Matt Reeves just wants to be loved.
“There’s definitely people who have a real bull’s-eye on the film,”
Reeves tells the LA Times, talking about his remake of Let the Right One In (retitled to the infinitely less evocative Let Me In), “and I can understand because of people’s’ love of the
[original] film that there’s this cynicism that I’ll come in and trash
it, when in fact I have nothing but respect for the film. I’m so drawn
to it for personal and not mercenary reasons, my feeling about it is if
I didn’t feel a personal connection and feel it could be its own film,
I wouldn’t be doing it. I hope people give us a chance.”
Well, one thing that almost makes me willing to give him a chance is the fact that the Times article reveals that Reeves is keeping the characters as 12 year olds. There had been a lot of talk that they would be aged up to get a real romance going, and even though Reeves had denied it in the past, I like hearing that the script is in a second draft and the kids are still kids.
The rest – setting it in the 80s, setting it in Colorado to make it snowy – doesn’t move me one way or the other. But as long as the kids remain 12, I’m willing to hold the tiniest, weakest, most fragile sliver of hope that this remake won’t turn out to be a huge turd as well as being a completely masturbatory exercise (even if the movie is great, it’s a completely masturbatory exercise).