the blog of nathan loding

The orig­i­nal Swedish ver­sion is clearly the win­ner between both, but the Amer­i­can ver­sion has a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the tale, and brings in sev­eral unique items that the Swedish ver­sion didn’t offer. In all, you actu­ally can’t com­pare the two apples to apples. It’s a wor­thy stand-alone film that deserves its own place on the hor­ror movie col­lec­tors shelf, even if it is right beside the original.

Let The Right One In is one of those rare films that comes along every few years. It’s been described as “tran­scend­ing gen­res” and it truly does. At it’s heart, it’s a coming-of-age story for a 12 year-old boy out­side Stock­holm in 1982. It’s about the girl who gives him the con­fi­dence to make that lead towards man­hood, and their incred­i­bly unique rela­tion­ship. It’s also about that girl, and her unique sit­u­a­tion – she’s a vampire.

I grew up on the orig­i­nal Clash of the Titans (1981). It’s corny by some of today’s stan­dard, but the movie still holds up over­all. The story sticks remark­ably close to it’s myth­i­cal roots, though it does take it’s own cre­ative embell­ish­ments along the way. Ray Harryhausen’s effects work is still amaz­ing to me. I can watch the orig­i­nal over and over. I will never watch the remake again.