Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Let Me In (2010)

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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 10-09-2010, 06:42 PM:

CINEMA: 13th Avenue Warren, Wichita, KS
AUDITORIUM: 11
PRESENTATION: 35mm/Dolby Digital/THX
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: None [Cool]

RATING: Two stars (out of four)

THE PLOT: Owen likes a hermaphrodite. Wackiness ensues.

This is an American remake of the Swedish vampire flick "Let the Right One In", which developed a global cult following in the age of sparkly vampires and half-naked werewolves.

The new one carries a similar tone, has several practically shot-for-shot scenes, and yet completely misses the subtlety and feel, not to mention the beauty, that made the original so special.

Too much creepy music, not near the poetic dialogue, and far less interesting character quirks doom this into a pointless attempt at capturing something somebody else already captured.

The original is a treasured part of my movie collection. This one won't be.

Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 10-09-2010, 11:14 PM:

Oh dear. Our fears have been realised. Shame, the trailer looked like it may have been the goods. Will probably see it anyway.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 10-13-2010, 09:57 PM:

while the movie was so derivative and shot by shot of 'Let the Right One In' (sans the cat scene) it actually was pretty good, the one thing that really stood out for me, was the soundmix which sounded meatier than the original film, notably the end pool scene.

Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 10-16-2010, 06:58 PM:

It is movies like Let Me In that make you thankful that a Hollywood remake of the likes of Chan-Wook Park's Oldboy is off the cards. If Hollywood lacks the courage to include the pivotal scene regarding the prepubescent vampire's gender featured in Tomas Alfredson's Swedish flick, Let The Right One In, then it certainly lacks the gonads required to take on the pinnacle of Chan-Wook Park's revenge trilogy. For although the scene is confronting, it is important as its absence renders all of Abby's (Chloe Moretz) ambiguous references to her gender moot. It is symptomatic of the film as a whole, a film which takes few risks, aligning itself to the stock conventions of Hollywood horror film making.

Sometimes low budget is better as it forces the film maker to rely more heavily on the quality and delivery of story and less on the spectacle of the employed cinematic devices. Let Me In fails to realise that the story is less about vampirism than it is about two lost souls finding each other. It takes an original idea and makes it derivative, applying stock horror conventions to a story which possesses a measure of morbid beauty and even pacing, creating instead a kind of Carrie with vampires. In the best American tradition, it overdoes it. Bigger is better. It's the cinematic equivalent of brickwalling music - take the original source and push all the levels up to maximum. The result is less dynamism and less subtlety for the sake of more bang: violins shriek to flag every suspenseful moment; when Abby gets her vamp on she turns into Linda Blair from The Exorcist with the agility of a CG spider monkey; references made to Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) at the beginning of the film suggest a possible budding Michael Myers; we now have a good ol' cop drama sub-plot; and the story is crassly restructured into a retrospective for the purposes of delivering some drama to the audience right off the bat, implying that we lack the patience to endure a slow build narrative. It's ironic that the devices employed to hasten the pace results in a movie which feels 30% longer!

In isolation, Let Me In is a half decent American horror movie but in light of it's source, the missed opportunity is blatantly apparent. It's a movie lacking in bravura; a movie which knows its audience well and preaches to it. This strategy may play directly to the box office take but it lacks artistic merit and in time will pale in comparison to its predecessor.

6 out of 10.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 10-17-2010, 06:30 AM:

Stu, AWESOME, razor-sharp review. But I would dock it another point - 5/10 only because I admit bias -- I am really a big fan of the original and to tell you the truth, it's more than a little arrogant of them to make this forgery so close on the heals of the real LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. Then again, in general, I hate remakes (as opposed to sequels or newly conceptualized versions) of great films. What's the point? Here I guess the point is so that illiterate Americans won't have to read.