the way that we live or that I live in my childhood and things like that."

When it came to working with child actors Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass), Reeves felt he needed a childhood fantasy expert. Luckily, he had an "in" with E.T. director Steven Spielberg.

"I'd never really had extensive experience directing children," Reeves said. "I met Steven Spielberg to talk about directing kids, and I was like, oh my God, it's Steven Spielberg, what's he saying? I have no idea, it's Steven Spielberg. He was very generous. I was really lucky, because Steven Spielberg is friends with [Cloverfield producer] J.J. [Abrams]. He'd seen Cloverfield and was like, 'Oh, that's a cool film.' I was like, 'Well, can I talk to you about directing kids?'"

That's the case for Americanizing the Swedish vampire film. Otherwise, there are themes that are just universal. "I related to the bullying and the idea of being a child of divorce and growing up in the '80s," he said. "I think it comes down to, in terms of doing a remake, what your intentions are. Whether you are interested in running roughshod over something or whether or not you are trying to bring something of yourself to it and being committed to and respecting where it comes from. I have such tremendous respect for that story. At the same time, it so resonates with me personally, and I thought, 'There's an interesting opportunity.'"

Let Me In opens Oct. 1.

[Stefen]

When was the last time Spielberg got a good performance out of a kid? Leo in Catch me if you Can? Certainly not since he's transformed into businessman Spielberg. Shia was terrible in Indy 4.

[polkablues]

Probably Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds, but she's a special case.  Can't really give Steve all the credit for that.

[Stefen]

The shitty acting by the brother cancels out that.

[diggler]

what was the point of this article? "this remake won't suck because Spielberg kind of liked my last movie!"

[Pubrick]

well if anything i got the impression matt reeves is a bit vague but has his heart in the right place.

the idea of talking to spielberg is maybe to counter the fact that Cloverfield got kinda mixed reviews and so it adds a bit of respectability to the film. i guess he's thinking of early spielberg and it could be true that if he has a hand in this it'll be alrite in the way he was the hidden hand behind Poltergeist.

i like the idea of Americanizing something IF the process is the result of an american putting something of himself in the new project. the idea is that it's influenced by the author and the author happens to be american, in the process of trying to express his personal take on the story it inevitably imbues the film with american qualities.

i don't know if that's exactly what Reeves was trying to say with his "context" and "things like that". i'd like to believe he's trying not to blow this amazing opportunity by making something stupid.

[MacGuffin]

SXSW Interview: 'Let Me In' Director Matt Reeves on Remaking 'Let the Right One In'
by Peter Hall; Cinematical

I, probably like you, exploded a little inside at the news that someone, anyone, was remaking the brilliant film Let the Right One In less than two years after it was first released in its native Sweden. I have an undying love for Tomas Alfredson's film, which is as fresh a breath of air as one can find from a vampire film, and don't want to see anyone dumb it down for American audiences. Fortunately for fans, it seems like Matt Reeves, the man behind the retitled remake Let Me In, shared those very same concerns.

Cinematical recently sat down with Reeves to chat about remaking what so many already consider to be an untouchable film, and I must say, he won me over. I'm not the only one either. Later in the day, Reeves was a member at the SXSW panel Directing the Dead: Genre Directors Spill Their Guts and you could practically feel the room packed with several hundred horror fans breathe a collective sigh of relief after he echoed much of what he told Cinematical below.

Cinematical: How terrified are you at this point of the horror fans?

Matt Reeves: You know, it's interesting. I totally get why, I would have that reaction and I totally get the cynicism of "I know what's going to happen..." Especially because when I was first getting involved, someone was asking me what I would do with the story and I was talking about Americanizing the story and there's been an idea about what Americanization means. There's an assumption that immediately goes, "Oh, he's going to take it and make it a big, stupid American film and destroy everything that's great about this story!"

But what I was really talking about was an American context for the story and about detail and about taking a story that, in the book and also in the film, is so rooted in Sweden and finding the way the essence of that story works in an American context, in the '80s of America and the idea of the Regan America and the "Evil Empire."

Cinematical: So it is set in the '80s?

