LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008) vs. LET ME IN (2010)
From the start I was against the remake of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. It is my favorite vampire film. It is a beautiful film about two lonely souls that meet. These two people are Oskar and Eli, a pair of twelve-year-olds. Oskar is a young boy that is picked on brutally at school and Eli is a “young girl” that lives with a man in his 40s that will do anything for her. The catch is that Eli is a bloodthirsty vampire. When I first saw the film, I thought it was one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen in a long while. I got involved with the main characters and the performances were outstanding. And by the end I had seen a near masterpiece.
Like everyone else, I was against the idea of the remake from the beginning. Hollywood can be more original that this! But the casting of Chloe Moretz blasted the spark that made me curious. She is a young actress to look out for. Believe me, one day she’ll have Hollywood in the palm of her hand. In every film I’ve seen her in, she has owned like no one’s business, and the fact she is such a young girl makes her talent more remarkable. When I finally saw it, the remake wasn’t bad…it wasn’t bad at all. In fact it really lived up to the original in my opinion and didn’t scorch the name of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN at all.
I’m giving all this background, when you’re all just wondering, which do I think is the better film? That is a hard decision because this is one of the times where the remake is pretty great. To judge the plot, would be difficult because essentially they are the same film down to even most of the scenes done the same way. BUT the remake made enough changes to really be its own film. To make a good remake one must go its own way, while paying enough homage to the original. This remake may have paid a bit too much, but it still works in the end. The one thing the remake lacks though that the original really supplied was subtlety. Everything about the original was subtle. We never saw Eli’s face when she killed. The blood was kept to a minimum; there really wasn’t that much. Even her pedophilic relationship with her Keeper was subtlety implied (unless you read the book and then they throw it in your face). The remake took a more “in-your-face” approach. They show us Abby’s face when she kills and the subtle kills in the original have been transformed into brutal and bloody elaborate death scenes. A car accident was also added to this film. The original started slow, but this remake started in the middle of the action and then went back to tell the story. This was a good approach to separate this film from its subtle forefather, and I like the idea, but I think the slow and subtle start was the better way to go.
When it comes to the characters and the actors, this is probably where I am most torn. The kids in the original film were fantastic, but so were the kids in the remake. In the original, I liked Oskar a lot but he wasn’t a good person. In the remake, Owen is an effeminate young boy who is picked on by his peers. I felt he was more vulnerable and I actually preferred him to Oskar. Kodi’s performance was excellent and made him even more sympathetic. Lina Leandersson was phenomenal in the original. She was very likable and I could really feel her love for Oskar, while Chloe Moretz as Abby BLEW my mind. What a performance! Moretz was absolutely amazing. She was sweet, subtle, and scary. I could feel her love for Owen, but I could also see the confliction in her performance. Eli/Abby is a young girl that wants to be a girl but she can’t because of the life she was forced into. Both actresses did an excellent job and their performances were different enough. But for me the edge goes to the kids in the remake. I got more attached to them. I found Kodi to be a more likable protagonist than Kåre in the original, and while the original Eli was subtler, I found myself almost entranced by Chloe in the remake. Her performance was way beyond her years and reminded me of Natalie Portman in LEON.
A tie would have to go to the film’s scores. I honestly cannot decide which one is better. Each film has a beautiful film score that elevates the script and the film to a new level. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN was one of my favorite film scores of 2008 and for 2010 LET ME IN is one of my favorites as well. I like the fact that each score was different but were both equally beautiful. The original’s score was like a soft fairy tale that was being told to me at night. For the remake, the score was beautiful and almost demonic in places (those angelic voices KILLED ME! I loved them!). Tie for this option!
The one thing I will give the original over the remake, is that it had more balls in places, especially concerning her relationship with her Keeper and a certain twist towards the end. In the original film, her keeper was a pedophile; while in the new take they made him a love interest from when he was a child. This was an interesting idea that separated this film from the original but it also added an ambiguity that was greatly appreciated. Is Abby using Owen or does she truly love him? They leave it up to the audience to decide. One example is in the original after the pool scene you see Oskar and Eli smile at one another. In this film, you NEVER see Abby and Owen looks terrified. It isn’t as heartwarming or beautiful as the original pool scene. But the new one is disturbing, bloody and brilliant. Both scenes are done very well and I like most of the new scene better BUT I prefer the happy smiles at one another in the original. Back to the Keeper though, he is more like a father to her in the remake and less of a pedophile.
Regarding a twist towards the end, I knew they were going to cut it out when I first heard of the remake happening. I just knew they thought American audiences wouldn’t like it or get it. Honestly it doesn’t change much in the end of things, but it just shows that the original had more balls in places. One aspect I loved about it was that it made the love story seem more about the love and the feelings as opposed to the sexual attraction. In the new one they added a lot of sexual attraction from Owen for Abby, but in the original the twist showed that Oskar truly loved Eli no matter what. The twist could have worked too in this remake in my opinion (they did make Owen pretty effeminate).
Another aspect the original did better was my personal favorite scene when Eli comes in uninvited. It is a bloody and grotesque scene that is also macabre beautiful. It was unique and it impressed me. They showed EVERY gash opening on her body and made sure to make it look horrible. The remake did this scene a bit too fast, and I appreciate that they were changing it up but it seemed like they just threw it in there.
But the remake succeeded in one major part…the subplots. I liked the subplots in the original (the parents, the bullies) because it added further development and made the world around him seem so much more realistic. We all have overwhelming parents and we’ve all been bullied so it was like we could relate to Oskar and his world. I also loved how the bullies were done. They were fully developed characters that felt regret and they weren’t all bad…like real bullies. If you read the novel it goes into their home lives. The remake made them your typical evil bullies for the sake of being bad. You know what? It doesn’t bother me. While I liked the refreshing take of bullies in the original, this is still Owen and Abby’s story so I didn’t really NEED a lot of insight into the bullies’ lives. With the handling of the parents, they also changed this. In the original Oskar has a loving overprotective mom and an alcoholic father who does love him. In this remake his parents are non-existent in his life. His father doesn’t actually care and the mother’s face is almost never shown. I liked this idea because it brought us into his head and we could feel and see how he felt. This actually showed the idea of loneliness to an even higher extent, which is great because in the end, the film is about two lonely souls that find one another. One subplot I didn’t like in the original was with the older group of friends. I found them boring and I honestly didn’t care for any of them. Every time they showed up I was taken out of the film and sadly it happened way too often. Thankfully the remake cut out the subplot (and the BADLY done CGI cats!!!) and replaced it with a cop on the track of Abby. It might sound a bit cliché but I thought it worked. He wasn’t very developed but his plight worked because instead of having a bunch of one-dimensional characters to follow around, we had a cop on a search for the killer of the people. This made the film ALL about Owen and Abby and that is fantastic in my opinion. They are the heart of the film. BUT when it comes to a certain scene of a woman in the hospital, I prefer the original honestly. In the original it was an act of desperation and salvation, while in the new take it was savage and brutal. I loved both takes, but the original was just sad (especially for a character I didn’t really care about). But in the end, when it comes to the subplots of the film, the remake wins.
This is tough to pick a winner. This is hopefully going to be my first in a series of Originals vs. Remakes. So who is the winner in the end? Is it the beautiful fairytale like masterpiece LET THE RIGHT ONE IN or the macabre but still gorgeous in its own right remake LET ME IN? One thing I do want to comment on is the title change. Why exactly? The original had a beautiful title that just sounds angelic, while the new title just sounds kind of dull. Just sayin’! But in the end, which is the true winner?
Let the Right One In: 10/10
Let Me In: 9/10
ORIGINAL WINS!
