Let Me In

Tomas Alfredson’s exquisite Let the Right one In is a strange and beautiful dark fairytale, a magical story of childhood and innocence lost. Since at its core the film is about a young boy who befriends a strange girl who just happens to be a vampire, a US horror remake was practically inevitable. However, the English language version, Let Me In, comes from the newly resurrected Hammer studios, who have seemingly done their best to try and create something that (unlike the recent bout of remakes that has flooded the horror genre) is actually good.

Despite its American setting, Let Me In is a fitting film for the newly revamped Hammer to begin with. For after all, the studio is best remembered for bringing us a rather different vampire, as well as following their great horror staple and providing us with a greatly increased supply of blood. Whereas the original took great care in what it revealed to the audience, the remake increases everything, a decision clearly designed to make the film more marketable and one that does add to horror aspects of the story, making a gorier and more brutal creation. Yet, on the whole this works against it, as the original, despite featuring vampires, was at heart a very human story of childhood and isolation. It focused on drama first and horror second, a decision the remake reverses. Something particularly noticeable is the removal of a subplot involving the local working class community that revealed the human effects of the vampire’s dark activities. The result is that the central drama of the film is lessened in a blend of gore and incredibly obvious and largely unnecessary CGI.

However, it’s certainly not all bad news as director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) does a good job sticking close to the original story, managing to keep a good portion of the first film’s thematic feel despite the translation. For, although Let Me In loses much of the original’s intelligence and almost all its subtlety, it remains a clever film. This makes a vast improvement on most of the recent wave of remakes that tend to take the original concept and seemingly lobotomise it. The film is also well acted, with Chloe Moretz showing that her wonderful turn in Kick Ass was certainly no fluke and her co-star Kodi Smit-McPhee proving more than equal to the challenge. However, at the end of the day, the film simply isn’t as well made and certainly doesn’t look as good as the original, which featured some simply wonderful cinematography of a glorious white landscape, something disappointingly missing here.

Let Me In is the sort of film that would normally be happily recommended. However, it’s essentially a less intelligent and greatly inferior version to last year’s stunning original. For try as Matt Reeves might, he cannot match its sheer visual power or elegance, nor recreate the same strange magical feel. In the end, we are left with an interesting and well made film, but one that never matches the quality and grace of Alfredson’s stunning vision.

Let Me In is showing at City Screen. Click here for times and further details.

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