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There's also a sequel (book) called Let The Old Dreams Die. It's a collection of stories with the main one being a continuation of Let The Right One In
Let the Old Dreams Die
Edit: thanks for the award 🤘
I never knew!! Now I want to read how the story continues!
Worth the read?
It’s not a big story, but gives a proper ending compared to the book. This book’s ending could be seen as ambiguous, this makes it a bit clearer. It’s more of an epilogue than a complete story of its own.
The short story ”Let the old dreams die” is definetly worth a read if you’ve read the book or seen the film. I found it very beautiful och haunting. It’s from the perspective of another character who appears briefly by the very end of the book and deals with love and what we will do for love (themes found in the original book as well) in a very beautiful and realistic way. It’s very different to the book in tone and how it’s told, and uses the original story in an interesting and smart way. I’d even say that it works as a stand alone short story, althought then you get the original book spoiled and that one is also very much worth a read even if you’ve seen either one of the film adaptations first.
There seems to be something inherently bleak and haunting in the tonality of a lot of Nordic cinema, even TV. The Danish Swedish collaboration of Bron/Broen , the original version of The Bridge series has that same tone and sweeping sparse Nordic panoramas. Another Swedish series, Wallander has this same feel.
You go back to 1950’s and 60’s Nordic cinema and some of the most popular and critically revered works to come out from that part of the world carried that very same bleak tonality. The movie The Seventh Seal and a few others come to mind.
I find it pretty interesting too. A lot of Nordic peoples I’ve encountered are sincere and offer up servings of warm hospitality. But I guess it’s something about climates with longer winters that really provoke a sense of stillness and reflection while your alone. Cold weather does drain you of more physical energy than the fall or spring like seasons of a temperate climate. I don’t know the real reason, but it is really interesting.
The Seventh Seal is amazing! I agree with you about cold weather. Perhaps it's the short winter days as well. Things shot in Alaska and Canada have that feel. Christopher Nolan's "Insomnia" comes to mind.
I believe "Insomnia" is a remake of a Nordic film.
Seventh seal is so good! Can i please show off that im friends with a closely related person of the actor that plays death in the movie and that she looks exactly like him irl hahaha.
Ironically, The Bridge takes place in the most southern part of Sweden (and the Copenhagen area of Denmark of course) which is considered very lush and bucolic in summer. To get that bleak atmosphere, they had to film exclusively in winter. Wallander was shot in the same area and was also mostly shot in winter.
Original "The Bridge" is AMAZING. I haven't even looked into the American version because there's absolutely no way that it's even half as decent. Like American "Fawlty Towers" (ghastly), the only reason such a thing was even made was that Americans have a pathological inability to watch foreign films or television.
Huh, i always assumed the title is just based on a saying and the Morrisey song is based on the same. Seeing the sequel title is the first time ive realised its named after the Morrisey song.
I’m not a Morrisey fan so never realized that but it makes sense. The author references Morrisey in one of his other novels.
I bought the film on iTunes because I liked it so much. The US version is rubbish in comparison, just like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo they tried to remake and it never did the original justice.
I thought the remake was decent. Neither do justice to the book because there is just things you can't put on film
Atmosphere was all out of whack for me. I prefer to watch the original in its native language with subtitles.
The film pretty much just copies the original but inverts everything. If Oskar is on the left, Owen is on the right. If it's a close up shot in the original, then it's a distance shot in the remake and visa versa. The remake even inverts the credits so that it's white at the end whereas the original is black. Mark Kermode said it right: The original is about children that happens to feature vampires and the remake is about vampires that happens to feature children.
Changing the name to “let me in” was a huge wtf moment for me.
If you like different vampire stories, check out Only Lovers Left Alive. I feel like a lot of people missed it.
It’s a great one, if you watched the What We Do In The Shadows tv series, Tilda Swinton reprises that role to make an appearance as part of the vampire council.
That council was the who's who of Vampire high society.
Blade was there!
And had connection issues with his video call, which was a hilarious gag
Why was Blade there? Wouldn’t he just kill them all?
Keifer wanted to come, but was unavailable.
Tom and Brad couldn't make it
STOP does she really play the same character?! Eve? Or just similar?
The joke is that she's playing the character, but they never say it. The vampire council scene includes Wesley Snipes, Paul Reubens because he was in the Buffy movie, Danny Trejo because of From Dusk Til Dawn, and also Evan Rachel Wood I assume because of True Blood.
They also mention “Rob, but he’s trying to distance himself from the whole vampire thing.”
That's awesome. I never watched the show because I assumed it just wouldn't be as good as the movie but perhaps I'll have to check it out
It is a head nod to basically all vampire movies and shows. They talk about Tom and Brad being too busy to join. Paul Reubens is there referencing his turn as a vamp on Buffy.
Paul Reubens was great in that role.
Same.
Ahhhh
That council scene was a pretty hilarious flex.
My husband and I were in tears, we were laughing so hard at this part.
I reckon its better to leave it as a surprise but then again it would also convince people to watch it
I love Tilda Swinton and that movie is on my list of movies to watch. I dont know why I havent gotten to it yet. I also loved What We Do in the Shadows and havent seen the show yet so I'll make an effort this month since its spooky season.
