Much as it pains me to admit, Let Me In was pretty much doomed to failure of some kind from the start. First, there was all of the pessimism and doubt about upstart filmmaker Matt Reeves trying to craft an American remake of a foreign film hailed as a masterpiece. The casting announcements and advance reviews managed to greatly pacify this backlash and that was miracle enough, quite frankly.
That aside, the next challenge was getting the word out to people who had never before seen or heard of Let the Right One In. You’d think that would be relatively easy, since domestic films are so much easier sold than subtitled ones and this vampire film had the Twilight craze going for it. Alas, the primary distributor for Let Me In is Overture Films, which ran into financial troubles just as the film hit theaters. With pretty much no money for sufficient mainstream advertisement, the film went unnoticed and dropped from the top ten in its second week of release. I consider this a shame, since Let Me In isn’t really a bad movie. It’s just one of those frustratingly mediocre movies that could easily have been great, but isn’t.
Let’s start with the core of this movie: Oskar and Eli, now named Owen and Abby. Their relationship is the axis of this story and it was played to perfection in the Swedish original. Unfortunately, the Owen/Abby pairing just doesn’t quite mesh. The chemistry isn’t completely non-existent, but it isn’t strong enough either. This problem certainly isn’t with Abby, who’s beautifully played by Chloe Moretz. All of the young vampire’s pain, joy and beauty come through clearly and Moretz plays her with far more strength and maturity than I’d expect from a thirteen-year-old girl. I know that growing up as a child actor isn’t easy, but I pray that we don’t lose this one to drug habits and sex tapes. Kid’s got a bright future. Of course, it must be said that the film first shows her as a true monster — giving her an extreme close-up with colored contacts and a bloody mouth over a fresh corpse — far too early, but that’s more Reeves’ choice than any decision of Moretz’ and the character of Abby is otherwise pretty much unchanged.
No, the real problem here is with our male lead. In the original, Oskar was a kid on the edge of criminal insanity. This was a kid who studied deaths and murders. A kid who had every intention of going Columbine on his bullies, but didn’t yet have the means or gumption to do so. The remake, on the other hand, drastically waters down Owen’s homicidal tendencies. When Oskar stabs the tree, he’s fantasizing. Daydreaming. Practicing. When Owen stabs the tree, it’s like he’s just venting. When Oskar finally hits the bullies back, it’s like years of repressed anger are finally lashing out. When Owen does it, it comes off more as self-defense.
Basically put, both boys are growing up in cruel conditions with no friends or trustworthy adults to lean on. Oskar responds with fantasies of revenge. Owen still hasn’t decided what he’s going to do. This is a perfectly valid take on the character, but Reeves and Kodi Smit-McPhee just can’t make it work, no matter how hard they try. Moreover, Reeves made the decision to make the bullies even more hellish while simultaneously taming Owen, making our male lead look like even more of a weakling. The long and short of it is that the character of Abby is more or less kept as is and her interactions with Owen are pretty much translated verbatim, though the character of Owen has changed considerably. This throws a sizable monkey wrench into their chemistry.
The movie also damages Owen’s character with regard to his sexual development. The original movie dealt with this in a very subtle way, through the subtext of Oskar’s times with Eli and his own barely prepubescent age. Owen, however, is seen interrupting his murder fantasies to spy on two neighbors having sex. Additionally, in blatant and useless reference to his star-crossed affair with Abby, Owen is shown to be studying Romeo & Juliet. No points for subtlety, Mr. Reeves.
To be fair, however, I should point out that Owen’s spying on his neighbors made a nice visual metaphor for his complete separation from other people. This theme of isolation is greatly assisted by Reeves’ novel decision to keep Owen’s parents obscured or off-camera. On a totally separate note, Owen is also given a fondness for Now & Later candy. He starts and finishes the film by singing its jingle (“Eat some now, save some for later”), which carries some rather disturbing implications for Abby’s eating habits if I’m interpreting it right.
Speaking of which, I should mention Abby’s caretaker, who is far and away better here than he was in the original. The Swedish Hakan was frankly quite incompetent at his work, botching his job and getting caught either because he panicked or because he made stupid decisions. Richard Jenkins’ character (credited only as “The Father”), however, is much better at killing, if only because he has the aforethought to wear a friggin’ mask. He’s very clever in his methods and practiced in execution. When he fails — as the story dictates he must — it’s more through poor luck than through any bad decision of his own (how was he supposed to know that the snow was going to give way?). Moreover, when he fails, he has the clarity of mind to think that maybe he is getting old. Maybe he is getting sloppy. Maybe he is getting tired of killing and maybe on some subconscious level, he does want to get caught. All when Hakan would offer nothing more than a feeble apology. Add in Jenkins’ forlorn performance and you’ve got a hell of a character.
