Ok, so my wife bought me a shit-ton of Blu-Ray's for xmas, and one of them was the original Let The Right One In. I watched it last night. I had heard some great things about the flick, but after watching it, I'm not sure what to think about it.
The first thing I noticed is while it had great atmosphere, it seemed to hold on most shots in the film way too long. There could've been 15 minutes shaved off this film had they just cut and moved on once a scene was over - instead, they would just hang on a scene for way too long after it was done. Not sure of the purpose, but whatever. To me, the pacing was just way too slow. The flick clocked in at an hour and fifty minutes, so it's a pretty lengthy haul considering the pacing.
I think the cinematography for this flick was fantastic (although there is something to be said about the lack of motivation for much of the lighting in the outside scenes, especially in the woods, but that's just being nitpicky, so lets move on), and the 'tone' it carried was indeed very creepy.
Those who haven't seen it, I'm not going to spoil it, but the general plot is about a boy (who is apparently very timid and doesn't like to stand up to the school bullies) who becomes friends with a little girl who moves in next door - who just happens to be a vampire.
One thing I will say is that this was a very refreshing look at vampires after the garbage that has been coming out lately (Twilight anyone?) - this is how I could see a "kind-of" love story develop between two individuals, one vampire and one human. It seems more gritty and real of a relationship between the two than has been presented in past vampire-and-human-love-story kinda flicks.
The ending (no worries, no spoilers!) can be taken one of a couple different ways. It could be a 'happy' or a 'sad' ending - depending on how you interpret what you see. That's all I'll say about that as to avoid spoilers.
The actors (the kids) were actually really decent. I watched the flick with the english dubbed dialouge because I didn't feel like reading subtitles for 2 hours, but it was still effective, even though it wasn't in it's native sweedish language.
All in all, I think it was a pretty decent flick, but it doesn't seem to have much of a 're-watchable' quality for me. It was good, but it's not like I'll sit down and repeatedly watch this over and over again. It's pacing was just too slow. Great tone and atmosphere, but the pacing needs some serious work. Not sure if that's because it was a sweedish flick and we americans are used to the "get to the fucking point already!" kind of movies, but it just seemed meandering. Other than that, it's worth a watch, at least once, especially if you're sick of the current trend of vampire flicks and shows.
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Originally Posted by bassman
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