The Policeman vs Lacke

[RapeSoul]

Virginia plays an important role in LTROI as a parallel to Eli, in showing the difference between an adult vampire and a child. We get glimpses of Virginias feelings through the process, ending with suicide as she cannot bear the consequences.
In LMI Virginia is reduced to a mindless arm gnawing zombie, and we are left wondering what bearing that has on Abby. Is she also a zombie like creature playing a role?
I was never comfortable with the cop entering the apartment alone. That was something an amateur wino like Lacke could do, not a pro.

I didn't care for Virginia, and I didn't think the difference between a child and an adult vampire needed to be shown. I think it was best to give Virginia a minor role in Let Me In, because Matt Reeves saw than the important thing to show in Let Me In was Abby and Owen's relationship. He had probable cause to go in, he heard someone inside, this was the 80's also.

[gymmy64]

He had probable cause to go in, he heard someone inside, this was the 80's also.

What does "this was the 80s" mean?

Simply hearing someone inside isn't probable cause. What indication did he have that someone was in imminent danger? Maybe you could reason that he thought someone was trying to escape, but I'm not sure how that could have been accomplished (he didn't know Abby could fly). If he thought there was a situation inside, why go in alone? Why not wait for backup, or at least call for backup? Of course, he couldn't do the latter, since Abby and Owen had to have time for their farewell and to hide his corpse, and of he has to go in alone so he can become a corpse. I think that any way you spin it, what the officer did was ill advised, especially for someone who appeared to be a seasoned professional. It doesn't mean that you can't just call what he did an error in judgment, but the result for me personally is that I felt a little less sympathetic towards his death than I probably should have.

He wouldn't have needed to break in if Owen had accidentally left the door open and cracked, but I suppose that's too boring. It's more dramatic to have him burst in and to see Owen react to it. That's why ultimately I don't have a real problem with the scene. It's dramatic/artistic license. LMI was hardly the first film or television show to sacrifice real world practicality for effect or storytelling purposes. It's why Captain Kirk and his first officers are always the ones to head into danger; in a "real" situation, there is no way they would leave the bridge, but on the other hand, who wants to watch a bunch of redshirts having all of the fun?

[drakkar]

I didn't care for Virginia, and I didn't think the difference between a child and an adult vampire needed to be shown.

Fair enough, but it was Eli/Abby who infected Virginia, so whatever became of Virginia also has some bearing on Abby/Eli whether one like it or not. You can call it a negative side effect of reducing the side plots in LMI, and the indication of Abby being a soulless zombie-like creature (infected Virginia in LMI) is contradicted by Abby's behaviour elsewhere.

[BurgerPrince]

Fair enough, but it was Eli/Abby who infected Virginia, so whatever became of Virginia also has some bearing on Abby/Eli whether one like it or not. You can call it a negative side effect of reducing the side plots in LMI, and the indication of Abby being a soulless zombie-like creature (infected Virginia in LMI) is contradicted by Abby's behaviour elsewhere.

Maybe Virginia chewing her arm open was to help show how irrational the vampire can be in its desperate urge to feed? Also, before that scene in the American film, the viewer hasn't yet seen why the vampire can't be exposed to sunlight.

Virginia's role in LTROI was indeed to compare the adult vampire to the child vampire. The child vampire, Eli, is unwilling to die, and will do anything necessary to survive. The adult vampire, Virginia, however, cannot live with the guilt of having to kill, and she kills herself instead.

LMI does something similar in which the young murderer, Abby (and eventually Owen,) is compared to the old murderer, Thomas (the American equivalent to Håkan.) As he aged, Thomas was buried deeper and deeper under his own guilt of being a murderer, until he finally admitted, "maybe I'm just tired of this, maybe I want to get caught." Although Abby and Owen feel guilt over murder, that sense is outweighed by the will to survive and escape capture by any means necessary.