Matt Reeves: It is set in the '80s, yeah. There's a great chapter in the book that's just the beginning, the very beginning. Lindqvist grew up in Blackburg where it's set ... you know it's so funny, when I first got involved I wrote to him and said, "I'm so touched by this story and blown away that I just wanted to let you know that I'm getting involved with this and why. It's because I had such a personal reaction to this story. I was bullied when I was younger, it's weird, when I first I saw this story it was way before it came out here. I had just finished Cloverfield and the movie didn't come out for almost another year. Someone showed it to me and -- they didn't even have the rights -- but they said, "Look we're pursuing the rights for this, we think you might be interested in it, take a look at it. The thing you might want to do is consider making the kids older," or some sort of thing, they were just throwing it out to me or whatever.

So I watched the film. Thing is, I've been working in TV for a number of years, and I did a movie before that, and one of the things that I had done was I had created this show we never got to make because it was too dark. But it was a coming of age story from the point of view of this 11 year old boy and he lived in this courtyard apartment complex and there was this girl next door and they had these sort of encounters in the courtyard that were so weirdly reminiscent of what Lindqvist had done. So I'm watching the movie and going, "This is so weird but amazing'" because it had that tone, which was a tone I'd been wanting to do for a long time.

And then when it turned out to be a vampire story, what he had done with it was so brilliant I thought, "This is amazing!" and I was so affected by it I said to the person who gave me the film, "I have two things to say. Number one, if you make those kids older you ruin the story and you shouldn't even make the film, just forget it. And number two, to that point I'm not sure you should remake this film because it is fantastic." And then they said, "Well, you should read the book," so I read the book and again I was so affected by that story and the detail of that story.

So I wrote to Lindqvist and said, "You know, This will not leave me and I'm so connected and drawn to it because of the story, which I so relate to for my own reasons, that I was interested in exploring a similar world with this thing that I had written. So when I saw this, which was so much better than anything that I could have written, it's just incredible." I wrote to him and said, "I just want to let you know why I'm so drawn to it. It's because I think most would think 'Oh, it's a vampire story and this and that' but it's because this story resonates so truthfully about that coming of age."

He wrote back to me and said, "First of all, I loved Cloverfield, I thought that it was a fresh take on an old tale, and so that was the thing that he responded to. And he said "That's what I was hoping I have done and that Tomas and I had done with the film. The thing that makes me more excited is that you're talking about it in a very personal way and this is my autobiography; I grew up in Blackburg and the whole thing." And I thought "Oh my God, that makes total sense that this would be your childhood because that's how vividly it's told."

And so in that book, in reading it, I remember in the first chapter there's this great thing where he talks about the city where he grew up, Blackburg, and he talks about how it was a planned community and that it was one of these sort of places that was built up and then people moved in. And he said you could imagine them building it and then one day all the residents coming in on the same day to move in. And at the end he says, "but the one thing about this place is that there wasn't a single church, which is probably why they weren't prepared for what was about to happen." And you're like "What? I gotta go read -- that's too amazing!"

But that thing was very, very specific to the Swedish context, which was this idea of a community that just sort of sprouts up without history and collides with the idea of this thing that's sort of rooted in primal history, and the idea of not even having religion as a way to deal with it. And I thought well, that whole idea of the planned communities, we have all these levittowns, all the WWII communities that grew up and all the other planned communities after that and I thought, well, that's also a very suburban, America idea, but not a godless one. So what does that context mean and what does the evil empire part of it mean.

So in terms of Americanizing it -- sorry, this is a very long answer -- but it was really about taking specificity and detail and what it meant to be growing up in that age, in that area, under those conditions in an American context so that the essence of that story remained the same but that it would resonate in a context that would be American and that specificity was what was most important. Because to me, the thing that's so powerful about the story is the idea that Oskar is grappling with very, very dark feelings because he's so put upon. His family is tearing apart, he's bullied mercilessly and he has no one to turn to and he's fascinated with these fantasies of revenge because, well, how could you not be; he has no way of expressing himself.

