AICN Reviews of LMI

[Harls]

they are often standing idle while the fan has already spread the shit all over the place, because they can't move by a gnat's cock unless having dealt with bureaucratical amounts of red tape.

No different from England really - witness the recent 'we can't chase motorcycle thieves because they're not wearing crash helmets and they may get hurt in the chase' scenario over here.

[DMt.]

I really have to stop reading these reviews, it's stupid. And irritating.

[Jiang_Shi]

that a scene where Abby shows Owen (this film's version of Oskar) a picture of her and a young Jenkins it's overkill. We already got it.

Awful, awful idea... >_< Under-estimating the audience :/ kind of insulting to hammer it in.

I watch Let Me In and I don't see Matt Reeves in it. I see Tomas Alfredson all over the place, but this feels like karaoke, not even a cover song.

It seems many do recognize the BS in saying it's not a remake but a new version from the book. At least to those that watched LTROI.

Don't completely agree with the reviewer's insight on the movie but it does bring up good points. Nothing that hasn't already been said though

[abner_mohl]

Another AICN review.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/46808

Quint takes a look at LET ME IN from Fantastic Fest 2010!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here.

When is I saw the original LET THE RIGHT ONE IN I walked into the theater one early morning at Fantastic Fest knowing nothing about it other than the title and that it had played a couple of other fests and people were saying it’s a must see.

In fact, I thought it was a ghost story. I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but the title sounded like a ghost movie to me.

The reason I’m calling back to the first film is twofold. I’m in the camp that it is unfair to be asked to separate a remake from the original… that kinda comes with the territory of remaking a good film, just as adapting a good book… If the movie does something different, shifts the focus significantly or improves upon the original film then the comparison won’t hurt, only help. Look at everybody’s favorite examples of remakes… John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Maltese Falcon, The Wizard of Oz, 3:10 To Yuma, etc, etc. Each one stands on its own, but brings a totally different (and sometimes better) perspective to the material.

My second reason for discussing the original is because when I saw it I knew nothing about the story and there was zero chance that Matt Reeves’ film could have the same impact, no matter how good it was, simply because I know what’s around the next corner at every point.

There have been very few films that I’ve seen cold in my adult life that ended up being my one of my all time favorite films… in fact, there are only two that come to mind. One was Alfonso Cuaron’s CHILDREN OF MEN and the other is LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.



Going in to Matt Reeves’ take on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s you have to put yourself in an almost play-like mindset. Sure, everybody knows what happens in Hamlet, but ...what a great performance by Laurence Olivier!

The great strength of Reeves’ movie are the fantastic performances he gets out of Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz, Richard Jenkins and the whole cast. It’s a beautifully shot movie, filled with great actors, a haunting score and gets right everything that needed to gotten right in adapting this for the English speaking audience that can’t stand subtitles.

The problem is that Reeves’ personal flourishes and additions to the original film count for less than 20% of the runtime, with the rest of the movie being almost scene for scene.

There are additions that work like gangbusters, like the filling out of the back story between the young girl vampire and her protector and Reeves’ decision to Charlie Brown Owen’s parents by not showing his mother’s face at all and only hearing the father over the phone.

The way Jenkins hunts for Abby is also an addition that I’d say is an improvement just because of the way Reeves shoots it. There’s more tension, the actual filmmaking is more dynamic and fluid and Jenkins is flat out a better actor than the original guy.

But other than those moments the movie struggles to keep pace with the original, often times falling way behind the mark.

The biggest offender is the sadly misplaced rubber human effects whenever Abby vamps out. No one will mistake Let the Right One In for being a showcase for CGI effects (the cat scene is always mentioned), but the effects never got in the way of the emotional reality or tone like they do here.

Abby looks like she ran away from Blade 2 when jumping all over the place. Those effects absolutely work in Blade, but Blade’s a cheesy action movie. This is not. When Abby looks like the shitty Exorcist prequel possessed girl when shimmying up a tree that’s a distraction.

And completely unneeded. It feels like an “Americanization,” added in for the mall crowd in case they’re bored by the movie. Same thing with the new “vampire” effect on Abby. In the original they cast an older woman just for one shot that was incredibly eerie. Here they give her a Regan-like Exoricst make-up and glowing golden eyes. Boo.

All conflicts aside, the movie could have been a lot worse. It could have been teenagers all Twilight style. But saying “it could have been worse” is not the mark of a glowing endorsement.

There are two things I take away from this film, though. One of them is that Reeves has shown he can do more than found footage style filmmaking. The direction of the movie is assured and there’s real heart put into it. The dude’s passionate about this movie and is starting to craft his own visual identity with this picture.

Secondly, the coming of age love story between Smit-McPhee and Moretz is still powerful, which is why you’re seeing some critics really falling for the movie. If that aspect didn’t work the movie would have been a complete write-off, another soulless empty shell of a remake. Because of the fantastic performances and Reeves’ passion for doing justice to the book and original film there’s a lot of focus on this friendship/love story.

