2008's Let The Right One In
2010's Let Me In
Let Me In (R) ★★½
It's no surprise that Hollywood decided to remake 2008's Let The Right One In, a Swedish import that has garnered more than its fair share of fans during the past 2 years. The original, with its bracingly original story and flashy Gothic decors, had something that could please even subtitle deractors. The remake -directed by Cloverfield's Matt Reeves- is surprisingly stale and has a few stunning surprises up its sleeves, it's a real shame that I was expecting almost everything coming in the way of plot (I mean it IS a remake after all). The problem is that Reeves doesn't try anything new or ingenious and instead decides to follow the same atmospheric hypnotics that made the 2008 movie so popular.
There's something very wrong in remaking a film that was already good in the first place. Don't get me wrong stuff like what Scorsese did with The Departed is great, there Scorsese took the source and twisted it upsid down to make well, a Martin Scorsese movie. I'm also lost for wods as to why critics have fallen for the remake so damn much, then again maybe they didn't have the chance to see the original and some film critics -more notably Lou Lumenick- have come out and stated their overall enjoyment with the fact that they didn't see the original source material.
The story, which is about a 13 year old vampire girl that starts a unique friendship with a bullied neighbourhood boy, is a real genre twister that re-invigorated the vampire genre, coincidentally the same year the first Twilight movie came out. You won't see any Bella or Edward sappiness in the original or -even- remake. There's no love triangle or high school dramatics. The stakes at here are real and the feelings psychological. I just think it is somewhat of a useless thing to remake such a film in an almost similarly told way. Reeves could have put his own spin and made something a bit more beneficial for both the fans of the original and newcomer, alas that does not happen at the least bit. If you've seen the original one, skip this one but if you haven't check it out or rent Let The Right One In.