But in an American context, what does that mean when the government is telling you in essence that the evil is other, it's out there, it's not in us, it's over there. So if you're having those feelings does that mean that you are evil, that you are other. And the same thing with the idea of the religiosity of the community; none of these feelings are supposed to be acceptable. What do you do when you're 12 years old and not acceptable and how does that play out.

Cinematical: Sticking with the Americanization, since this is the rebirth of Hammer Films...

Matt Reeves: Which is British!

Cinematical: Exactly. How involved was Hammer in making it a British Hammer Film? I read in an interview the other day that [producer] Simon Oakes was enthusiastic about how much Britain had embraced the film.

Matt Reeves: Yeah, they had. Everywhere it's been loved, but particularly in the UK that film was exceptionally well received, it just caught fire. The problem in the United States is that there are many people who haven't seen it. But the people who have seen it, they are passionate fans, understandably because it's an amazing film. I think what he was referring to was how that film had created such excitement and how Hammer has this history of these classic genre films but in particular vampire films. I'm excited about that, the idea that this will be the first Hammer vampire film in a very, very long time.

That's a really exciting thing and what ended up happening was, amongst all those people who were pursing the rights, they were the ones who got the rights from the Swedish producers, who were involved with the film as well. It's a very interesting process through which this all came together.

Cinematical: Are you familiar with the subtitle ordeal here in the States?

Matt Reeves: You know what, I did hear about that. It's so funny, when we first started putting the movie together I asked all the people if they had seen the film. The directory of photography, this guy Greig Fraser who I hired, he and I just really connected on certain ideas visually. He hadn't seen the film -- he had just finished Jane Campion's film; he's an incredibly talented director of photography -- but we really connected about the sense of naturalism that I think was important for the story. So I asked him to not see the film yet. The essence of this story I want to honor, but we really need to make this our own story. I did the same thing with Kodi and Chloe, who hadn't seen it yet.

But one of the things along the way ... I would talk to people who had seen it. A couple people would say "God, that film was brilliant!" Then some people would say, "Ah, I don't know about that film," and I'd go, "What are you talking about?" And they'd say, '"Well, the acting really wasn't very good." I'd say, "What are you talking about?" I started to realize that they had seen the dubbed version! So I became aware of that through those people. And then I found out about these sort of terrible translations. I don't know what happened but I did hear about it.

Cinematical: Well my question is, even if you weren't aware of those similar problems ahead of production, what was your approach to keeping the nuance of the language, of the dialog? I'm not talking the literal translation, but the lingering moments of "I'm not a girl..."

Matt Reeves: Sure. I don't know what [the new subtitles] said they said, but after I saw the film and was so taken with it -- and I didn't see any dubbed version of the film, I saw the film with subtitles, which I thought was just tremendous. Then I read the book. Obviously I don't read Swedish, so it was already an English translation of the book. You know, it's interesting, because Lindqvist did the adaptation of his book, it's very faithful to it in certain sections, almost word for word.

In adapting it, I tried to make it American as possible in terms of filtering through of what I felt it would be, but I really honored what he had done. In terms of the translation, for much of it I would turn to the book and say, "Okay, what do they say in the book?" I looked at what he had done in the movie and how he would take two scenes and sort of combine them into one. His adaptation was brilliant I thought, so I had the book to constantly refer to for nuance.

There might be something that didn't sound right colloquially, but it was a good translation in the same way the subtitles on the film -- before they did all that dubbing -- were. There was definitely a respect and attention to that and anything that didn't feel quite right we would change. There's stuff that I would go back to the book for often.

When I was making the film, there were a couple points, getting into certain aspects of the film, where I had an idea based on what I had read and also what I had seen in the movie. The cool thing was, and I only did this once or twice, but Lindqvist said, "if you have any questions," and I went "I do have a question!" And so it was a great opportunity to email him and say, "This is how I relate to it, and this is what I think it meant, but what were you intending? What was this?" And he wrote me back a very, very beautiful, articulate answer and it just helped me to know it.

Cinematical: If you had discovered the book ahead of time, do you think you could have gotten an adaptation made in America if the original film did not exist?