The foundation is strong, everything is done in an A+ manner, not going for schlocky at any point, but a ...good movie held up to a near masterpiece is always going to walk away the loser.

Will this be the overall reaction? Am I only reacting this way because of my crazy love of the original? Well, yeah. This is my experience. The average movie-goer will probably be blown away by this movie and that’s totally fair.

Believe me, I’d rather see more genre fare like this coming out of the studio system. This film takes the genre seriously and puts a large amount of focus on the character relationships, so you’re with Owen when he’s bullied and you sympathize with Abby despite her being a monster… perhaps because of her being a monster.

It’s a complex issue that goes a little beyond the standard “good or bad” of movie reviewing. For the record, the movie is certainly a good movie, but for fans of the original you could find yourselves like me watching the movie with an unconscious mental checklist running scene by scene. “Oh, it’s time for this scene. That’s pretty good. Oh, it’s time for this scene… the original did it better.”

In short, this film is solid, totally top shelf in every department and a giant step forward for American genre storytelling, but it doesn’t add anything to the story which is why I don’t know if I could consider it a good remake. It’s a good movie, mediocre remake.

[abner_mohl]

Capone opens the door and invites Matt Reeves' LET ME IN to enter his horror-loving soul!!!
Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

Beauty is beauty. If something beautiful looks like some other beautiful thing that came before it, does that somehow negate the original? I guess that's what the debate revolving around (more like swallowing up) LET ME IN, the impressive and, yes, similar remake of the Swedish vampire masterpiece Let the Right One In. If I liked Lawrence Olivier's HENRY V, am I not allowed to like Kenneth Branagh's. If I like the visual take that Tim Burton gave to BATMAN, does that erase the powerful drama that makes up BATMAN BEGINS or DARK KNIGHT? Zack Snyder's DAWN OF THE DEAD is easy to love, and I would argue that the recent remake of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT is better than Wes Craven's groundbreaking original. So, is the fact that LET ME IN comes so closely on the heels of Tomas Alfredson's original (both based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who wrote the first adaptation) the part of this equation that bothers people so much? It kind of feels that way.

I picked LET THE RIGHT ONE IN as one of my favorite films of 2008, and I listed it as one of the Top Five vampire movies of all time for a podcast I was on recently, so few people have put their money where their keyboard is on this movie like I have. So when it was announced that CLOVERFIELD director Matt Reeves had written and was directing a remake, I felt the breath leave my lungs. But having seen the new film recently, I had a reaction that was unexpected, to say the least. Reeves has given us an alternate--but not radically different--version of this story of a young boy and his relationship with a friendly vampire girl next door that is as good as the original for quite a few different reasons. Reeves has expanded certain elements, streamlined others, and given his actors room to show the true nature of their characters.

The young boy Owen (played by the young Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee from THE ROAD) is portrayed as a bit more of a perv and potential homicidal. He spies on his neighbors with his telescope, and even manages to watch an especially beautiful woman in an apartment across the courtyard having sex. And while his counterpart Oskar in the original film shows such tendencies as well, Smit-McPhee is allowed to show his bloodlust a little more explicitly, with the help of his vampire friend Abby (Hit Girl from KICK-ASS, Chloe Grace Moretz), who encourages him to fight back against a small army of bullies to torments him daily. She's not concerned about his well-being; she's testing him to see if he's worthy of... something. Moretz is incredible as Abby, part subtle temptress, part protector, part nasty creature, and manipulative without appearing so. We get a bit more of Abby's ugly vampire side, a change I'm not sure I agree with, but it doesn't take away anything as much as it doesn't necessarily add either.

The third major player in this unholy threesome is an unnamed older man (Richard Jenkins) who acts as Abby's caretaker but is clearly exhausted from the work. The two move into the unit next door from Owen and his recently single and hyper-religious mom (Cara Buono, whose face we never see clearly because neither does Owen). When he spots Abby talking to Owen, Jenkins' character is seized with jealousy; the way he looks at Abby is clearly with something more than a paternal affection. One of Reeves' biggest changes is adding a fourth player into the mix, a police officer played by Elias Koteas, who is put in charge of investigating what becomes a series of brutal murders and attacks. The fact that the cops were barely a factor in LET THE RIGHT ONE IN always bothered me. Koteas kind of takes the place of a few people in the original and in placed perfectly into the story to bring elements together more satisfactorily.

Reeves also dispenses with the scenes featuring the rowdy drunks at the bar, instead making many of them people who live in Owen's complex. The brutal attack of one woman who actually survives and has an unfortunate incident at the hospital is assigned to the aforementioned pretty lady on which Owen likes to spy. Even the color palette Reeves chooses is dissimilar. The Swedish film was basically boiled down to black, white, and a ghostly blue. Reeves sees the color of 1980s New Mexico (when and where LET ME IN is set) as streetlight orange, and he projects that color directly into the courtyard where Owen and Abby regularly meet on a the saddest jungle gym I've ever seen. But the color is warmer and seems to assist in fueling the relationship between the pair. What seems to get lost in the discussion about either film is that, this occasionally bloody, often tense work is a coming-of-age movie about Owen's first (and probably only) love. And while Moretz is certainly a pretty young woman, Owen falls for her because he senses a kindred spirit, a fellow traveler, and, when pushed, a ferocious killer.

