Tomas Alfredson's dark supernatural fable LET THE RIGHT ONE IN was one of the best films of 2008, but it had one glaring flaw: it was in fucking Swedish. Sure, the movie was phenomenal, if you didn't mind reading words on the bottom of a screen for 117 minutes. As they say in Sweden, jag knullar ditt bröd! (Translation: fuck your bread!) If you're anything like me, you don't go to the movies to read. You go to avoid reading. Also, to avoid process servers.If you've seen neither the original film nor this one, and if you're interested in either, the nicest thing to say about this version is, it'll do. If it's one of those nights when you just don't wanna read nuthin', LET ME IN will simulate the LET THE RIGHT ONE IN experience, without all the ümlauts. And, to "writer"/director Reeves' credit, he makes some choices which, though not bold, are clever. An early nod to REAR WINDOW, with Owen spying on his neighbors using a telescope and opaque fright mask, is a fresh and creepy addition. Richard Jenkins, as Abby's nameless caretaker, is even better in the role than its originator Per Ragnar (Is that even a name?!) and the mid-film sequence that puts him over the edge, so to speak, is an expansion and improvement on the sequence in the Swedish ür version. You have good ol' American CA$H to thank for that, movie-friends.
Well Amurrica, seeing as you missed LET THE RIGHT ONE IN in '08, here's your chance to see it on your own terms: LET ME IN, Matt Reeves' new English language remake of Alfredson's film, preserves the spirit, look, and plot of the original, making shockingly few missteps along the way. The adorably-named Kodi Smit McPhee stars as Owen, a child growing up in 1980's Los Alamos, New Mexico - which is, apparently, the Stockholm of the U.S. Who knew? A spate of grizzly killings breaks out in Los Alamos, just as Owen gains a new neighbor in his apartment complex: Abby (Chloe Moretz,) a shoeless and enigmatic young lady. Is Abby somehow connected to the murders? I'll give you two guesses.
Also unsurprising about LET ME IN is the fact that after two weeks in wide release, it's made barely $9,000,000, recouping not even half its production budget. For all the effort put into taking a cult film and instantly/slavishly adapting it for American audiences, American audiences still don't care to make this more than a cult film. All the attention that's clearly gone into this faithful remake, and the underlying question is 'why?' Why go through all this trouble, to come out with a product that's so similar to its source, and still too strange for most of our great nation's moviegoers? So that we don't have to read subtitles? Give us a little credit. We did invent jazz, and The Snuggie.
But for each gold star, there's a notch in the negative column too, at least according to this admirer of the first film... Elias Koteas' detective character, another new addition, is finally redundant; the original's Lacke, best described as 'Van Helsing as pathetic drunk,' was a far more interesting, and tragic character. And most egregiously, the original film's holy-shit exhilarating climax is mussed up here. It's a difference of degrees, a difference you may very well not give a breadfuck about - and one I won't delve too deeply into, in case you're eating right now - but let's just say that the Swedes did mayhem just right, and the Americans, perhaps unsurprisingly, overdo it just a tad. But a tad's a tad!
If you're looking for a smart, unsettling slice of occult fiction, head out to the theater now to see LET ME IN. Like, literally, right now. This movie will be gone in about 36 seconds, in order to maximize DVD revenue... But if you've got Netflix streaming, and don't mind suffering subtitles, the original film is ready to watch, instantly, and it is still THE RIGHT ONE.
Cross-Posted at
www.stevenspielblog.com
More from Let Me In
- Reviews: Fantastic Fest 2010: Let Me In Review
- Reviews: TIFF 2010: LET ME IN Review
- News: TIFF 2010: An Extended Clip From Matt Reeves' LET ME IN Impresses.
- News: LET ME IN Opens Fantastic Fest 2010
- News: Matt Reeves' LET ME IN Goes Red Band
- News: New US Trailer And Poster For Matt Reeves' LET ME IN
- News: First Trailer For Matt Reeves' LET ME IN Is Flat Out Brilliant.