Matt Reeves: It depends on how you're asking. If you mean a commercial sense, it's hard. I think if the book had been an American book and if the American book had a bit of a following then the answer is probably yes. It's interesting, when I first got interested, I read the book and ran into a friend from film school who is Swedish. I asked him if he knew the book Let the Right One In and he went, "Do I know the book Let the Right One In?! I love that book!" Because to them, that is a HUGE book in Sweden. It's respected like The Shining, like a Stephen King to them.

So I think if it had been a Stephen King-type book, the answer is yes. If it had been just the Swedish book it would have been challenging because I think there would have been a question of how dark it was. There are times with a lot of these horror remakes where, if a film works well in another culture, it lets American producers know that this is something that can be done. So that's how a lot of things come to pass, I think.

Cinematical: Well looping back to the interview with Simon Oakes, one of the things he said was, "We played a little with the chronology." Can you elaborate on that? Does the story do a sort of Cloverfield jumps back and forth through time?

Matt Reeves: It's definitely a faithful adaptation to the essence of the story. I don't think anyone will think we did anything too radical to the story. The book is a brilliant book and if you were to adapt it in full, you would have to make a ten-hour miniseries the way you would with a Stephen King book. There's an enormous amount of story there and what he did with his adaptation was focus it on essentially the Oskar-Eli story and make that the throughline because it was the potent coming-of-age, Romeo and Juliet story. And I think that is what you have to focus on so the essence of that is exactly what our film is.

The chronology aspect of it ... we're only two weeks into editing so it's too early to say how much of that will stay. But even that, it's not some radical thing, it's much more an approach to storytelling. It's not like the movie is Memento, radically shifting back and forth, it was just a structure thing.

Cinematical: I've also heard the approach this time around is to make it scarier. What is the philosophy there? Did you have an R rating in mind? Are you going to maintain an R?

Matt Reeves: The thing is, I don't know how you do this story and it isn't R. Who knows what it'll be, but there is an expectation that we have that it'll be R. It's weird, Simon told me that he heard Kick-Ass, which got an R here, had gotten a 12+ rating in the UK, so he thought, "Maybe we'll get a PG-13..." I told him that maybe the UK is more accepting of certain aspects of things but that I can tell you that based on what's happening in our story, here I can't imagine it not getting an R.

In terms of the scary thing ... the kind of movies that made me shrink in terror were horror films that were done in a very, very naturalistic, realistic way. When I was young and I saw the Exorcist ... the approach to that film is so horrifying because it's so committed to the believability of that story. As ridiculous as the story is, I tried to do that with Cloverfield too. Most monster movies are silly and fun but the idea was let's imagine that it's totally real and what would happen. The key is to find the reality of it.

When I was working on Chloe I kept saying, it's not about playing a vampire, it's about taking her and making her real and to deal with those darker sides of ourselves, the primal nature. When you think of the Exorcist you think of Linda Blair and pea soup and all this madness, but really if you look at the first half of that film, the stuff between her and Ellen Burstyn is so naturalistic and so real. She's incredible in it! People think "oh, it's the Exorcist and she's just doing crazy," but she's so terrific in it and so believable as this young, 13-year old girl.

That was really what I meant in the approach of trying to get into that tone. To take this story as if it were utterly real, and if it's real, that would be horrifying. The thing about the book that so blows me away, and the movie as well, is that it's such a tender love story but at the same time it's a terrifying story. It's that mixture of tones that gives this story it's unique quality. For them to have those sort of halting, tender interplay and the way they talk to each other and to know that a moment's notice she can turn; it's an absolutely horrifying thought.

Cinematical: Ah, okay, so you're not stocking it with jump scares?

Matt Reeves: No, no, no. It's nothing like that; it's just about treating and honoring the situation that was created and doing it in as realistic a way as possible, which if you think about it would be horrifying. That is definitely what the intention was; just treating it as reality and not "let's scare this up!" It truly honors the story that Lindqvist has created, it doesn't throw in some cool, new scares just to jazz it up.

