Saturday, October 2, 2010

Let Me In, Matt Reeve’s American remake of the beloved and amazing Swedish film Let The Right One In, is ostensibly a solid, even impressive bit of filmmaking. Reeves, fresh off his shaky-cam victory of Cloverdale, crafts a film that explores the pains of growing up and the mythos of the vampire in a bleak and original way. Unfortunately, no matter how entertaining and well put together the film is, I walked out of the theater completely baffled as to why this film needed to be made.

Review - Let Me In

Owen (Kody Smit-McPhee) is a lonely boy living the snowy desolation of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Threatened by bullies and generally ignored by his drunken mother, Owen spends his time in a sort of pained solitude. Until he meets the secretive, though darling, Abby (Chloe Moretz) and her "father" (Richard Jenkins), and everything in his life changes. Though the film revolves around the bloody secrets of Abby and her father, it’s truly the story of loneliness and growing up. People are bullied, life revelations are made, romantic relationships (innocent and awkward) blossom - and a hefty selection of people are brutally murdered. It’s an innovative take on the subject, and Matt Reeves manages to maintain the themes of the original, while ably translating it for an American audience. But therein the problem lies - why on Earth did we need to translate this film for an American audience? Sure, any opportunity to see two child actors this talented co-exist on the same screen is fantastic, and again, Matt Reeves does a fine job of shedding the shaky cam and crafting a subtle, visually impressive film, but Let The Right One In was already a fantastic film. Instead of challenging American audiences to get out and see the original film, instead Hollywood basically puts out the exact same film but without the challenge of subtitles, thus making it marketable. Honestly, this film, at times shot-for-shot, is nearly the exact same film as Let The Right One In, and that’s not a bad thing, but aside from making money, money, money, how can Hollywood justify spending its dollars on it?

The weakest moments in this remake are the bits of the film that stray from the original (the burning in the hospital, Abby’s CGI kills), the flash-scares that seem intended to ensure our tepid attention-lacking brains to snap to attention and remember we were enjoying this subtle, strange film. Hell, most of the people who lumber out to the theaters to see this worthwhile film won’t even know that there ever was an original Swedish film, they’ll just think they popped on in to some slowly-paced horror flick featuring two talented child actors. And they’ll be better for it, but in the long run, all of us are losing something.

 

Noah Sanders is the blog/news editor at Light In The Attic and a contributor at Sound On The Sound and the KEXP blog.  He also has his own Criterion-based film site, Criterion Quest.   If you'd like to contact Noah in regards to his writings here at Side One: Track One then please do so here.

- Noah Sanders -



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