Welcome to Re-make Mondays, a weekly feature that takes a look at a remake/reboot currently being touted to hungry cinema/TV audiences. I’ll feature the remake, and also what footage or content I can from the original, and then leave the helpless victim for you all to tear apart or cuddle up to in the comments. So, let’s get started.

Last year you might have caught moody American vampire chiller, Let Me In, at your local cinema. It’s set in grim, frost-bitten New Mexico in the 1980s and features a young boy who is being bullied at school, and the friendship he strikes up with the strange little girl who moves into his apartment complex (played by Chloë Moretz, of Kick-Ass fame).

Here’s the trailer for Let Me In:

Not too many people know that the American film is a re-make of an earlier (and in my opinion, much better) version of Swede John Lindqvist’s 2004 novel, Låt den rätte komma in. The 2008 film bears the same name as the novel, and was directed by Tomas Alfredson, for whom the novel brought back many memories of being bullied as a child. If you’ve seen either version, you’ll know that the bullies come off a distant second in the chilling climax. You’ll never look at a municipal pool the same way again.

Here’s the trailer for the Swedish original

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZJUgsZ56vQ

My Verdict: English re-makes of popular foreign films are not unusual, and in some cases quite successful. The biggest concern is that the elements that made the original work will be literally lost in translation. That isn’t the case here as both versions stick very closely to the original Swedish novel, though respectively, the films focus on different elements of the story more closely.

In the original, the supernatural elements are very low key, played down in favour of the natural gloom of the icy Swedish landscape and the warmth between the two child characters. In the American re-make, the attention to the paranormal element, and the stylisation of the grim Reagan-era setting are much more stark. Though both films vary in tone, and I prefer the Swedish original  personally, either makes an excellent, if chilling couple of hours viewing.