Let Me In

As a big fan of the Swedish film Let the Right One In, I was (like most) a little hesistant to accept an American remake. In light of all the Twilight hysteria over the last five years, any antidote to Stephanie Meyer's tweenification of vampires is welcome, so at the end of the day I guess I'm quite happy for this story to reach new audiences via an English-language remake. Let Me In goes for a similar indie-film vibe as Let the Right One In, which suggests that it is a remake of the Swedish film rather than a new adaptation of the novel. At any rate, Let Me In doesn't compromise for the American audience. There are some significant changes (like the New Mexico setting) but nothing that radically alters the taste of the story.

For anyone who's unaware, this story is based on a revisionist vampire novel by the twisted Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist. It's kind of an anti-Twilight, focusing on a lonely 12 year old boy who befriends a vampire girl. The boy, Owen (played here by Kodi Smit-McPhee), is being bullied by some larger kids at his school. Abby (Chloe Grace Moretz), an ungodly vampire, moves into his New Mexico neighbourhood and the two begin learning about each other. It isn't a film for kids, it's quite full-on in parts and the extent of Abby's vampirism is more horrific than a casual viewer might suspect.

Let Me In captures the disturbing nature of bullying quite graphically. A lot of claustrophobic framing is used to rankle to the viewer somewhat, and the film uses these elements to explore taboos surrounding sexuality and puberty (which is actually quite brave for an American film). Part of this is the text's theme of androgyny - the way the bullies refer to Owen as "little girl", and the way Abby's voice becomes deep and man-ish when she's angry. I had an uneasy feeling that a lot of this stuff would've been dropped from the American adaptation, so I was happy to see that it wasn't the case. Another thing struck me while I watched Let Me In; the character of Thomas (Richard Jenkins) is portrayed in a manner that makes one think of pedophilia, but he might not be a pedophile at all - he could've met Abby when he was 12, and has been with her from that age. Just a thought I had, I'm sure others may have come to this conclusion too.

I'm not sure I liked the film's colour palette. It was all orange and shadows, which fits with the desert setting, but I'm just over America's south-west being shot in this way. Aside from the cinematography stuff, it takes a lot of its visual cues from the first film (the first attack, the way some of the deaths are shot and staged, the flaming bed, the pool scene at the end, etc). I'm not sure what kind of impact this film made overall, I'm unsure if it would've actually reached any viewers who wouldn't or didn't watch the original version. The upshot of this fidelity to a well-made film is that it means that Let Me In also happens to be quite well-made as well. If I hadn't seen the original version I might've been knocked out by this film, but as I'd seen it all before I can't say it did much for me. It's almost shot-for-shot like Let the Right One In a lot of the time, so I just felt like it was a bit of a pointless exercise. People who don't like foreign language films though will benefit from the availability of this version, it still makes a nice change from the cutesy shenanigans of the Twilight films.

DIRECTOR: Matt Reeves
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Matt Reeves, based on the script and novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist.
KEY ACTORS: Chloe Grace Moretz, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, Dylan Minette

RELATED TEXTS

- The Swedish film Let the Right One In, and the novel it's based on, also called Let the Right One In.
- Matt Reeves previously directed Cloverfield.
- For the other recent take on teenage vampires, see Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2.