Let Me In | Horror/Romance/Remake | rated R (A,L,V) | starring Chloe Moretz, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Richard Jenkins | written & directed by Matt Reeves | 1:56 mins
Severly bullied at school and ignored by his divorcing parents at home, young Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) finds a kindred spirit in new neighbor Abby (Chloe Moretz) a 12-year-old girl who seamingly only comes out at night, isn’t 12, isn’t a girl and feasts on human blood. As Owen works up the courage to face his bullies, dead bodies start piling up in the town, appearing to be the work of a ritualistic serial killer, sending an FBI agent circling around Abby and her handler (Richard Jenkins).
It’s a reality that a lot of people just don’t like to watch movies and read subtitles with them. When they want to read, they’ll read a book. It’s a reality usually lamented as sad, stupid and the latest excuse for some good old fashioned American-bashing by armchair teenage internet critics. While that’s always ignorant, you still can’t get around that these people are missing out on some great movies, one of those many, many movies was the Sweedish vampire novel adaptation Let the Right One In. So in keeping with the tradition that a movie isn’t a real movie unless it comes out of the Hollywood cannon, we get this instant remake of a 3 year old film taking the story of human/vampire pre-teen love to English speaking audiences.
Surely the subject of remake hate, Let Me In doesn’t really fit any of the criteria that usually sparks remake hate. For one thing it’s not a cash in as the original movie is unknown to most Americans outside of the internet movie bubble or New York/LA festival circuit. It’s not a reboot of a classic like the Platinum Dunes remake. It just is. Adaptor/director Matt Reeves, who also surpassed low expectations with Cloverfield, does it again here. He approaches the film seriously, with reverance and respect to the original film and book it is based on. He doesn’t speed it up or contemporize it, doesn’t stunt cast it with celebrities. He even keeps with the androgenous theme of the first film casting an effemenite boy and a more dominent girl in the roles. The movie is also a rung on the ladder for Chloe Moretz (who cursed her way through Kick-Ass and (500) Days of Summer), well cast as Abby, on her way to full-blown stardom. In short, Let Me In is good by any standard. If you won’t see the original, there isn’t anything wrong with this version.
So now that the newbies have left, let’s take a look at the differences between the films for those who have seen Let the Right One In. The biggest difference to me was the fleshing out of Abby’s handler. I did always think it was odd and silly that her handler would be so inept as to try to kill those for blood out in the open, easily and obviously getting caught. In Me this element, almost a background detail in the original, is given a storyline all of it’s own. For those watching this movie again, this new stuff will make Let Me In belong to Jenkins’ character at times. Now he dons a mask (like a garbage bag with eye holes) and hides in the backseat of unsuspecting teenagers. The gym sequence in Right is replaced with a far more suspenseful gas station sequence. A real high point of the film.
A lot of Let Me In feels that way. For the most part it’s nearly a shot for shot remake, but the stuff that is added is welcome connective tissue fleshing out and connecting things that were given to us in a vacuum in the first film. Another superior layer in the movie, for me at least, is the bullying. Reeves really amps up the brutality and humiliation done to poor Owen to the point of near abuse and he doesn’t let us look away. It builds into that wonderful payoff so well. In fact, I would say the payoff is the biggest thing Let Me In botches. What was so wonderfully clever in it’s subtlty is now turned into bloody overkill.
Another interesting change is the re-casting of Abby’s victims. In the Sweedish version, possibly my favorite little detail was that Eli’s vampirism spread through a small group of elderly town gossips. But because we don’t really have that kind of coffee clatch group here in America it would come off as cheesy so instead he turns that part of the film into Rear Window where by which random neighbors who Owen watches through his telescope become the victims. Instead of a nosey neighbor, we get the usual Hitchcock-style cop closing in where he shouldn’t. I can see why the change was made, but it is a less effective approach.
Let Me In really works, far better than I would have expected. Reeves is a filmmaker who is comfortable enough with the material to play it with the exact pace it needs to be played. The playful melding of romance with crowd-pleasing vampire flick is present here. The yearning, the longing for companionship between two ignored, lonely souls is too, but doesn’t register as powerfully. It’s a good remake and a good vampire film in it’s own right. But beyond a simple compare and contrast of these two very similar movies, it boils down to the fact that I still couldn’t escape the feeling that I was seeing something I had already seen before, and that excitement and euphoria of being surprised by a great movie was not there. That’s a feeling you can’t recreate. Hopefully those who have not seen Let the Right One In will get that feeling from Let Me In.