Let the remake in

What a surprise. Another americanized remake of a good European film. This time the Swedish horror hit Let the Right One In (2008) got remade for the people who can't read subtitles. I'll first give a few words about the original before going to the remake.



Let the Right One In (2008)

This movie hit me hard when I saw it two years ago. My friend had to literally drag me to see it. Vampires have become quite lame and the subject is drained so empty that I really couldn't believe this would be anything but recycled crap served for the children. How wrong was I... Right from the first scene it took a grip of me and didn't let go. When the end credits rolled I just sat there wondering what just hit me. This is a brilliant little story about a young boy who gets bullied around in school, has no friends and his family is falling apart. He becomes friends with the new girl next door who turns out to be a vampire. Doesn't sound like much but it surely is. This is an absolutely brilliant movie where the mood is quite unbeatable. Kåre Hedebrant and especially Lina Leandersson do a superb job on their roles as the young boy and the girl and the rest of the cast is not bad at all either. This is one of the best vampire movies I've ever seen and a brilliant drama too.
90%



Let Me In (2010)

The biggest positive surprise this movie gave me was to see that the legendary Hammer Films is back in business producing horror movies. That aside the remake did offer very little. The storyline is made a bit more compact leaving out some of the smaller characters of the original, but the running time of the movie is longer than the original. That should mean it gives more depth to the main characters, right? Well unfortunately not. The characters remain surprisingly shallow. The boy is quite great and Kodi Smit-McPhee fits the part perfectly. The girl however was quite a miss, Chloe Moretz was brilliant as Hit-Girl on Kick-Ass (2010), but she wasn't a good choice to play the vampire in this one. Missing the depth of the original character makes her part seem mostly just posing. Other than the little compacting of the story and of course the new setting to fit the english language there's not much different compared to the original. Some of the scenes are almost identical. The mood is great in this one too and aside from the worse girl part there's not much to complain. Can't call it a bad remake, but still if you can read subtitles just watch the original as it's better.
70%