Of the three main characters, Smit-McPhee and Moretz at least equal their Swedish counterparts, while Jenkins actually exceeds what Per Ragnar did with the same character in the original. Jenkins plays the role as a tortured, frustrated, angry man that has been at this never-aging creatures behest for most of his life. And when he sees what Abby is lining up for herself, he simply gives up, spectacularly. Above all else, the thing that LET ME IN remembers and preserves about the book and original movie is that it is so much more than a vampire movie. If Abby weren't a vampire, she'd be a goth girl with a troubled life, and the story would still be extraordinary, thanks in large part of the performances and smart, dialed-back direction from Reeves.

I'm not sure Matt Reeves has won the "Why remake it?" argument, but if we lived in a world where this was every audience member's first exposure to this material beyond the novel, I think LET ME IN would be hailed as a minor masterpiece in genre filmmaking. The fact that it's a remake never really factored into my critique of the movie. It's not a shot-for-shot anything (if you think it is, you either don't remember LET THE RIGHT ONE IN or didn't watch the new movie very carefully), and the overall aura of the work is fairly unique. But sometimes getting there first is enough to upset people about what follows that is similar (that's one of the many themes of THE SOCIAL NETWORK). I don't think remakes are inherently ... There are many remakes that feel like a sign of the Apocalypse, but LET ME IN isn't one of those movies. It's a haunting, powerful, still-strange work that I'll treasure alongside the Swedish film, and there's no crime in that.

[jun2k]

(Leandersson was dubbed over because Alfredson wasn't happy with her performance)

Pretty sure it was because they wanted a more androgynous voice?

is there such a thing as "androgynous voice"??

[CyberGhostface]

Yeah, because Eli had one.

[sauvin]

They did away with the drunks in LMI? I've not seen it yet, planning on it tomorrow, but some of the ocmmentary in this thread suggests that Reeves thought the drunks were "unnecessary"?

I think not. Jocke's murder was an important first step in setting Lacke up to want to kill the kid, and their meeting at the top of the stairs after the kid had just mauled his girlfriend sealed his resolve; the moment Eli's vampirism affected their little joy juice society, Eli's days in Blackeberg were numbered. Without these drunks, without two of their number having been victimised in this way, her days in Blackeberg might have been much longer.

They might not have been "interesting", but the drunks definitely had a role to play in LTROI.

[Wolfchild]

The foundation is strong, everything is done in an A+ manner, not going for schlocky at any point, but a damn good movie held up to a near masterpiece is always going to walk away the loser.

QFT. Of all of the verbage that has been written online about Let Me In, this comes the closest to how I feel about it (or at least how I feel about it today ).

Also, FWIW, I have thought that more space in LTROI should have been devoted to Virignia's experience. I at least would have liked to have a few more minutes of her conversation with Lacke in the hospital. The sub-plot with the drunks served multiple plots purposes; it provided the dramatic threat to Eli, but through Virginia it also served to explain Eli to us a little bit. The film shows us in detail how far Oskar has to go to accept and love Eli, but it spends a lot less effort to show us how far Eli has to come to accept and love Oskar. In the novel, JAL told us about Eli by relating Virginia's experience of becoming a vampire. I thought that if the film had devoted just a smidgen more space to Virginia, it could have opened up Eli a little more to us.

But it seems that Matt wasn't as concerned with adding layers to his Abby character. For his interpretation of Owen taking The Father's place at Abby's side, adding balance of this sort to Abby would serve no purpose in furthering the story. Seen in this light, it makes sense to diminish the sub-plot surrounding Virginia and Larry.

[jetboy]

I agree with everything that the two negative reviews say and I think the first one could be summed up by saying..."yeah, but why?!?"

and the second one was summed up my saying that it was "mediocre".

It was so underwhelming. I was ready for a good viewing experience. I was thinking that, "Ok he knows that their was already a beautiful love story and surely he doesnt want to compete with that." I was thinking he was going to tone down the love and ratchet up the grit and terror and it was going to be a good popcorn movie. An example I could think of is when Cameron made the sequel to Alien, he knew that he needed a new angle so that he wouldnt be competing with Ridley Scott so he made it more exciting and adventurous. Thats what I thought Reeves was going to do. If you want tenderness you got the original if you want more of a fun experience you have the remake. They would compliment each other but Reeves made a REMAKE and tried to compete with the tenderness of the original AND be terrifying and spread itself to thin.

People dont think that we should remember the original while viewing the new one but I say that I wish Reeves would have thought that people might judge against the original and went in new direction