Hey, Ben here. I’m trying not to cuss so much on The Movie Advocate. I can make my points just as well without using dirty words. That’s what my mom tells me, anyway. Well sorry mom, there’s no other way to say this:
Fuck Let Me In. Fuck it a lot.
I’m not generally in the crowd that hates remakes unequivocally. Sure, I’d love to see more original material come out of Hollywood as much as the next movie snob. On the other hand, some of my favorite movies are remakes. John Carpenter’s The Thing and David Cronenberg’s The Fly spring to mind. Walking into the theater, I was actually expecting to enjoy Let Me In, the American remake of the chilly, moody Swedish vampire masterpiece Let the Right One In. Most reviewers have given the remake positive notices. Tim League and Harry Knowles made it the opening night selection for Fantastic Fest, which is about as close to the Geek Stamp of Approval as a movie can get. It’s not just the Geek Vote, though. Esteemed FILM critics are also drinking the Kool-Aid. The 90% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes is the year’s most disappointing critical letdown this side of the tepid reception for the much more brilliant and original Splice.
I should have known when the guy behind me in line for the movie exclaimed, “Wait, where are the 3D glasses!?” Let Me In aims for that guy. It also aims for the 400 pound lady in the row in front of me who was eating a McDonald’s Big Mac in the theater. Because if Let the Right One In is fine dining, Let Me In is a Big Mac. Or, better yet, let’s say Let the Right One In is like going to a wine tasting. You swirl and sip the wine, drawing out all of the hidden and implied flavors. You develop the whole picture by contemplating the juxtaposition of overbearing and subtle tastes. Let Me In is more like Coors Lite. It tastes like piss but it gets you drunk, kind of. All of the plot points from Let the Right One In are present here. Indeed, at times it comes dangerously close to a shot for shot remake. But all the finesse of the original has been drained out, leaving nothing but a façade that looks like the right story, but is nothing more than a superficial facsimile. This is an empty shell of a movie, with a hole in its heart.
Let Me In is an American remake, by which I mean that it lacks subtlety as much as it lacks subtitles. “I don’t read my movies,” cries Joe Moviegoer, “and I would be much obliged if the movie would think for me as well.” “But of course,” responds director Matt Reeves. “Don’t worry about having to come to any conclusions on your own. You know, the big problem with the original – apart from the subtitles – is that there are loose ends and sometimes you have to reflect on a moment to draw out its full meaning. I’ll make sure that everything in my movie is spelled out in flashing neon lights.”
I’ll give you some specific examples. Let the Right One In was set in the 80s, but maybe you don’t remember that. If not, that’s okay. It wasn’t a big deal. It was just one of this little details that made that world seem isolated in time as much as in setting. Matt Reeves has ‘corrected’ this subtle touch by reminding us every five seconds that we’re in the 80s. Ronald Regan pops up on TV multiple times. The characters listen to David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” at least four times in the movie. The guy who works at the gas station looks like Boy George. Woah, crazy! Hey, did I mention that Let Me In is set in the 80s? LOLz. Oh look, Now and Later candy, remember those? Hey, did I mention that Let Me In is set in the 80s? Ms. Pac Man! Hey, did I mention that Let Me In is set in the 80s? It’s set in the 80s.
Remember in Let the Right One in when it dawned on you that, wait a minute, that old man isn’t Eli’s dad, it’s her lover! If so, that makes you smarter than Let Me In’s target audience. Abby (this movie’s Eli, played by Chloe Moretz) and the old man (Richard Jenkins) caress and hint in trailed off sentences, but just in case you didn’t get the picture, Abby shows Owen (this movie’s Oskar, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee) a photograph of her with the old man back when he was her age. OMG!!!! Woah, I totally get it now! Thanks, Matt Reeves. Did you catch in the original where they hint that Eli is maybe not a girl at all, but rather a castrated boy? It’s subtext, but it’s there. In Let Me in they play the “What if I wasn’t a girl” bit for laughs. “OMG, he thinks she’s talking about being a boy but she’s actually talking about being a vampire! LOL, that would be totally gay.” Hey idiot, it is totally gay. Deal with it.
If you’ve seen Let the Right One In, you may recall that some of its most memorable moments as not just the big action beats, but also the quiet montages of snow falling in Oksar and Eli’s little suburb. Everything in that movie informs everything else. The whole is entirely unified, creating a hypnotic, dreamlike atmosphere. No so with Let Me In. All of those peaceful passages have been violently excised form the story.
What’s left is MEGA-AMPED UP for American audiences. Owen's mom is no longer the nice but stressed single mom she was before, now she’s a bible-thumping fanatic. The lady who Eli/Abby turns into a vampire doesn’t knowingly martyr herself by opening the shades anymore, now she’s grotesquely sucking the blood out of her own arm with splatter gore everywhere when a nurse opens the shades, setting the lady on fire as well as the nurse, and oh what the hell lets just burn down the whole wing of the hospital, too. Matt Reeves knows what’s best. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Abby’s nocturnal attacks find her fully CGI’d, jumping around like the hideous lovechild of Gollum and a leapfrog. It’s all so… so mondo! But in the worst possible way.
I have one final question, and then I’ll stop complaining. It’s obvious that Reeves made this movie for the SUV-sized-tub-of-popcorn crowd. But when there are Transformers and Saw movies in the world, why would the ‘tubbies’ go and see a movie like Let Me In? Despite the uncalled for adrenaline shot Reeves gives the source material, this is still a pretty slow, brooding movie. They’ve already alienated people who love the original. And once the Big Mac set gets a whiff of what Let Me In is really about, I can’t imagine they’ll be flocking to it in droves. So who is this movie for?
-Ben