Let Me In

[jellydonut25]

I just saw this over the weekend (took me a while to get around to watching it but the wife watched it with me, so that was cool because she normally would avoid something like this)

I agree with most of what MFW said above, but I thought I would add one thing that kinda stuck out to me as far as a difference between this and the original:

In the original, the feeling of terror I got was when I began to ask myself "Does Oskar really understand what he is getting himself into?" I feel that the psychological mindjob of this particular film is sort of centered around this question. Oskar seems very, VERY naive and I get the distinct feeling that he falls in with Eli because he doesn't understand what's really going on...I mean, I don't really think Oskar understands that Eli is a castrated boy...

In the remake, the scary part was the question, "How far is Owen willing to go for this girl he loves?"

It's a bit of a subtle difference, but it's there.

I absolutely loved the inclusion of the picture of Abby and "The Father" as young kids...it adds to the overall dread and depression of the film, basically leading us to think that the cycle is going to repeat itself with Owen: Abby will love him for a time, but as he gets older and begins to question his willingness to kill for her, she will tire of him and move on. We get the feeling (sort of, maybe I'm just inferring here) that this is how Abby's life goes and the Owen/"Father" situation isn't occurring here for the first or even the second time.


I have a couple of nitpicky (and not so nitpicky) negatives:
The CGI was pretty bad. This one I wouldn't consider to be nitpicky because it kinda pulled my wife and I out of the film. The shot of the nurse "on fire" was poorly done and the shot of the head floating into the pool at the end was both bad and unecessary.
The score was a bit too repetitive and always there. Yeah, a nitpick but there were times when I just wanted the score to shut up or be different.
I'm of two minds on the "Abby is strong" thing. Part of me likes it, because it brings in a more depressing notion that the reason she keeps the caretaker around and the reason she wants Owen is for companionship, and not because she simply NEEDS someone to kill for her. In an interesting twist, by making the character seems less outwardly human, a lot of emotion and characterization is brought in and Abby comes off as more real and less detached. The other part of me thinks that a creature as powerful as she is would not have run away when the husband tried to force her off his wife and sees it as a bit of a plot hole, and questions the idea of making her so powerful.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I'm still not sure that it was necessary, or that it's REALLY different enough from the Swedish version, but it's a solid film and one I may actually buy, so that's gotta be worth SOMETHING...

3.5 outta 5...maybe 4 if a re-watch of the Swedish version hammers home the idea that these are two quite different movies.

[swfreakjpb]