JUDGEMENT!: Let Me In

Hey DNA-ers!  (Man, I gotta work on that)  This is Alex with another review of Hollywood's recent offerings.  This particular review is of Matt Reeves' remake, Let Me In.  Enjoy?  Enjoy!

Despite the fact that I am an unabashed opponent of 90% of all remakes done in cinema, there is occasionally an actual, valid excuse for producing one.  Whether time has lapsed and a story of yesteryear feels as though it can benefit from being reincarnated in the present pop-culture landscape (Ocean’s Eleven), or a director has been saving a passion project for years that he feels can only be served best by his own, personal spin on the tale (The Fly), there are reasonable means for endeavoring a remake of a production.  Unfortunately, Let Me In does not contain a single one of them. 

Let Me In is an American remake of the Swedish film entitled Let the Right One In, which was an adaptation of the Swedish novel of the same name.  The best way one can describe the original is as the most dark, disturbing, and grotesque, yet PASSIONATE love story you will ever see.  The production is so smooth and engrossing, you don’t even realize the severity of the stakes and the absurdity of the entire nature of the story until long after you’ve left the theatre.  In the most succinct, secretive nutshell that I can keep it, a scrawny little boy, Oskar, befriends a young girl, Eli, who recently moved into the apartment across the hall from him.  She is shrouded in awkward secrecy and her only relative appears to be her much older father.  Throughout his blossoming relationship with Eli, Oskar comes to stand up for himself and learns to choose his own path in life, in regards to love, self-fulfillment, and destiny.

The story is fantastic and is further bolstered by the overall mood, tone, and acting styles of the cast involved.  An overbearing, depressing schematic is draped over the entirety of the production, making all the little beats of magic and wonder that coalesce between the two, young lovers all the more enchanting.  There is nary a negative word to be said about the picture, other than the fact that it tries to bite off a bit more than it can chew from the novel (Pun quota: filled).  However, one obvious detriment to the film’s success (not detriment to the actual film itself, mind you, but detriment to its financial SUCCESS) is that it was produced in Swedish with English subtitles.  Heaven forbid.

Flash forward to two, yes, I said TWO, years later when American director Matt Reeves decided to remake this literary adaptation for obvious reasons…obvious reasons, like…like the fact that the original isn’t in English…and that the original requires non-Swedish speakers…to read…Le Sigh.  While a bit snarky (believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, I CAN be snarky) it’s the honest truth.  Reeves’ remake is an admitted (Reeves has been quoted numerous times on his desire to ‘retain’ quintessential aspects of the film, “So my intention was to take the story and to, as much as possible, honor that story and tell it but in an American context.” (Bloody Disgusting interview)) almost-shot-for-shot rediscovery of the original which is an astounding TWO years old.  While I never condone ABSOLUTE, shot-for-shot recreations of past works (what, honestly then, is the point?), I will acquiesce that I would at least be able to see the merit in recreating an absolute classic shot-for-shot if it was decades old and the crew felt as though modern-day technology could truly benefit the new production.  This, however, is simply not the case in the example of Let Me In.  Modern cinematic techniques have SURELY not so-greatly surpassed those of the ancient era of 2008.  In fact, parts of this remake feel technically clunkier than it’s former.  The CGI in almost every scene that’s laden with it feels completely out-of-place and off the mark.  Rather than letting the film marinate in the simplicity and natural ebb and flow of the reality it has set up, just as the original did, Let Me In forcefully inserts scenes comprised primarily of CGI and effects that simply make the entire production come to a screeching halt.  In one of the first scenes in which we find out just WHAT Eli is (or Abby, in the American version, which is something else that will be discussed in a minute) the tone, the feel, and the entire gravitas of the film as a whole becomes completely stunted as what was a beautifully-paced production takes an immediate right turn and begins to jerk the audience around in what can only best be described as a cheap thrill-scare.  Further, every time that Eli’s ‘secret’ is expounded upon from that point forward (I’m doing my best to not uncover any full-on spoilers in this review, I feel like I can successfully vivisect this movie without ruining the first) some form of awful CG or some equally garish effect is utilized that feels completely anachronistic to the rest of the story’s flow.   It’s as though the studio saw the gorgeously crafted Swedish version and said “While we obviously HAVE to change this movie into English, another added improvement would be making it more DYNAMIC!  YEAH!  Why does everything have to be so blase and pouty?  ‘Boo hoo, I’m a little weak boy with no friends!’  We need more action, more epicness, more LEAPING!!!”  And that’s the stuff Hollywood failures are made out of.

All those past indiscretions aside, the few liberties that Reeves’ does take with his remake just act as glaring reminders as to how much better the original is and how frivolous this entire escapade was to begin with.  The few things that have literally been changed for American audiences are that the main characters names have been changed from Oskar to Owen, and Eli to Abby, and the story now takes place in Los Almos, New Mexico rather than Stockholm, Sweden.  That, my friends, is basically it.  There is nothing else to it.  And once you watch the two films back-to-back and realize that other than those facts, very little has been changed, you become very, very angry.

My largest arguments are not that the film, in and of itself, is bad.  It certainly is not.  Taking almost the ENTIRETY of its cues from its excellent Swedish source material, Reeves’ adaptation comes out as a fairly beautiful portrayal.  The acting is actually quite good in most areas (though not as strong as the original…I’m not gonna let this go) and the overall tone, pacing, and feel, when not broken up by unnecessary, ridiculous effects, is kept intact.  Additionally, there is one plot element that is left out of the American version that actually feels warranted, not because it doesn’t work, but because time simply does not permit its involvement (if I go any further, we will be in spoiler country, so I’ll just say that it deals with gender).  The film, overall, is ‘good.’  But the question that keeps plaguing me is how in the world ‘good’ merited a $20 million remake two years after the fact.  The subtleties and changes of the flick are so minute and redundant when aligned with the original that it hardly deserves the cash that it has been attributed.  What I’ve been wrestling with since this project was announced, was how something as trite as this was allowed to be produced when that $20 million (which I’m sure doesn’t take into account Prints and Advertising) could have been so much better allotted to either another lower budget, ORIGINAL flick, two VERY low budget flicks, or ten SUPER-LOW budget mumblecore movies.  In the grand scheme of things it’s all very disheartening, and I think I can sum it up perfectly with a direct quote from one of the producers of Hammer Films, one of the partners of the production studio responsible for the American version.  When asked by Fearnet.com what Matt Reeves was bringing to the table in terms of his adaptation of the film, Chief Simon Oakes spewed that:

I think the original is fascinating in its exposition, but at the same time there is a doggerel element to it in terms of the mood and setting. So I think it takes it out into a more accessible setting. I think perhaps there is a little more characterization in terms of the two central characters. To be perfectly frank with you, this is making an astonishing story – which however hard you might try or I might try to get people to go see the original, they’re never going to do it – more accessible to a much larger audience. I think perhaps, again, the roughness of the original is great – and when I talk about faithful, I don’t want to put words in Matt’s mouth, because he is the creative filmmaker here, and we very much protect that with our directors – but I think it’ll just have perhaps a little sheen to it that makes it a little more accessible I think.

So the ADMITTED intention of the production company of this film is to make the film more ‘accessible’ to a ‘wider’ audience.  They wanted to give it a ‘sheen’ so as to clean up the ‘roughness’ of the original.  And people wonder why I have so much hatred and cynicism towards the mainstream.

79/100

P.S.  I realize that after that scathing review I am giving the film an incredibly high score.  This is because I disagreed with the film FUNDAMENTALLY, however, as a film, most of the technical aspects are still pretty tight, especially since it takes so much from the original which I would give an even HIGHER score.  Le sigh.