Fantastic Fest 2010 – Let Me In/Buried
So, that was Happy Feet 2.
I really thought about just starting this series of reviews with:
Blah, blah, favorite festival, blah, blah, Geek’s Christmas, blah, blah, blah. How ’bout the movies?
And I still kinda feel like starting them that way, but I wanted to introduce things at least a little bit.
First off, if you don’t know, Fantastic Fest is one of the biggest horror/sci-fi/fantasy film festivals in America and it’s run by the Alamo Drafthouse. It’s one of the only festivals that I go to just to see movies and not to volunteer. Strangely, that’s not what makes it my favorite festival. Really, it’s the films and the people. Sure, some of them are pretentious, but they’re my kind of pretentious. They’re not talking about how Fellini is the only director worth paying attention to and how Tarantino is SO over-rated. They’re talking about how Fulci was MUCH better at eye-gouging than anyone else in the business and how Peter Jackson really did his best work in the beginning of his career.
Ok, maybe not that last one, but I’m sure there’s ONE guy out there who truly believes that. The rest of us know that, while Dead Alive and Bad Taste are amazing films in their own right…Lord Of The Rings. ‘Nuff said.
It’s also probably the fastest growing festival that I attend. I’ve been with it since the beginning and it has grown SO much over the last five years that it’s hard to keep up with it. In fact, they can’t even seem to keep up with it sometimes, but they’re trying really, really hard. That’s why I cut them so much slack when technical things fuck up on their website. They’re seriously just learning all of this shit. Give it time and it will be a well-oiled machine. They’re trying new things (that would be pretty cool if they worked perfectly) to get us in movies as quickly and comfortably as possible.
I miss the little festival that it was five years ago, but I’m pretty happy for them.
Anyway, we’ll see how this all goes down. We can only hope.
First things first, though. The remake we’ve all been worried for.
Directed by: Matt Reeves
Written by: Matt Reeves
Based on book and 2008 screenplay by: John Ajvide Lindquist
Why would anyone remake a movie? Especially one that came out only three years ago?
Well, the main reason is because an American audience can’t understand the original film. At least, that’s what the makers of Let Me In think.
You see, three years ago, a little Swedish vampire film called Let The Right One In took the world by storm…but apparently not America. Although, I saw it in America. So did millions of other people. So many people, in fact, that the producers of the DVD had to redo the subtitles in order to please the fans.
Let The Right One In was a great film. It’s a vampire movie for people who hate what vampires have become. They aren’t sexy. They aren’t seductive. They’re animals and they live pretty sad “lives.” This one happens to be a 12 year old girl.
When I heard that Hollywood was going to remake it, I asked the question above: Why?
THEN I got excited. You see, I heard that it was going to be Hammer’s first film in about 30 years. THAT, my friends, is a reason to get excited! Not only that, but Chloe Moretz from Kick-Ass was going to play the vampire. Awesome!
Oh yeah. The director of Cloverfield is directing.
Wait…what? Hammer? Cloverfield? I don’t get it.
I still don’t get the connection. I mean, I liked Cloverfield and all, but Matt Reeves wouldn’t be my first choice to direct a quiet and desolate film like this one. (Turns out he does a perfectly fine job.)
Either way, it’s the film that opened Fantastic Fest and I was going to see it…and I was going to be excited, dammit!
For those of you who don’t know, Let Me In/Let The Right One In is about a young boy named Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee, the super tiny co-star of The Road) who is constantly bullied. He’s a weakling. His parents are getting a divorce and they really don’t seem to want to be bothered by him. (They are so little a part of his life that we never actually see either of them…even though his mom has quite a few scenes in the film.)
One night, he meets Abby. His life changes. For the better? For the worse? That’s up to you to decide.
Let Me In is not a totally wasted time. On the contrary, it’s actually very well made, acted and written. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the film. The only problem with it is that I’ve seen Let The Right One In. It’s the exact same film. Sure, there are some differences here and there. (No cat scene, it takes place in the 80s, Owen loves Now Or Laters.) Overall, though, there are no real changes. So why the fuck bother?
Well, I will say this: you should support this movie if only because it’s a Hammer film and we all want Hammer to make more films.
There is one change that I thought was interesting. They could have set this movie anywhere in the northern part of the US and it would have made total sense. Instead, they set it in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the site of the first nuclear tests in America. Sure, those were about 40 years before the film takes place, but that doesn’t matter. The shadow of those tests hangs over that town and, in fact, the country all through the 80s. Ronald Reagan is constantly heard on the soundtrack (along with lots of pop songs).
Could this be Reeves’ way of making the film a political statement? Perhaps the vampire is America and it is “helping” the weak, impoverished country get back on its feet, just in a very horrible way?
Well, whatever. The movie is actually really good. It’s just hard to recommend if you’ve already seen Let The Right One In.
Directed by: Rodrigo Cortes
Written by: Chris Sparling
Many years ago, Alfred Hitchcock said that he wanted to make a film set in a phone booth. He never made that film, but he did make one in a Lifeboat.
Just a few years ago, Joel Schumacher finally made a film mostly set in a phone booth. He called it, creatively enough, Phone Booth.
Now, Rodrigo Cortes has made the most claustrophobic movie ever made.
Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is a man in a box…literally. He was buried alive and he has no idea why. We are buried with him as he slowly puts together the whys and hows using a zippo, a cell phone programmed in Arabic and a pencil.
Seriously, that’s the entire plot. It doesn’t sound like much and it sounds fucking impossible. But there it is.
As unbelievable as this film is (that cell battery would have worn out LONG before it did and he would have run out of air pretty damn soon, considering how much he was using his zippo), it really didn’t matter. The tension went up and up and up until you just couldn’t stand it anymore…then it went up some more.
Yes, it’s a political statement. “Who is really the terrorist?” “How do we treat our workers in the Middle East?” “What does it really mean to be a contractor?” Some of it was a bit forced, but I can forgive it. It’s a movie made in a fucking box and Cortes keeps it interesting. It was NEVER boring. Of course, it helps that he has one of the most charismatic men on the planet stuck in that box. If it had been Keanu Reeves, this movie would have blown. But it was Ryan Reynolds. He’s one charming bastard. I don’t know what it is about that guy, but he could make a movie in a box and it would be interesting.
Oh wait…he did. And it was.
The movie opens this weekend. Go see it. I promise, if you want constant tension, you will not be disappointed.
Listen for Stephen Tobolowsky and Samantha Mathis in small, but pivotal, voice roles.
