Subtitle screw up?

I’m a little pissed off. After months of waiting to finally see LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, I have the copy of the Blu-ray sitting on my desk and now I hear that the DVD subtitles are all screwed up. So instead of seeing the version that some people were lucky enough to see in the theaters, I’ve seeing a dumbed-down version of the Swedish vampire flick. Icons of Fright uncovered a big issue with the subtitles on the DVD and Blu-ray in American territories. Instead of the theatrical subtitles, there are more simplistic subtitles added to the DVD that loses some of the nuance that director Tomas Alfredson approved for the theatrical version. Take a look at one example that Icons of Fright points out:

The original theatrical subtitle

The DVD subtitle

While that may not appear to be a huge deal at first glance, the character on the top is tapping a message in morse code. He’s spelling out “sweet” for another character. This is completely lost in the DVD translation where they’ve translated that he’s just tapping a beat and singing along to it.

Magnolia Home Entertainment, who released the DVD and the Blu-ray in the US, have yet to comment. Sadly for those of us who spent money on the disc, there’s not much for them to do to rectify the situation (unless there’s some BD-Live option that could offer updated subtitles). For now it’s just a buyer beware. You should probably wait until the version Alfredson meant for you to see hits shelves.

Click here to head to Icons of Fright to read their entire article (with much more visual evidence) on the matter.