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American Remakes Rant? (Let the Right One In)

At GeekTyrant.com, MRBLACK posted about the American remake of Let The Right One In, and he’s being a bit of an ass about it. Let The Right One In was one of the best movies of 2008, and it received as much support in the US as you can reasonably expect from a subtitled Swedish vampire movie. It was overwhelmingly accepted on the festival circuit, raved over by critics and genre fans alike — even receiving an almost unheard of 96% from 26 critics in the Cream of the Crop ratings at RottenTomatoes.com — and it played in general release at sixteen theaters in the U.S. (That list doesn’t count festival shows, or even the weeks it played at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin.) For what it is, grossing $2M in the U.S. was a good show. Good enough to get the attention of U.S. studios.

MRBLACK wants you to be upset about the remake, and he refuses to support it in any fashion (beyond inflammatory blog posts which will only drive more interest in the film…) You can’t expect American audiences to suddenly become hyper-cinema-literate and start watching foreign genre films. If the remake is notable (whether it is extremely good or bad) it will attract attention to the original, just like the American remake of Japanese horror films (like The Ring) caused a rush at Blockbuster for the originals. An American remake also puts money into the pocket of the foreign studio (and writer) who owns the rights to LtROI so they can go make another great film.

Hold your judgment on the U.S. remake of LtROI until there are more details. Until then, use this opportunity to encourage the less informed to rent the movie from NetFlix. (Tell them how easy it is to stream it!)

p.s. I may just be arguing the point to argue, but MRBLACK’s attitude rubbed me wrong.