The announcement of a "Let the Right One In" remake was initially met by resistance from some fans who didn't feel that a 2008 film, one largely considered to be an exceptional work, was really worth revisiting. Reeves' greatest hope for the SDCC panel was to show attendees exactly why and how his own take on the story stands apart. By most accounts, he accomplished just that. And now that you've seen some of his vision, I figured I'd share some more from the director on his remake in comparison to the 2008 original.

"It's a very Scandinavian film," he explained. To Reeves, those here in the States who don't care for "Let the Right One In" likely feel that way because the relationships in the film "feel foreign and maybe keep you from identifying as much with those characters."

While Reeves is himself a fan of foreign film, and he adores "Let the Right One In" in particular, he also acknowledges that this disconnect often exists for many viewers. With "Let the Right One In" specifically, he noticed in the book and the film both that the story's setting was "a planned community" of the sort that is unique to the country of origin.

"It's... worker housing, that sort of cold, planned community that... sprouted up all at once. You can almost imagine everybody moving into the town all at once... as opposed to a town that grows over time; it didn't even have a church, it didn't have all of the basics that you might have if you had a town that had been around for hundreds of years."

While such settings do exist in the United States, Reeves saw a much more widely recognizable comparison in America's small-town suburbia. "It's kind of [like what you see in] 'E.T.,' that kind of 'Spielbergia,' the planned community, suburbia."

The time period was also key in translating the story for American audiences. Both "Let the Right One In" and "Let Me In" are set during the '80s. Here in the U.S., this was the time of Ronald Reagan's administration, a very different time for the country. "The idea of Reagan's 'evil empire' speech and that whole sort of school of thought was that evil was something that was outside of us. Evil was 'Other,' it was over there, it was the Soviets."

So in "Let Me In," Reeves hopes his story speaks to the idea that his characters, particularly Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), "would be grappling with these very, very dark feelings but being in a kind of American town where there was that sort of [Reagan era] mindset and religiousness. How would you fit in? How would you feel about yourself being confused and being 12 or 13 years old and not knowing what it means that you wish you could kill those kids who were terrorizing you every day? The humanity of that."

"I'm interested in those sort of universal character themes, but also the specificity of the culture that it's from. But what I was really interested in doing [in 'Let Me In'] was taking those same sort of themes... but putting them in an American context."

In addition to the basic story requirements, Reeves also sees a tonal departure between his film and the 2008 original. "Let Me In" falls closer to the book as he experienced it. "I will say in terms of the tone that I was trying to... as much as possible put you into the main character of Owen and the idea of experiencing all of this [through him]. I love... the vampire story as a metaphor for this pain of his adolescence and the loneliness. The idea of being rooted to his point of view."

Reeves compares this aesthetic to the work of Hitchcock and others, those who build suspense filmically, develop it from the character's point of view so that we, the viewers, identify with it and thus feel it more acutely. "So I hope that in addition to it being a very tender coming-of-age love story, ['Let Me In' is] also... a very suspense-filled and, in a way, dread-filled experience. Like in 'The Shining' or something like that, where you have this sense that something's not right, that all things may not come to a good end. That eerie quality, which is something I felt in reading the book."