Let Me In - DVD Review

It’s pretty rare that a remake equals or betters the original, especially when it’s an Americanized version of a foreign film. Take The Vanishing, Funny Games, Ringu/The Ring, and REC/Quarantine as perfect examples of the original foreign language versions being much better.

When I heard they were redoing the near-classic Let The Right One In, and not only changing the setting from snowy Sweden to the desert of New Mexico, but the guy that made Cloverfield was directing it, my (and many others) first reaction was “why”? While it was not a perfect film, there wasn’t much to be improved on. This had all the makings of yet another Hollywood money-grab, taking a popular little cult movie and remaking for it mainstream America and those who refuse to see movies with subtitles. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Let Me In is equal to, if not slightly better than the original.

Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) plays Owen, a lonely pre-teen boy, living with a single mom who is hardly around, and who is constantly being bullied at school. He’s a kid with no friends and no direction, who steals from his mom, spies on a neighbor and fantasizes about getting back at his tormentors. Then one night an older gentleman and a girl around his age move into the apartment next door.

Chloe Moretz (so good in Kick-Ass) is Abby, a girl with her own dark secrets. She’s a vampire who is decades old, but trapped in a girls body, never aging. One night while Owen is sitting in the courtyard of his rundown apartment building, Abby approaches him. He doesn’t ask too many questions of her (like why she’s barefoot and not wearing a jacket in the snow and cold), he just accepts her, even though she tells him, "Just so you know, I can't be your friend", and she smells a bit. It doesn't take long for Owen to realize just who and what she really is.

At first, we don’t see Abby do the vampire deed herself. Her guardian (Richard Jenkins) selects the victims, drags them into the woods where he hangs them upside down, draining their blood into jugs for Abby to drink from. One particularly suspenseful scene that is different from the original is when he is hidden in the back seat of a car driven by a potential victim. This leads to a spectacular car crash, which the filming of is documented step-by-step in a bonus feature on the DVD.

While a lot of Let Me In is similar to the original, it’s not a scene for scene remake. It takes that film’s premise, and ideas from the book that were left out and builds on that. The new version gives us more of an insight at what evil lies beneath the image of an unassuming, sweet and innocent young girl who is also a monster. We see the changes she goes through, especially when she has to kill on her own after her guardian fails to bring back her needed sustenance. While the original was more subtle and ambiguous, in typical American fashion things are a little more spelled out and bloody here.

Most of the typical vampire mythology is intact, but I especially liked the part where the film takes it’s title from. Now we know exactly what happens when you don’t grant a vampires request to be invited in.

Stephen King wrote "Let Me In is a genre-busting triumph. Not just a horror film, but the best American horror film in the last 20 years." I wouldn’t go that far, but it probably is my favorite film of 2010. Unfortunately, it died a quick death last fall at the box office, mostly I think because of the backlash at it being an unnecessary remake of the much loved original. I know I failed to see it in the theater because of that. Hopefully it will find a whole new audience on DVD with those who have never seen the original and those who have that stayed away from theaters like myself. There is a place of my shelf for both versions of this one.