It’s no secret to the avid moviegoer or film fan that Hollywood has reached that gross point of saturation where there is little to no originality anymore. Adaptation has been the norm for a number of years now so much so that they’ve drained the well of comic books dry, they’ve bled sequel after sequel out of any successful franchise, and yes I’m talking about Iron Man 3! I mean I love Tony Stark as much as the next guy but come on! Surely every book by Nicholas Sparks has now had a film starring Zac Efron/Channing Tatum/ Ryan Gosling… even that atrocious alien novel by Twilight author Stephanie Meyer got a major motion picture deal. Nothing is sacred anymore from being green-lighted by the big wig acquisition execs at hell pictures corp. Even literary gold like The Great Gatsby has had a Baz Luhrman makeover and Kerouc’s beat classic On the Road has made it to the big screen, for better or worse. Guess we did get to see K-Stew naked… meh.
So when there’s nowhere left to turn, when there’s no dreamy teen fiction about dangerously handsome vampires that sparkle in the sun or kids competing to kill each other in a futuristic dystopian universe, where do they turn? They turn to… films. Foreign films that is. The last untainted pool of creative ingenuity in cinema has in recent years been tapped into and the titles transformed into diluted 2 dimensional remakes that dumb down both concept and artistry to the extent true film fans everywhere are assuming the foetal position and rocking themselves silly waiting for it all to be over. The most recent being Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo which is a Hollywood remake of a foreign film adaptation of Steig Larson’s eponymous book… wrap your head around that one, I dare ya!
2013 is all set to tread the same all too beaten path and be another big year for the remake. Rumours of 50 shades of Grey adaptation are rife and as the search for Anna Steel and Christian Grey continues there is already a confirmed release for the remake of Sam Rammi’s cult classic The Evil Dead. However the next World Cinema title in line for the big budget transformation is Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy. Spike Lee will be taking the helm to re-envisage the Korean Thriller master piece. So with all this in mind I thought I’d clue you all into some Hollywood hits of recent times that originate from much greater foreign films that maybe you didn’t know about.
1. Let the right one in 2008 (Sweden)-Let Me In 2011
This sweet understated Danish horror flick was massively successful for a film of it’s expectations back in 2009. Set in a suburb of Stockholm it tells the story of Oscar, a bullied 12 year old who finds friendship and love with a vampire. Horror romance is a seriously underrated genre. It’s weird being creeped out and emotionally compelled at the same time, it’s also a difficult task for a film to manage but somehow it does. Dark and eerie; cute and warm. Well worth giving a shot, the subtitles aren’t so bad I promise!