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 damn 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 damn 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.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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