Matt Reeves grilled about Let Me In and Let the Right One In

Matt Reeves, director of the American version film version of Let the Right One In novel, entitled Let Me In, gets asked some direct questions by Capone over at AintItCool about his upcoming film. We have some of the most interesting aspects of that interview below.

Regarding how the Let the Right One In was first brought to his attention

I was trying to figure out my next project, and somebody said “We’d love to do a movie with you” and they said, “Take a look at this film. We are pursuing the rights for it.” And this was around the time of CLOVERFIELD, so that was January 2008. The movie [LET THE RIGHT ONE IN] didn’t come out until long after that, almost a year later. I think it was October of that year

About the original novel

there’s this great chapter, which is the opening of the book where he talks about Blackeberg…what he said at the end of the chapter–and this is the thing that got me hooked in the book right from the very first chapter–was he said “But there wasn’t a single church in this place, which is probably why they were so unprepared for what was about to happen.” Then you are like “What?! I have to read this. This is brilliant.”

On the time period of his version of the story

The Swedish story is set in the ’80s and I wanted to set this story in the ’80s as well. I wanted to honor it as much as possible and translate it into an American context, and our America of the ’80s of course was Reagan America and the idea of the Evil Empire and the idea of being a 12-year-old boy who is so mercilessly bullied, who is basically disconnected from his family, because there is this painful thing that’s going on with the parents getting divorced and feeling so lost and helpless and what that would feel like to be having these dark fantasies in a place where the world is telling you that “Evil is other. Evil is outside of us. It’s over there. The Evil Empire. The Russians, they are evil, but we are not.” The idea of not a Godless America, but an America that is steeped in religion. The idea of saying that those feelings are basically evil. To grapple with the evil within him

Where the story of his version is set

We actually set it in Los Alamos, [New Mexico] because that’s also an iconic place with a very interesting history as well.

Some of the differences between the two film versions

A lot of coming-of-age stories have that aspect of the kid looking out into the adult world, and the adult world being both alluring and terrifying and confusing, and that’s very much what the coming-of-age experience is, so my idea in trying to adapt it was to take as much of the story and filter it as much as I could through his point of view, so we are introduced to those characters through him and so that’s different.

The anatomy of characters in the film

I don’t want to give anything away just yet. You will see when you see the movie, but I have tried to remain as true to the story as possible, but you guys will tell me!

The rating of the film

I would be shocked if it wasn’t an R, because the very content of what the story is, which we haven’t watered down, is an R.

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Before this interview I was very skeptical about the quality of this project but now I think I am looking forward to it. Matt Reeves spin might make his version of the story seems  to be well thought-out. Lets hope it works.