Review of Let Me In (2010) by Shiira — 09 Oct 2010

The chances of remaking a beloved Swedish import such as Tomas Alfredson's "Lat den ratte komma in" into an equally good, if not, superior film and entertainment, didn't bode well from the outset, and there's more than adequate historical precedence to back these well-heeded doubts up.

Not with our track record, not after what America had done(almost thirty-five years ago, around the time of the Bicentennial) with the vaunted Abba sound, as mad record producers and engineers in a recording studio, reconStructed the Nordic husband and wives' soaring harmonies and propulsive rhythms into the limpest simulation imaginable, reducing the Scandinavian Beatles' musical genius("S.

O.S.", anybody?) into something called The Starland Vocal Band. But "Let Me In", far from being the vampire genre's "Waterloo", is actually an "After[-dark] Delight".

Not only does "Lat den ratte komma in" survive its Americanization, the coming-of-age story about a monster, actually benefits from its alchemization. To the filmmaker's credit, his application of a little American major studio know-how is not the least bit detrimental to the art house approach to the narrative's pacing.

It's still methodical; it's just not meanderingly so. "Let Me In" shorns up the story by sending the boy's father to the periphery, relegating his role to an unheard voice during the boy's mother's phonecalls.

In "Lat den ratte komma in", Oskar's visits to the countryside brings the movie to a halt. Like Sean Parker(Justin Timberlake) in David Fincher's "The Social Network", the filmmaker knows that the [movie] is here," not there, wherever there may be in relationship to Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Pueblo, perhaps? When Oskar(Kare Hedebrant) meets Eli(LIna Leandersson) in the original, the boy appears to be not especially well-versed in adult matters, so when the girl, fully nude, crawls into bed with him, following the loss of her Protector(sex partner?), there's very little erotic charge, because the moviegoer assumes that the pre-pubescent child hasn't developed an eye for the female anatomy, as of yet.

His American counterpart, on the other hand, is a peeping Tom, who spies on his neighbors with a telescope, and gets more than an eyeful from a couple in the midst of foreplay. He sees breasts; he likes them.

Unlike Oskar, who was barely cognizant of sex, Owen(Kodi Smit-McPhee) just isn't ready. While "Let Me In" doesn't get into details about the angst involved with being forever twelve like Neil Jordan's "Interview with the Vampire" did(the child vampire Claudia, played by Kirsten Dunst, whose hair always reverts back to its doll-like curls after she cuts it), the moviegoer speculates that the woman whom Abby(Chloe Moretz) attacks and nearly kills, was chosen so because of her womanly breasts; breasts that Owen would admire; breasts that she'll never have.

"Let Me In" feels more like a love story than the Swedish original. The relationship between Oskar and Eli in "Lat den ratte komma in" seems platonic, more like brother and sister, because of the boy's sexual naivety.

Recognizing that American kids are faster, the filmmaker added that scene of voyeurism to make it feel contemporary, even though, technically, "Let Me In" is a period piece. The best improvement to "Lat den ratte komma in", the presence of a gun, is quintessentially American, since the gun has no place in the Swedish landscape, in which the gun, of course, belongs to law enforcement, conspicuously missing from the source film.

Hypnotized by all that lyrical snow, perhaps, distracted the moviegoer, so enamored with the taut atmospherics of the apartment complex courtyard, from wondering as to why nobody ever called the cops.

It's a story contrivance similar to the "Friday the 13th" movies, where none of the surviving campers ever thinks to report the homicidal maniac in the hockey mask that's picking them off one by one.

Saying The Starland Vocal Band is better than Abba; now that's blasphemy. But saying that "Let Me In" is better than "Lat den ratte komma in"; now that's just the truth.