Let Me In

Horrorphile

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Let Me In

October 4th 2010 23:43

It’s a strange climate when the rights to a great movie filmed in a non-English language are acquired by Hollywood and a remake is produced and released within a few years. The Hollywood remake Quarantine (2008) which followed [REC] (2007) was almost snapping at the heels of the Spanish original. With Let Me In (2010), it’s been three years since the Swedish original. Soon I imagine rights will be squeezed from the producers whilst they’re still in principal photography on the original, so that the American remake counterpart can be released simultaneously. It’s a cynical predication, I know, but the climate is cold that way.

Kodi Smit-McPhee as Owen

Thomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (2007) was a superb vampire movie, one of the best in years; elegant, sophisticated, darkly poetic, and haunting in its resonance. Of course, the source material is what gave the movie its tough narrative spine and compelling thematic elements. John Ajvide Lindqvist’s novel is one of my favourite horror stories, beautifully written. Lindqvist also penned the screenplay adaptation. Like most filmed novels Lindqvist was forced to condense its scope, and he softened the novel’s more disturbing elements to make it more palatable for a mainstream audience. That’s not to say the movie wasn’t powerful.

Chloe Moretz as Abby

Let the Right One In is a rare example of a movie adaptation being truly excellent, keeping the essence of the novel, in a way painting pictures from the same ink that penned the prose. Because of this I came to Matt Reeves’ remake with much trepidation. Curious, of course, especially when I read an early interview with the director claiming he would be sticking more closely to the novel than the Swedish original. Reeves scripted the adaptation and credits both Lindqvist’s screenplay and the novel as his source material. I can’t help but compare his remake, partly because there are so few people involved directly in the writing process (Lindqvist and Reeves), and more importantly, because I feel so passionate about both the original novel and its original adaptation.

Richard Jenkins as Father

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Matt Reeves’ Let Me In is the result of producers wanting to make the story of Let the Right One In made more wildly seen. A new version of the legendary Hammer studios comes on board and Let Me In is their first movie in thirty years. It’s not a case of simply re-distributing the Swedish original to more international cinemas. American producers aren’t interested in that. They want an English-language version so that the lazy, xenophobic demographic will spend their bucks. Reeves’ version follows the original movie very closely. In fact, so closely that there are many scenes that look like carbon copies. Not as offensive as Gus Van Sant’s Psycho (1998) remake, but Let Me In feels pointless. It offers absolutely no further insight into the novel, but worse, it makes an unforgivable compromise. In Let Me In the character of Abby (Chloe Moretz), known as Eli in the original, is a girl. Well, as far as the audience who haven’t seen the original is concerned, she’s a girl, even if she does tell young Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) she’s nothing.

Elias Koteas as the policeman

Reeves has removed any reference to the child vampire being an emasculated boy, one of the original’s most powerful and disturbing character elements. He leaves in the scene where Owen peeks at Abby in the bathroom having had a shower, but denies the audience the nightmare image of what he might have seen. “Might” is the operative word. It’s a sly nod to the original, but it remains a cop-out. Even more of a cop-out is crediting the role of Abby’s guardian as Father (Richard Jenkins). He’s a pedophile in the novel, and his role as guardian to Eli in the original movie is suggested as more than just protector. Instead, Reeves indicates that the guardian was once Abby’s childhood sweetheart, but now is rapidly approaching his twilight years. I have to admit I actually didn’t mind that suggestion, depicted via a sepia-toned photo strip of the pair.

Let Me In Nicolai Dorian, Jimmy Pinchak, Dylan Minnette, Brett DelBuono

The bullies: Donald (Nicolai Dorian), Mark (Jimmy Pinchak), Kenny (Dylan Minnette) and Kenny's brother (Brett DelBuono)

I was keeping my fingers crossed that Reeves would include the novel’s sub-plot of teenager Tommy, Oskar’s apartment building neighbour, and his eventual basement battle with the putrid, ruined corpse of Hakan (the guardian), who has been wandering the dark city streets as an undead, after plummeting from the high rise hospital window and hauled off to the city morgue. The desperate confrontation is a climatic highlight of the novel. But in Let Me In Tommy is only referenced as having once loitered in the basement but now has left the building. Other characters from the movie of Let the Right One In are entirely jettisoned or barely peripheral. The role of middle-aged cat-loving Virginia becomes a glamorous young woman (Sasha Barrese), but she’s not given a single-line of dialogue. What I did like though was her ravenous, desperate feeding measures in the hospital room; one of the only occasions where Reeves pulls something from the novel which Lindqvist didn’t include.

