HAMMER FILMS: LET ME IN. (2010) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY MATT REEVES. BASED ON THE NOVEL/SCREENPLAY BY JOHN AJVIDE LINDQVIST. STARRING CHLOE GRACE MORETZ, KODI SMIT MCPHEE, ELIAS KOTEAS AND RICHARD JENKINS. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This horror-romance is a re-working of
the Swedish film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN from
2008, based on the
writings of John Ajvide Lindqvist. This re-make was mostly praised
for staying faithful to the original but I have to confess that, at
the time of writing this review, I haven't yet seen the original
movie so I can't comment on that.
I know, I
know. Shame on me...! It's an oversight I intend to rectify
post-haste, believe me, but for now I can comment all you like on the re-make.
Try and stop me, haha.
You're
probably going to kill me for saying this but I wasn't crazy about
the re-make. For the first hour of the film I was actually bored to
tears. All the quiet talking in the quiet snow-covered playground
late at night and so on.
In the second
half, the film picked up a bit but I still see it as more of a series of
interesting isolated incidents flanked on either side by boring bits
than a film that was good all the way through. If you see what I
mean. Let's take a peek at the plot.
The
central character, apart from The Little Vampire Girl, is a
twelve-year-old boy called Owen who lives in New Mexico in the 1980s.
(It's not a spoiler to say that there's a Little Vampire
Girl, is it? I mean, you DID know that, right...?)
Owen's home life is in a deplorable state.
His
parents are getting a divorce. His dad lives somewhere else and his
religious zealot of a mom prefers passing out drunk on the couch to
keeping tabs on her offspring. By the way, remember the re-make of Stephen King's
horror movie classic, CARRIE?
Chloe
Grace Moretz, a young actress who's almost certainly going to make her mark on the
world of cinema, took on the role of Carrie White made famous by
Sissy Spacek in the original. I was just going to point out that
Carrie had a religious zealot of a mom too, brilliantly played by
Julianne Moore in the re-make, though Carrie's mom was a lot more, shall we say,
hands-on than poor
wee Owen's mom...!
Anyway,
as Owen is left to his own devices so much, he has plenty of time to
hang around the playground of the housing estate where he lives. This
is how he meets Abby, a strange little girl who is icy cold to touch
(maybe she should put on some freakin' shoes...!) and
who needs to drink human blood in order to survive. If that's not a
dead giveaway as to what she really is, I don't know what is.
There
are some horrific scenes in the film of Owen being bullied by the
kids in his school. UTV IRELAND, one
of my home stations, actually issued a warning about 'distressing
scenes' beforehand. I blame
Owen's zoned-out mother. Maybe if she didn't send him to school
dressed and hairstyled like Marcus, the bullied kid in ABOUT
A BOY (starring Hugh Grant and
Nicholas Hoult), the other kids wouldn't pick on him so much...!
Little
Abby encourages Owen to stand up to his bullies. It probably doesn't
matter to a Little Vampire Girl if her words set off a chain reaction
of strong bloody violence heaped upon more strong bloody violence, because she'd be used to that kind of thing and probably lives for it, but it certainly turns Owen's world upside-down. The warning from UTV
IRELAND was justified. The
bullying scenes are hard to stomach, especially if you're a
parent...!
Chloe
Grace Moretz shows an acting ability beyond her years. I'm afraid I just flat-out hated the boy. He just reminded me too much of the aforementioned
Marcus from ABOUT A BOY, whom
I also hated...! I found the film as a whole bleak, depressing, grim
and even dull and boring for long periods.
There
were some nice scenery shots of waterside snowbanks and, as I've
already remarked, there were some
isolated scenes that livened up the proceedings a good bit. Namely:
Little Girl Lost in the dark, spooky tunnel; the bitten woman in the
hospital bed; Owen having the poor judgement to cut his finger in
front of a Little Vampire Girl; and Abby's 'Father' and
the unscheduled acid facial. These powerful and memorable scenes notwithstanding, I
probably won't watch this film again.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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