Let Me In
Director: Matt Reeves
With: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Grace Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, Dylan Minnette
One of the questions critics ask one another, and maybe real people do as well, is why do they remake good movies? Why don’t they fix up the stinkers? On the idea that one shouldn’t re-invent the wheel, I guess.
A subset of remakes is the foreign language film redone in English, on the notion that US audiences are too stupid or lazy to read subtitles. The girl with the dragon tattoo, so far presented in two (of three) very good Swedish films, will get the remake treatment soon, and I don’t have a good feeling about this.
I also felt this way when I heard that they were remaking Let the Right One In, the 2008 Swedish vampire film that is everything that the current spate of vampire films is not: dark, intelligent, emotionally involving, and good. Praise the film gods. Let Me In, a very close copy of the original, has retained all of the virtues of Tomas Alfredson’s wonderful film, and made no missteps.
Owen (Smit-McPhee) is a lonely little boy in middle school. His parents are divorcing, and his mother has no time for him. Owen is bullied at school by Kenny (Minnette), a typical snotnose tyrant with two dumb wingmen.
He befriends Abby (Moretz), a spooky little girl who has moved into his apartment complex. She never seems to get cold in the frigid Los Alamos winters, and has impressive skills with a Rubik’s cube. (The story is set in the 1980s.) She lives with an older man (Jenkins), whom everyone assumes to be her father.
He really is her slave. He seeks out people to kill so Abby can have fresh blood. Now older and not so efficient, he fails more than he succeeds, and Abby is forced to hunt. As in the original, these scenes are the more horrifying because it is a 12-year-old girl (“I have been 12 for a very long time.”) killing and feeding. And she has the superpowers of a vampire.
Moretz, who was terrific in Kick-Ass, was the perfect choice for this role, and she nails it. Smit-McPhee has a wide-eyed soulfulness and gravity as Owen.
All the other parts are done well, especially Jenkins as the “Father” and Koteas as a cop investigating the grisly murders. See the original by all means, but this one is a keeper. I hope Lisbeth Salander and her dragon tattoo fare as well.
SPOILER BELOW!
One particularly poignant moment is when Owen is in Abby’s apartment and sees a photo of her with a young boy his own age. We realize that the kid in the picture is her “Father,” and we wonder what is in store for Owen.
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