Let Me In - WOW! [boxed spoilers]

Cafe Society
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I just got back* from the midnight showing of Let Me In and I declare to you now, it’s GOOD! Very very good. Could be among the best movies of the year. Could be. I was a huge whining naysayer when I heard that they were remaking the movie Let The Right One In, and I am so happy to report that I was wrong, wrong, wrong as wrong could be in my hyperbolic predictions.

The Swedish film is a wonderful, wonderful film. It will always have a special place in my heart, and no movie could possibly be better. But, if you set the Swedish film up on a pedestal, but then move that pedestal out of your field of vision, and watch the American version as its own entity, it rates high.

Almost everything that made the original movie so good is there in the remake, all but Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar and Lina Leandersson as Eli. But Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Moretz make the characters their own, and do a wonderful job. At its core it’s a story about friendship between outsiders, and the two have definite chemistry.

The movie is dark, chilly, quiet, brooding, creepy, scary, sweet (in a twisted way) and gory. It really is a remake of the Swedish movie, almost shot-for-shot more often than not, not an adaptation of the book as I’d hoped, but I didn’t mind. I love both versions now.

For those who’ve seen the Swedish original, please give this a chance and don’t be too hard on it because it’s not the Swedish movie.

For those who haven’t seen the Swedish original, please watch this, but then watch the Swedish original too.

I suppose a lot of people are sick of vampires now, but these two films are worth seeing because of their unusual point of view.

A few spoilers ONLY for those who have seen the Swedish original:

[spoiler]They kept in the fact that Abby’s a boy. She tells Owen so, twice. Later, they show Owen looking at Abby naked and you see the realization that she was telling the truth on his face, but unlike the Swedish version, they don’t show Abby’s castration scar.

The biggest differences come from The Father’s scenes, how he stalks and kills, how he comes to pour acid on his face and such. The opening is different, starting with the ambulance taking The Father to the hospital and what happens to him there, and sets the movie up as a flashback leading up to that point from two weeks earlier. Richard Jenkins barely says a word, but he gives the character much more of a creepy poignancy than in the Swedish version. Just as in the Swedish version, it’s never explained who he is.

It’s set in 1983 btw. It’s winter too, and the cold, while not quite the character it was in the Swedish version, is still pretty potent for many scenes. [/spoiler]

I’d write more but I’m so tired. It’s a good thing I don’t have to work today.

I hope it does well. There weren’t very many people in the theater.
Edit to add, I got back earlier, and started this post, but got distracted reading reviews of the movie.

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Maybe you got a different title but in the UK it’s called Let the Right One In.

Regardless, it’s an interesting movie… shot in a really intimate way.

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They kept the original title in the UK?

Yeah, they switched it to **Let Me In **in the US for the remake.

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Is the pool scene done the same way?

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Good to hear; I have a high record of success regarding telling whether I’ll like a film based on the trailers <harder than it sounds these days>, and I really was intrigued by this film. I’m not a horror film fan, so I was wondering if it was a trick of the trailer or something, but I thought it’d be a really good book, if that makes sense; glad to know it is a good movie, and I shall see it. :slight_smile:

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For those looking to “catch up” by renting the original, do NOT watch it dubbed. The dubbing is atrociously done, and really took away from the film. (I watched it with friends who hated subtitles.)

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shamblesmaybe is incorrect - it’s being premiered at the London Film Festival and is also called Let Me In according to the website. I really want to see this. I too was a huge whining naysayer and am happy to be proved wrong, based on the OP.

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I second this question.

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Wouldn’t you know, I get a call waking me up and asking if I can come in today. I’ll be tired as hell but it was worth it. That’s why god made No Doze.

Yes! You don’t see anything of what’s happening but you hear it, oh my do you hear it, and you see what Owen sees under the water, the blood, and heads floating. You see the aftermath too. It also ends the same way, on the train.

I’ll be going to a screening of Kings of Pastry tonight (meeting D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, whee!) tonight so I won’t be able to answer any more questions until late tonight.

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We saw this last night. It was excellent - very spooky setting, and realistic for a vampire movie. The cinematography was outstanding, especially for the scenes where

the “father” hides in the second car, then is forced to choke the friend and drive the car in reverse, and winds up rolling it into a ditch. This was shot from the back seat, and was really well done and scary.

and

the scene where Owen is underwater in the swimming pool, and Abby kills his tormentors, but we can only see bits and pieces from underwater, plus a head going into the pool. This reminded me of some of the scenes from “Jaws”.

