Movie Review: Let Me In

Here's Justin's take on Let Me In.
Let Her in, Again
Swedish vampires move to New Mexico
Justin Senkbile

It'd be safe to assume that fans of Swedish director Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In have, at best, mixed emotions regarding the idea of a big, Halloween-season American remake. Good news: writer/director Matt Reeves seems to be a fan too, and his Let Me In is one of the best Hollywood remakes you're likely to see.

Between his mother (Cara Buono), who is drinking her way through a divorce, and the regular beatings he faces at school, 12-year-old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) lives a brutal existence. As he begins to fantasize about taking drastic measures with a cheap pocket knife, a new neighbor moves in.

Her name is Abby (Chloe Moretz). She lives with a man who is presumably her father (Richard Jenkins), and she can only be found outside at night. Quickly, and despite her warnings, Owen befriends her and begins to experience a different kind of cruelty: frustrated young love.

It's no spoiler to reveal that the apparently adolescent Abby is actually an ageless vampire, although she doesn't define it that way, and her faux-father does the dirty work of scouring the town for fresh blood. The bodies he leaves behind bring a shaken but determined police investigator (Elias Koteas) on the scene, but we spend most of our time watching the progression of Owen and Abby's strange friendship.

If Jenkins' and Koteas' presences here aren't reason enough to see this movie, I don't know what is. Two of America's greatest character actors are both at the top of their game here, with relatively small, mostly thankless roles that are impossible to forget. But it's our tragic lovers, Smit-McPhee and Moretz, who make it all work, and they are as good as you could hope for. They're both fragile, frightening and vulnerable, in very different ways.

Instead of harvesting only the exclamation points, as we've come to expect remakes to do, Reeves has created what really feels like a loving adaptation. He takes great effort to capture the same eerie atmosphere and let the relationship between the two kids remain the essential point.

So Let Me In is both very good and very similar to the original…then what's the point? Besides being a convenient solution for the subtitle-averse (which isn't really a good thing), it's worth it just to see how Reeves has managed to take this Nordic story and make it feel quintessentially American. Set in suburban 1983, with a perfectly utilized pop soundtrack, it becomes a sort of twisted, poetic John Hughes movie. The setting also inevitably draws us back to the last golden age of American horror, when Jason Voorhies and Michael Meyers were problems counted alongside bullies and acne to their high-school victims.

With that in mind, Let Me In becomes less of a remake and more of an American counterpart to Let the Right One In. And although that might seem useless, the end result is just as magnetic and heartbreaking. Turns out, Reeves has made a movie good enough to survive any fan's comparison test.

Grade: B+

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You will not agree with me here

Christopher Nolan, whose Prestige I caught the end of as I was about to go to bed last night (God that's a good movie...even if the logic behind the final reveal caused me to have to explain it to my wife using props), is the Don Corleone of superheroes at DC right now. As such, he has supposedly made a list of potential capos to step in and direct Superman, the least interesting, most famous superhero of all. The clock is ticking, as there are legal constraints regarding ownership of the character reverting back to Shuster and Segal, so things will move quickly or not at all. Deadline got their hands on Nolan's short list, and it looks like this:

• Tony Scott (Unstoppable, The Taking of Pelham 123)
• Matt Reeves (Let Me In, Cloverfield)
• Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles, Clash of the Titans 2 [upcoming])
• Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code)
• Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch)

Let's take a look at these potential candidates in order of my suggestion for who to hire for this exciting relaunch...and by exciting, I mean I hope it's this:
Tony Scott - No. Just. No. He does the same thing over and over again, and that thing is cause epilepsy and nausea. No. This is clearly just a studio suggestion. Right? I mean, we're not going to get Tony Scott's vomitorium version of the man of steel...right?

Jonathon Liebesman - What's a Liebesman? I would say that while the jury is still out on the man's career and talent, he doesn't have the experience that a project like this demands. Also, you really can't have Clash of the Titans 2 listed in your resume and have me take you seriously. You saw the first one and were all "I want in on that!" Nope.

Matt Reeves - And here's where things get interesting. I loved Cloverfield, which wasn't a big movie but was an effects movie. I have heard just great things about Let Me In, which was all set to be hated by those who loved the original and ignored by those who had never dared listen to Swede talk. There's a chance that this guy is really as talented as I think he is, and he may be perfect for the gig. But...we're talking about a pretty huge jump for him. I like that he's on this list, I may even love it. But I don't recommend him as my first pick.

Duncan Jones - Oooooh, doggie. Now we're cooking with napalm. Moon was a damn revelation, and Source Code is a bigger budgeted, star-heavy (Jake Gyllenhaal) flick. Jones can nail the character, Moon taught us that. And he made that flick look like it had 10 times the budget. Again, we have the experience issue, but the confidence and style in that first effort of Jones suggests the fearlessness needed here. This is probably who I want to get it most. It's just not who should.

Zack Snyder - Okay, hold on a minute. Before you start barking about the slow-mo style he uses ad nauseum, bitching about what happened with Watchmen, or whining about the baggage that comes from hiring him, consider three things. (1) - Have you seen the trailer for Sucker Punch? Just the trailer assures me he's the guy for this gig. (2) - Watchmen was brilliant. It was. Watch it again. He's going to faithfully adapt the character in a visually exciting way. (3) - His best quality is that he understands kinetic action and frenzied pacing. Uh, that's kind of what Superman needs. I like Snyder. I like him a lot. I think he'd respect the material, wouldn't try to slather his way of doing things all over it so much as he would remedy the biggest problem: Superman is effing boring. I know that this is the least appealing of the three sexy choices (nobody wants Liebesman or Tony Scott), but it's the right one. I think after Sucker Punch does what I know it's going to do, we'll have a whole lot of converts to this way of thinking.

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