The US trailer for this film gave a very different feel.

[Drad]

I saw a thread about this a WHILE ago but I really wanted to expand on this because I just thought about my thoughts when I first saw the US trailer.

When I first saw the trailer, I thought Oskar was evil, and that Eli and him went around killing people, and the movie was a horror movie about two evil children. Also, I was under the impression that Eli and Oskar were having a sexual relationship, because around in the trailer when he asks "Will you be my girlfriend?" it shows the scene where oskar is in his underwear, laying on his bed with his hands behind his bed looking up in pleasure.

Anyway, I was put off on watching this film for about a year. I heard about it from some of my friends and the site owners of www.spill.com once it was released at the Austin Fantastic Fest, and I didn't see it until I was able to find it on DVD. I was blown away once the movie was halfway through, because the movie had a very lighthearted feel to it compared to what the trailer made it look like.

[sauvin]

I saw the trailer after I'd seen the movie a few times and was struck by how very different the "feel" of it was from the movie I now knew so well.

There's another movie whose marketing and trailer were also so misleading: Bug. I went expecting a creature feature, some dumb brainless thing to waste a Sunday night with. Bug, however, left me unable to wait for the DVD to come out so I could watch it with subcaptions or subtitles (I don't understand speech easily).

I gave LTROI a miss when it came around to the big screen here, but I don't remember having seen any trailers for it. The summaries I'd seen for it were "a girl is a vampire, a boy is lonely, they're drawn to eachother", and it sounded ilke "Oh, geez, we get to watch a male Buffy fret about his math homework while he's not busy playing Tic-Tac-Toe with Spikette?"

Bearing in mind that Americans have dismayingly short attention spans and appalling retention, how would you suggest the marketing could have been better handled?

[Drad]

The main thing about the trailer that made it seem darker than it was was the music.

[sauvin]

Darker? Maybe, maybe not. Its true darkness is still a matter of debate on this and other boards

[a_contemplative_life]

I saw the film based on a review I'd seen on YouTube, and before seeing any trailers. Later I saw the trailer and thought it was appalling misleading. Could be that some of the disgruntled posters at IMDB are folks who went to see it based on a trailer and didn't get what they thought they'd get. I can't understand why such a beautiful story like LTROI would be marketed this way. Stupid.

[hillerr]

The US trailer was misleading. 'Bait and switch' comes to mind when describing it.

[NaKriege]

Makes me think of this comic. Applies nicely to the disconenct between the American trailer and the movie's actual content.

[Gavin]

Some of us Americans aren't so bad. I grabbed Let the Right One In out of the blue. Never heard of it, never read anything about it, except the back of the DVD right before I rented it. I might be different in how I do things but any time I watch a foreign language film I watch it as is first, no subtitles, just watch it in its natural state. I do this to set a sort of emotional compass if you will. I try to read the facial expressions and body movements that go along with the dialogue to see if I can understand what is actually going on without truly understanding the language. What is interesting about this method of viewing a film such as this is that I became engrossed in other aspects of the film that I may have missed while reading the subtitles. Eli's jump for instance, the use of hands, reflective surfaces, doors, and the Scandinavian landscape. The sterile way that Hakan went about his business. The awkward and yet moving intimacy between Eli and Oskar. Sounds other than the voices that told their own little tale. I returned the movie before watching it with subtitles because I knew that I would have to own the film. Of course I researched the movie immediately following my first viewing and became aware of the subtitle controversy and made sure I purchased the theatrical version before I took on the subtitles. While watching it again, this time with the subtitles turned on, the appreciation I felt toward this film was tenfold. It was a living and breathing work of art.