It was like the anti-Twilight. No sparkly vamps here. True old-school horror. I own the Swedish original, “Let The Right One In”, but haven’t watched it yet. I certainly will soon.

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Uh, we have a thread on this already.

:confused:

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Dammit - I searched for it and came up empty. Mods, feel free to close this.

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I’m glad to hear from someone who hasn’t yet seen Let the Right One In and likes it a lot. I was wondering how it would appeal. Let us know what you think after seeing the Swedish version.

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It’s a bitch to search for because of the three short letters. In the future when looking for this thread or the other one I’ll probably search for something like “Chloe Moretz Matt Reeves” or something similar.

Fans of the Swedish movie will be going Wha? Huh? but as I warned, most of the scenes that have been changed have to do with The Father character.

This, on the other hand, is almost exactly the same.

I love that!

Edit to add, thanks to the mod for adding the [boxed spoilers] to the Subject line.

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I’m very right… but based on the DVD I have.

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They’re talking about a “remake” that hasn’t even come out in the UK yet (and won’t for a month, other than the London Film Festival), not the movie that’s been around for more than a year.

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I just saw it last night, and I thought it was a wonderful movie. I would see it again, and I very rarely see movies twice. Both of the young actors I think have a great future if they stick with acting.

I love how the characters are sympathetic when viewed from “inside” but many of their actions are what we usually think of as evil. The movie, I think, is designed to make you just a little uncomfortable with your choice of loyalties. The fact that I still liked Abby even after she killed an innocent jogger disturbed me a bit (but I liked it!)

One question, though:


I know Abby kept saying she wasn’t a girl, but I didn’t think we were supposed to interpret it that she was a boy. Maybe if I had seen the original that would have been my conclusion. She wasn’t a girl, she was an “creature” who never aged. That is what I took her statement to mean. Is there anything in this remake that specifically points to her being a boy? The only thing I can think of is the scene when she gets out of the shower and he briefly sees her changing into a dress. He gets a startled look on his face, but that could be because he’s never seen a naked girl before. He’s seen breasts with his telescope, but not the full package (so to speak)

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I haven’t seen Let Me In but I have read the book Let the Right One In and seen the Swedish movie. In the book it’s explicit that the vampire was originally a boy. It even starts using masculine pronouns to describe him halfway through the book. In the movie you get a clip of something swimming down the drain of the bathtub (I’m assuming his penis) and you see his/her disfigured genitals followed by the male lead’s shocked face. It sounds like the scene is exactly the same except they didn’t show the clip of his/her genitals, possibly because they didn’t think a shot of a physically prepubescent girl’s genitals would sit well with audiences.

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I’m sure Chloe will. She has several projects lined up, including a sequel to Kick-Ass where, I hope, the focus is more on her character Hit Girl; in Martin Scorsese’s next movie, Hugo Cabret, also with Jude Law, Asa Butterfield (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Some of Rambow), Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer, Christopher Lee, Michael Stuhlbarg (he was the lead in the Coen’s A Serious Man), and Ray Winstone, among others; The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea with Zach Braff, and a few others that look interesting. We’ll be seeing her for a long long time. Kodi Smit-McPhee doesn’t have anything lined up at the moment, but I hope he continues acting too.

I agree.

That’s a nod to the book and the Swedish movie, because the fans of those would have screamed with anger if they’d dropped it entirely. In the book, “Eli” (short for Elias, renamed Abby in the remake) was castrated by the man who turned him into a vampire, centuries earlier. It hardly makes a difference to the plot one way or another, but it’s an aspect of Eli/Abby and we all assumed it would be dropped for the remake. I’m happy again to be wrong.

Ooops, AClockworkMelon beat me to it.

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Not in the version I saw! Is there a longer version in Sweden??In the version of Let The Right One In I saw, you just see a split second glimpse of Eli’s genital area, with a castration scar. It’s so quick I didn’t even realize what it was the first time I saw it.

About the remake,

Yeah, that’s exactly why, and they’re right. I don’t fault them for that. Matt Reeves would have been labeled a pedophile. It would have generated so much controversy, which is generally a good thing because it leads to much needed publicity, but not when it comes to child pornish-type things.