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Apr. 28th, 2009
Quick book review: Let the Right One In
Apr. 28th, 2009 11:27 pmYeah, I'm going to be trying to do more reviews. You've been warned.
So Let the Right One In was one of the best movies of last year. A lot of movie critics put this Swedish-Vampire-Film-That-Could at the top of their list and hey, I'll put it at the top of mine too, because while I enjoyed the hell out of The Dark Knight, it wasn't as well-crafted as this film is. I understand that there's some weird problem with DVD subtitles: the film's in Swedish, and apparently whoever released the DVD didn't get the rights to the English translation, and quickly farmed it out to some hack who didn't speak Swedish too well and thus mistranslated the film. As a result, many people who really want to see this film are holding off until the DVD is re-released. But some of us (aka: me) were ignorant of such things, and rented the dubbed version from Netflix. And while the voice acting was predictably poor and awkward, the movie was stylish enough to impress me anyway.
I was impressed enough to buy the book the film was based on, which judging by its first paragraph, promised not to suck:
Blackeberg. It makes you think of coconut-frosted cookies, maybe drugs. 'A respectable life.' You think subway station, suburb. Probably nothing else comes too mind. People must live there, just like they do in other places. That's why it was built, after all, so that people would have a place to live.")
And now having read the book I've gotta say - if you liked the movie, you need to read it. ( spoiler-free analysis, cut for length )
So Let the Right One In was one of the best movies of last year. A lot of movie critics put this Swedish-Vampire-Film-That-Could at the top of their list and hey, I'll put it at the top of mine too, because while I enjoyed the hell out of The Dark Knight, it wasn't as well-crafted as this film is. I understand that there's some weird problem with DVD subtitles: the film's in Swedish, and apparently whoever released the DVD didn't get the rights to the English translation, and quickly farmed it out to some hack who didn't speak Swedish too well and thus mistranslated the film. As a result, many people who really want to see this film are holding off until the DVD is re-released. But some of us (aka: me) were ignorant of such things, and rented the dubbed version from Netflix. And while the voice acting was predictably poor and awkward, the movie was stylish enough to impress me anyway.
I was impressed enough to buy the book the film was based on, which judging by its first paragraph, promised not to suck:
Blackeberg. It makes you think of coconut-frosted cookies, maybe drugs. 'A respectable life.' You think subway station, suburb. Probably nothing else comes too mind. People must live there, just like they do in other places. That's why it was built, after all, so that people would have a place to live.")
And now having read the book I've gotta say - if you liked the movie, you need to read it. ( spoiler-free analysis, cut for length )