- News: Second Image From Matt Reeves' LET ME IN
- Galleries: Let Me In
- News: Matt Reeves' LET ME IN Cast Announced
This review neatly sums up all my suspicions, hopes and fears of this remake. And I love the last sentence!
I'll probably catch this once upon a time on a telly, for curiosity's sake. But for now, while it still costs me money, it's too soon and too little.
Now if there was an enormous hype about Matt Reeves having done a miracle, it would have been different, but seeing as how the general buzz seems to be that it's "not a LOT worse than the original..." I just can't be bothered. Kudos to Reeves and crew for not messing this up, but at the moment there are a lot of other movies that draw my attention more than this one.
Hey Greg,
Don't know if you will read this since you have a hard time reading but I really wish you could have made a video of your review for I have a hard time understanding why I should read a review of a movie...A movie is made with images so shouldn't a review be done in the same way?
Alright just kidding...I think you should just go fuck yourself and stop seeing movies altogether...for anyone that ever says such things as "but it had one glaring flaw: it was in fucking Swedish" should just stop writing about them....you are a disgrace to Twitch.com and should be fired!
Sincerely
Me
I'm pretty sure, dear ol' Greg was being sarcastic. Which can be hard to detect when reading. No irony intended in making that statement. Well not much...
You've summed up most of my feelings about the film yet in a far more enthusiastic way. I was mainly bored. The one thing it did in a more interesting way was how the caretaker had to pore the acid on himself. And that's about it.
My thoughts echo the above as well. The movie is perfectly fine, good, if a little rough in the pacing (gluing the key scenes together smoothly) department. But the acting is solid and if the original didn't exist, it would be a very interesting film. But the original does exist, and it is a fair bit better and a fair bit smoother in execution.
In the original the only real issue was the dodgy CGI cats, in the new one, you have CGI little girl movement which is highly distracting.
The 80s Americana references and music feel a bit forced. The cop is superfluous, the mom and dad characters as well as the neighbors barely exist...while I can see making the film more from the main characters POV, it still seems like a strange choice.
Considering they had all the potential avenues in the novel that were not done in the Swedish film, the fact that they pretty much just re-do the book with a few additional set-pieces and a '3 days earlier...' intro structure is pretty disappointing.
Of course all this is if you have seen the Swedish film. If you've not, you are more than likely to quite love Let Me In. Your loss though, as said above, the Swedish one trumps it in nearly all ways.
I've said it before here on the site, but I'll say it again to frame my thoughts. LtROI is my favorite movie. I think it's absolutely fucking beautiful. So a few points were already going to be knocked off before I even walked into this. But it was a slow Sunday and I decided to go ahead and see LMI with my brother. Good movie, but it doesn't touch the original. Pacing was off and after all the talk about this being a different version of the same story, I was kind of disappointed to find out that was indeed a remake of the Swedish film. It has its strong points though. The kids were great and Reeves clearly knows what he's doing behind the camera. And some of the changes made here were pretty cool. But overall, the moments in this film where I was touched only made me think about the original and how much I love that film. Like I said, good stuff here, but it's going to leave a much better impression on those who haven't already seen LtROI.
Brilliant review, even though I still have no interest in seeing it. "Amuuuurica" haha
Matt Reeves had a great opportunity to develop the source material further, and he failed to do it. The most terrifying scene in the novel is present in neither version of the film, and in the spirit of things bringing up r.e.a.d.i.n.g. isn't what we are looking for, but for all of those interested in supplementary material to Let the Right One In, read the novel, it's fucking gangbusters.
What the fuck is wrong with you Americans! As soon as you have to do something to earn a film experience like reading fucking subtitles for a foreign film, you start whining. Well let me tell you something I hate American remakes, you take a classic film (in some way or another) and then you make it stupider, rape the original scenes that made the film what it is and Americanize into a piece of trash that should never have seen the light of day. There are countless of examples of bad remakes build on a epic cult film. Are you seriously that stupid that you can't watch a movie and read subtitles at the same time? Crazy!