Saturday, February 5, 2011

Let Me In (2010)

It's been weird watching so many "mainstream" movies lately.  Recent theater-run horror for me is usually just a random interruption in my Netflix queue before I get the next b-movie, foreign flick, or straight-to-DVD nonsense.

Anyway, there seems to be a lot of popular horror being released lately and one of these movies is Let Me In.  This, of course, is a remake of the Swedish Let the Right One In.  Right off the bat, I was hesitant about watching this movie.  I loved Let The Right One In and I didn't want this to ruin it for me.  Also, I heard that they removed a few things from the plot to make it "less complicated" for American audiences.  Really, have we become so stupid America that we even need vampire movie dumbed-down for us?

They really got some great leads for Let Me In in Kodi Smit-McPhee (Owen) and Chloe Moretz (Abby).  I loved Kodi in the road, and Chloe looks promising.  In fact, for most of the movie, she looks like a mini Danielle Harris.  Could she be the next generation's scream queen?

I digress.  Let Me In follows generally the same plot line as its predecessor, except this takes place in New Mexico in the 80s.  They mix up the storyline a bit, making it kind of start near the end and then sort of go backwards.  And all the killings were different, which sort of made sense, because some of them really wouldn't fit with suburban New Mexico. Abby replaces Eli, and is more of an evil, glowing-eye vampire than they make Eli out to be.  Owen is good as the bullied kid, however, it's somehow not as convincing as Oskar.

And that's pretty much how I felt about this whole movie -- just not as convincing.  I really wish I had been able to see it on its own, without ever seeing Let the Right One In, because all I did was compare the two.  I just couldn't look at it as a separate movie.  It was a good flick, overall, but it just didn't give me that gut feeling that I got from watching Let the Right One In.  And it just seemed like they tried too hard to make Abby a "scary vampire", what with her scary voice and glowing eyes and all that nonsense.  And it wasn't clear why the old man was helping her, while it was quite clear in the previous version.

Anyway, this is probably not that objective of a review, because I just couldn't look past the first movie.  All I did was compare the two and think about how I liked Let the Right One In better.  So if you loved Let the Right One In, you're probably not going to like Let Me In as much.  But if you liked Let Me In, then run to your Netflix and get Let the Right One In.

photo source

2 comments:

George Beremov [Nebular] said...

I completely disagree. Yes, the original was brilliant, but somewhat cold and soulless, while the remake was way more intense, atmospheric and visually-stunning. Put your reservations aside girl and admit it: probably for first time in film history the remake is better than the original :)

The Scream Queen said...

Hmmmmm, no. I just didn't like it as much. I actually thought the original had a lot more soul and intensity than the remake. To each their own ;o)

In my opinion, the only remakes that are almost as good as the originals are Dawn of the Dead and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.