Review: Let Me In

In 2008 the Swedish horror film Let the Right One In pumped fresh blood into an anaemic vampire genre… so why the mad rush for a US version?

If you’re a hit-making studio exec, that’s a pretty easy question to answer: build on an existing foreign fan base, season with English-speaking stars, and get a nose-full of the glorious odour of a money making no-brainer. (Plus stoopid American’s only watch English-speaking films, right?)

But remakes aren’t artistically redundant by definition. If the producers are willing to put in the effort, you might even get a promising young director at the helm, someone artistically and commercially adept – a director like Cloverfield’s Matt Reeves.

And he does a sterling job retelling this story of a bullied boy finding friendship with a nomadic girl vampire. Though his job is largely restricted to lifting the thoughtful tempo and desolated Swedish suburban vistas from Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In, and placing them into a carbon copy American setting. So far, so 2008…

What is unique about Let Me In is the two young leads, Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Chloe Moretz (Kick Ass), who comfortably guide the film through its familiar surroundings.

Perversely, the only original flourish in Let Me In undoes all its fine mimetic work. As Abby the vampire is driven out to feed, she pounces upon a victim and the CG takes over. The character we’ve followed and empathised with due to her human qualities is shown dancing midair, moving at impossible speed with those clichés of the American vampire: fierce lenses and a mouth full of sharp gnashers (both purposefully missing from Let the Right One In).

True, it’s a joy to see these great actors playing great characters (much like Lina Leandersson and Kåre Hedebrant did the first time round), but the film’s success is otherwise so intrinsically linked to the 2008 original, if you get the urge to go see it, rent Let Me In instead.