Again, that's the same thing with what people think when they think Americanization. "Oh, I know what they're going to do, they're going to make this totally over the top," and it's not at all. Again, as with the Exorcist, part of the reason it's scary is because it's done so realistically, but it's also restrained and that's one of the things that I tried to do in working with everyone; in working with the crew and the sets and the actors was to do it as restrained as possible. It's funny, people don't think of Cloverfield as being restrained because it's a handycam movie, but the only reason it's a handycam movie is because that was supposed to be the reality of the situation.

This has nothing like that, but there is an approach to try and do it through his point of view as naturally as possible. It's the restraint of that story that makes it scary. You and I could be having a conversation and then the creepiest thing can happen and it's not in your face. So hopefully no one will think that the film is in your face.

Cinematical: Well I know you're only two weeks into editing, but when can we expect to see our first glimpses and teasers?

Matt Reeves: I don't know. I'm sure you'll be one of the first to know, it'll be soon for sure but I literally just started editing, so there's no date right now.

[MacGuffin]

First Image of Chloe Moretz in 'Let Me In' Remake
by Erik Davis; Cinematical

The first image of Chloe Moretz in Matt Reeves' Let Me In has arrived online, courtesy of an Entertainment Weekly early preview that's apparently only available in the print edition (hence the scan). Moretz, who was last seen as the somewhat controversial, foul-mouthed, ass-kicking vigilante in Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass, trades in her mask, guns and purple wig for a much softer, vulnerable-yet-dangerous look in Let Me In, which is a remake of the supremely excellent Swedish flick, Let the Right One In (which itself was based on a book by John Ajvide Lindqvist). Those who saw that film will immediately recognize what's happening in this image, and while she's not running up walls and jump-kicking bad guys, those blood trails right under her lip prove Moretz definitely gets her freak on during the film.

Our own Peter Hall sat down with Matt Reeves to talk about the film back at SXSW, where he made comparisons between Chloe Moretz and Linda Blair in The Excorcist: "When I was working on Chloe I kept saying, it's not about playing a vampire, it's about taking her and making her real and to deal with those darker sides of ourselves, the primal nature. When you think of the Exorcist you think of Linda Blair and pea soup and all this madness, but really if you look at the first half of that film, the stuff between her and Ellen Burstyn is so naturalistic and so real. She's incredible in it! People think "oh, it's the Exorcist and she's just doing crazy," but she's so terrific in it and so believable as this young, 13-year old girl. That was really what I meant in the approach of trying to get into that tone. To take this story as if it were utterly real, and if it's real, that would be horrifying."

Let Me In hits theaters on October 1st.

[Pas]

Chloe Moretz > Dakota Fanning

I really dig the roles she's choosing to do... I know people here hated her in 500 days, I thought she was pretty funny I guess. Kick-ass was definitely amazing. She's gonna be in Hugo Cabret, some other thing that has a very decent premise (Mixtape) and the pretty kickass sounding film of Michael Mann's daughter... so yeah, good for her.

[socketlevel]

Chloe Moretz > Dakota Fanning

I really dig the roles she's choosing to do... I know people here hated her in 500 days, I thought she was pretty funny I guess. Kick-ass was definitely amazing. She's gonna be in Hugo Cabret, some other thing that has a very decent premise (Mixtape) and the pretty kickass sounding film of Michael Mann's daughter... so yeah, good for her.

it's funny when this kinda thing happens. i would like to hope it's her choices but i doubt it sadly. i think she's very talented and not yet super expensive so talented film makers that are starting out or work in a more budgeted environment have access to her. like in the end i hope she's some cool girl that develops into a very respectable actress and is behind all her choices, but then again she could be doing michael bay pictures next year. i wouldn't be surprised either way; the test of time will reveal it all.

[polkablues]

I like Chloe Moretz, but I don't like her for this role. Really, 12-year-old Dakota Fanning was the ultimate actor for the part. Sadly, that ship has sailed. While Moretz does the "wise beyond her years" schtick well, it only plays about ten years past her actual age. Pre-teen Dakota Fanning, on the other hand, played like someone who had lived a full and extensive life, yet somehow got stuck in the body of a little girl. I don't know. I'm cautiously optimistic about this flick, but I'm more cautious than optimistic.