The TV show is actually better than the movie. And I love the movie.
I was scared it was going to be a let down. Now I'm excited to watch it.
Only lovers left alive is one of my favourite films of all time. I don't know, it just does something to my soul.
For me, the real genre-breaker was "Thirst"
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Yeah that's the one. There weren't even fangs! Honestly if I never saw the cover before watching it, I would have thought it was going to be a religious movie until about halfway through.
Loved Thirst
“Give me all of your money.”
The soundtrack is incredible. I still listen to it a lot.
You! I like you. I couldn't agree more. I think it has a lot to do with atmosphere. The entire movie has this ethereal, dream-like quality to it. Not to mention, it may be one of the only movies I've ever seen that romanticized night-time Detroit, and boy did they nail it. I also love how music and their love for it was such a central theme to the film. The movie Drive had a very similar feel to it and is also one i adore.
I agree! I watch a ton of movies and yet I only saw Only Lovers Left Alive for the first time last year. My immediate reaction after watching it was “how to fuck could this have slipped under my radar”.
I think it’s truly awesome as long as you don’t watch it expecting an action filled blood sucking movie. It’s quite the opposite.
Also check out "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night"
Yeah, that was a good one.
And then there's another great one from original "Old Boy"s director: "Thirst".
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762073/
Ok. Now my favourite modern vampire movies are together. A girl walks home alone at night, thurst, only lovers left alive and let the right one in (I also liked the American interpretation).
Ravenous.
More of a Wendigo movie but it’s not specified. The movie leaves room for overlap between both myths.
Great movie. Its an old timey western, but a horror movie about vampires. One of only two movies i know in that genre. (Bone tomahawk is also a great western horror)
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Well there goes your social life...
Ravenous isn't about vampires though?
Not exactly but close enough. Its based on a native American superstition (the wendigo iirc) that parallels vampires in broad strokes (drink the blood of another human, gain super powers and a desire to drink more human blood)
That openening/closing music with the weird time signature was stuck in my head for like a year
I just watched that recently and loved it. Hiddleston and Swinton just had this physicality to their acting that made it feel like they were actually preternatural creatures. I can't think of a better physical performance of vampires.
That soundtrack ! A grossly underrated, under the rader flick.
We really had a lot of long discussions about the lives of vampires after watching this one. It's crazy good. Tilda Swinton at her best. Oh, and the soundtrack!
Yes! And also “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night”, an amazing Iranian vampire film.
Edit: see comment below. I was apparently wrong about it being Iranian.
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Oh snap! Really? I had no idea. Thanks for the correction.
It's not really a correction, it's just being pedantic. She's a first generation English Iranian. Her family was born in Iran, she was born in England but raised in the US. The cast is all Persian or 1st gen Persian-American.
I love this movie so much. Watched it for Hiddleston, ended up really enjoying it.
It's a Jim Jarmusch movie... c'mon guys.
I LOVE his stuff.
ETA, but yeah, I can see people not knowing who he is. I just find his way with dialogue to be exceptional.
Gonna be that guy, the book is amazing. I highly recommend giving it a read, the author also wrote a book called Handling the Undead dealing with a more emotional angle on zombies. I remember when Reeves said he wasn't going to remake the Swedish movie but create a better adaption of the book. Well, that was a lie...
I really tried to like the book, but holy shit its really really really really bleak and has almost nothing but awful things happening throughout. The movie does too, but as a compensation it looks beautiful.
I think that might have been Lindqvist's intention; was to show that Oskar's life really is that bleak, which is a perfect description btw, and that Eli was realistically the only good thing that was in it for him.
Except that Oskar is destined to become elis keeper just like hakan or whatever his name was. That's why it's so bleak, the thing that seems like a good thing is actually the darkest part of it
That’s an interpretation that many people have but not one shared by the author.
See further down in these comments, i discussed that with someone else as well lol
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I grew up in Sweden in the same time period. Captured it so well it was eerie. My childhood was pretty bleak.
Why was Sweden bleak at the time or was it just your experience and that made you connect to the character.
I grew up in Sweden then too. Sure, we had free high quality child-care, healthcare, education, welfare, with strong unions, good economy and very low crime. But we only had like really few tv-channels, so all in all it was pretty bleak.
Yes, bleak is a very accurate description.
Yeah. I distinctly remember the book describing in detail the farts leaving the young boy’s butt cheeks during the castration. It’s a lot.
Oh interesting. I read the book after seeing the movie and didn’t like it that much. Didn’t hate it, but loved the movie more. It’s been a few years; maybe I should give it another try.
I typically find that whichever I experience first is what I enjoy more with a handful of exceptions.
I was just thinking about this. I saw Let Me In first and got interested in the book. I read it and thought wow, there are more characters here that I didn’t really find interesting. Then I watched Let The Right One In after reading the book and noticed there were a lot of parts cut out and thought the movie was bare with just the important scenes included. Then I realized, I bet if I saw this one first, I would not notice the cut out parts from the book and would find the pacing fine.
I'm gonna get flamed for this but I felt that way about Lord of the Rings. I was introduced to it by the movies and while I enjoyed reading the books afterwars there was so much exposition and development for minor characters that it took me a lot of effort to finish reading them.