But all of this avoids the $20 million question: Why remake this movie? What’s the point? What is Matt Reeves bringing to the story that’s new? The $9.5 million answer, I’m sorry to say, is “not much.” Oh, there are some hints of original ideas: Reeves decided to set the story in 1980s America, at a time when President Reagan was using religious rhetoric to illustrate the “good America vs. evil Soviets” conflict. Additionally, Owen’s mother is shown to be uber-Christian and Owen himself has to ask his atheist dad if there’s such a thing as evil in this world. What does all of this amount to? Hell if I know. Maybe I’m missing something, but if Reeves was trying to make any religious, philosophical or political point about the proceedings, then it’s lost on me.
What’s more, the other neighbors are almost totally missing from the remake. Seems to me that if Reeves wanted to bring American xenophobia into the picture, then bringing in the paranoid villagers who react with mob mentality to the killings would be a natural choice. Unfortunately, our primary civilian is not some guy out to kill a little girl because he thinks she’s a bloodsucking monster. Rather, he’s a police detective who’s only trying to find the truth and stop the killings. There’s a world of difference between the two: It’s the difference between frightened vigilante justice and a patriotic duty to law and order.
While I’m on the subject, I should point out that the remake does feature a woman who gets turned into a vampire and subsequently flambeed in the hospital. The problem is that this character arc in the remake — while much more visually spectacular — carries no heft whatsoever. We see her through Owen’s window a few times before the turning, but we don’t see her at all afterward. In fact, I don’t think she gets a single line of dialogue in the whole movie. We don’t see her suffering, we don’t get an idea of what it’s like to be freshly undead and her transformation to charcoal doesn’t come through just deserts or by request, but through sheer accident. The subplot does lead our detective to Abby, but it’s otherwise totally wasted.
However, I do feel the need to address one thing that this movie gets absolutely right: The music. The pop songs throughout are wonderfully chosen and utilized, particularly “Let’s Dance” by David Bowie. First, it’s used as workout music for one of Owen’s neighbors. Second, it’s used to identify the selfsame neighbor when we next see him. Third, it’s used to identify the Walkman that Richard Jenkins is listening to a few scenes later. Brilliant.
The score also deserves mention, and I could scarcely believe it when I heard that this movie was scored by Michael Fucking Giacchino. I thought my ears were deceiving me: No way could this music be written by the same man who scored Speed Racer, the Star Trek reboot and The Incredibles. I know that comparing this film to those others would be like comparing an onion to oranges, but I’ve come to associate Giacchino with music that’s bright, fast and energetic. The score to Let Me In is none of those things. Giacchino has crafted a subtle and unobtrusive score for this film, filled with percussive pulses, choral wailings and versatile strings. It all adds wonderfully to the film’s atmosphere.
The cinematography is also very good, as Matt Reeves shows clear visual skill with this movie. The whole film is filled with warm and cold colors that contrast harshly to nice effect. There are also many times in the film when Reeves shows great ingenuity in how to shoot particular scenes. Sometimes, such as the brilliant car crash scene, it works. Sometimes, as with the ending pool scene, it doesn’t.
Sure, the pool scene looks great and features some rather spectacular gore, but that’s kinda the problem. In the original, that scene was amazing precisely because of how subdued it was. The scene was more or less entirely silent, with lengthy suspense gradually giving way to terror as the water slowly turned red. In the remake, the suspense lasts for about ten seconds before the screen is overrun with screaming murders and bloody mutilations. Of course, if I may digress, I’d forgive all of that if I could get just one version of this scene that made some goddamn sense! Ever since I first watched the original film, I’ve been carrying that one stupid nitpick about how *Eli couldn’t have known that Oskar was in trouble and she couldn’t have gone back to the school that quickly even if she did*. I’ve found absolutely no answer as to how it’s possible and the remake continues that stupid, stupid plot hole. Gah.
When all is said and done, Let Me In could have and should have been a great movie. The music is wonderful, the visuals are solid and the cast is uniformly wonderful. Even Kodi Smit-McPhee is clearly doing the best he can with what he’s given. The talent is here and a sincere love of the source material is clearly present, but Reeves seems incapable of fitting his own interpretations of the source material into the mix and he shows a distinct lack of subtlety when the film needs it most.
I can’t help but feel that all this movie really needed was another polish or two on the screenplay. Or maybe Reeves should have shared the screenwriting duties or handed them to someone else entirely. Maybe he should have waited until he had a few more movies under his belt. Would a different editor have helped?
In any case, all the necessary ingredients for a great remake are in here, but a few misguided creative choices prevent them from fully coalescing. Still, in this time when studio meddling is commonplace and the Twilight franchise is making millions, this film could easily have been a hell of a lot worse. I certainly wouldn’t stop anyone from checking it out and I can’t wait to see what Matt Reeves does next, though I would definitely recommend the original film over this. Yes, with subtitles. Suck it up.