Let Me In Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee

Your vampire buddy bleeding profusely is nothing a hug won't fix

The ending is too rushed in Reeves’ version. And the swimming pool sequence lacks any of the nightmarish menace. This is one of the movie’s more important scenes. In fact the whole movie seems to hurtle toward the finish, despite being about twenty minutes too long. And what happened to the Morse code, it barely features. Owen’s father becomes simply a voice on the phone. And in a particularly odd visual decision Reeves never allows the audience to see what Owen’s mother looks like, she is only ever seen in long shot, or out of focus, or from below the neck, supposedly to accentuate Owen’s dis-attachment to his parent because she has become a drunk religious zealot (which she isn’t in the novel or original movie). A bored-looking Elias Koteas plays the detective trying to get to the bottom of the case.

The calvary arrives in the nick of time

I was pleasantly surprised at how androgynous Chloe actually looked, but then it doesn’t matter since she’s not the castrated boy anyway. The special effects make-up is good, especially in a jugular puncturing and in Virginia’s arm chow-down. But the CGI work used to create Abby’s swift and ferocious behaviour when she attacks looked unconvincing. I didn’t like the music at all, except during the opening credit sequence (and when that chilling choir piece is used again later in the movie).

It’s a double-edged sword; Let Me In is better than most Hollywood remakes, but the problem is, the original is so damn good and Reeves doesn’t take it in any new direction. It’s still set in the 80s (curiously with several UK pop songs instead of American), and the location is still snowy, albeit the high desert of New Mexico. I have to acknowledge that the audiences watching this movie who haven’t seen the original Swedish version (and haven’t read the novel) will be suitably enthralled; the story is there, if somewhat emasculated (including the title), the production values are solid, it’s nicely shot, and well-acted.

But Let Me In is ultimately a hollow experience. Superficially it works, but it remains an entirely unnecessary facsimile.

The posters are very striking

Here’s the trailer:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

11 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by David O'Connell

October 5th 2010 03:07

20/20 Filmsight
Screen Fanatic

Seeing this tomorrow night mate so as with Buried, will have to read your review in full afterwards. Just scanned the first couple of paragraphs. Love that second poster with the 3 red drops!

Comment by Bryn

October 5th 2010 03:28

Horrorphile

Indeed David, an inspired poster design, shame the movie wasn't as inspired ...

Comment by ShaunK

October 5th 2010 09:12

Screen Adventure

How good is that snow angel poster!

Dear me Bryn - I'm tossing up on whether to even see this. You know i dont think I ever realised that Eli might have been a boy? Is that not something you picked up from the book only. In the original there was that money shot for half a second and there was no.....erm....'johnson'.... to be seen?

There was no detective in the original was there?

all the same - an eloquently written review Bryn!

Comment by Deni

October 5th 2010 12:47

Abstract Magick
Cinema Herald

I'm looking forward to seeing this regardless. I've been telling myself to try and see it as a different movie, knowing that there will be times when comparing the two will be difficult to avoid.

Shawn, I've read excepts of the book, which I'm desperately trying to get my hands on

(I would love to read it) and I think there is reference to her sex there. In the movie, it seemed like something happened to it.

Comment by Bryn

October 5th 2010 12:55

Horrorphile

Actually I don't think there was a featured cop in the original movie, although there was the law, I was getting the novel and movie confused ... Sheeesh.
No, it's not explicit in the movie that Eli is a boy, but there is a brief shot (other than the no genitalia shot) after Eli kisses Oskar, where you see Eli as an old (androgynous) man, which is a reference to the novel, where Eli allowed Oskar to glimpse her own memories (being castrated by a pedophile a couple of hundred years earlier) via a supernatural kiss.

Comment by Bryn

October 5th 2010 13:02

Horrorphile

Deni, the novel is brilliant. Much darker than the original movie, which is still superb.

If anyone's interested I wrote a guest article last year on a screenwriting website about the differences between the novel and the original Swedish movie. You can read the article here

Comment by Matt Shea

October 6th 2010 11:31

Nice write-up Bryn. I've been hearing different things about this. I was impressed by the first film but not blown away so will probably let this one go. Coming back to check out the Story Department write-up.

Comment by Bryn

October 7th 2010 03:55

Horrorphile

Cheers Matt ... You know, it's not that Reeves has made a bad movie, it's competently handled, just in the end it's anemic compared to the original (even though it's probably bloodier, though not necessarily more nightmarish)

Comment by JohnDoe

October 7th 2010 17:08

Film & TV on DVD

Just as I feared Bryn,

I was really interested in a film that took some of the various subplots in the book and bought them to the screen with their edginess intact.

Sounds like this one has actually taken all the challenging material out and gone a more traditional remake route.

I will eventually check this one out on DVD but I'm sure the masses will eat it up having not been exposed to the glorious original.

Comment by The Film Geekette

October 7th 2010 20:57

The Film Geekette

That's a bit of a shame...

I expected it to be quite sanitized (Matt Reeves isn't exactly an auteur and Americans generally don't want naked children and paedos in their horror movies), but out of sheer curiosity, I might give it a go.

On TV.