Let Me In – A Review

When I finally got to see the film ‘Let The Right One In’ last year, I blogged about it, then read the book then realised I had fallen in love with it a little bit.

So when I heard the inevitable news that this wonderful little Swedish film - from the novel and screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist – was to have a Hollywood remake done… well, I immediately resolved to give it a wide berth.  The original was not one bit broke, why try to fix it?

But it hasn’t been that easy to stay away.

Word has trickled down that the remake is a respectful and faithful one, that the people involved have the highest credentials and that the end product is indeed a film of value in itself.

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That, on its own, might not have been enough to encourage me to watch it - to risk tarnishing the memory of the original - but there was one other factor.  I wanted my son to see it.  I have written for Teens quite a lot myself and I happen to think, despite the 18 cert here in Ireland, that this is a great teen movie.  I knew he wouldn’t mind watching the subtitled original but I also thought that this shining -new remake might be the best way to win him over to what I feel is a masterpiece of bittersweet teen storytelling.

So last night, we all sat down and watched it.  I figured it would be worth a tweet at the end; ‘It was good’ or ‘It was not as good as the original’… something typically profound like that.  As it turned out, I couldn’t do it that ‘concise’ so here I am, trying to tell you what I think.

So here I go.

The remake is far better than the original, in one key respect.  It has a vastly superior screenplay.  Matt Reeves co-wrote this with the original writer, Lindqvist, and it’s a novel adaptation masterclass in my book.  The novel had a wide scope with many characters who interwove, some more successfully than others.  Then ‘Let The Right One In - The Film' came along and pared this excess but, critically, I always felt that it never pared them as much as it should have.  The side stories; the guys in the bar, the policeman on the trail, these only seemed to detract from the fascinating central theme.

The new screenplay pares it all away and brings it down to what really counts, the two central kids.  Everything is made to revolve around them and quite rightly too.

I would love to see the original film made to this tight, focused script but that’ll never happen.

The new film has two high-power teen leads playing their little hearts out.  It also has an apparent agenda to do the very very best it can with the source material.  So it’s a fine film, in itself.

But…

There is just something about the original film that makes it so much better than the remake, the same 'something' that makes it better than the novel too.  It is, I believe, with the exception cited above, an almost-perfect capturing of the story.  I ask myself what it is that makes it so and I came up with the answer that it is some ‘X-Factor’ which is largely indefinable which makes one version resound and another version not.

But that’s just too lazy, isn’t it?  Not good enough at all, Ken.  So I thought and thought and now I reckon there are two particular reasons why the original film wins.  Wait… three… one of them less important than the other two.

The less important one is the setting.  The new film is set in America and, let’s face it, we are familiar with movies set in America, it sets us immediately on firm ground.  The original setting – the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg – by contrast, is like another world to us.  No matter how much the new film tries to mimic the locations (and, by gosh, it does) we never feel we are in an uncharted land.  That feeling of dislocation, in the original, helps with the other-worldiness of the story, helps to make it seem possible.

The second reason is the casting of the two teen leads.  The remake casting is superb. Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road) and Chloe Moretz (who was dynamite in ‘Kick Ass') are both already-seasoned performers who play their parts beautifully.  But the casting of the original, for me, is nothing less than inspired.  Little Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar and Lina Leandersson as Eli simple ‘live’ the parts for me.  I don’t know much about film acting, an expert might say that the American actors are streets-ahead of the original players and I couldn’t disagree.  But, for me, one of the key elements of the original actors’ success was that I didn’t know them, I had never seen them before.  Always, with the remake, there was that niggling, ‘where have I seen them before?’ question.  One never quite escaped the knowledge that they were actors playing a role.  Remarkably, the actors in ‘Let The Right One In’ have never been seen in any other film (as yet).  That is key.  They weren’t just seen to be playing the parts, they ‘were’ the parts.

The final difference – don’t underestimate it ever – the Music.  The original soundtrack for ‘Let The Right One In’ by Johan Söderqvist may be a bit derivative at times but it remains a delicate thing of beauty.  The remake music seemed displaced and forgettable to me.

Finally, I must report that my little plan, to win John over with this new version, has pretty much failed.  My son didn’t really like the film, he found it slow and a bit hard to follow.  He was tired, I’ll let him off.

All in all, the new film is an honourable film and well worth a few hours of your time.

But ultimately, when I ask myself, “if this was the only version of this story that you ever saw, would you love it as you do?” the answer to that would be “No.”

Sorry but no.