saw this at last.

[sauvin]

I wasn't asking for lightning to strike twice nor was I expecting it. That would be unfair. All I wanted was believability. I think I'm in the minority who liked LMI but found Owen and Abby's relationship non believable since it seemed forced. Although talented, I just thought Chloe was miscast.

My reaction to the kids' developing relationship in LMI wasn't that the actors had been miscast, but that the pivotal scenes had been rushed. The worst offender here that comes immediately to my mind is where Owen asks her if she's a vampire. THAT scene was just shot WRONG. So was the bleeding scene, but that one further suffered from having been ineptly turned into the Reader's Digest version of itself.

Man, people just be hatin' on ol LMI, but I don't see why.

Not everyone is going to like LMI and that's understandable. Not everyone is going to like LTROI and that's understandable.

I hated it, too, on the first few viewings, because it wasn't LTROI - and this was after having asked the board to try to keep an open mind in the week or two before it arrived at a theatre close enough for me to drive to. The music was wrong, the lighting was wrong, the kids' VOICES were wrong. Everything was wrong.

I say now it was a respectable effort and an interesting variation on Canon. As soon as I can find the [deleted] thing, I'll be watching it again tonight, along with LTROI itself again, just to get some of the mixed emotions stirred up from spending too much time in the fanfiction area to settle.

Edit: 5 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

[jetboy]

It isn't about letting the right one in (both into your life and your heart), it's about letting her in, one way or another. The general tone of the movie is a little more sinister than LTROI, and I think this matches with the notion that Abby is supposed to be, as Dave Zahir said (though in the negative), a manipulative little bitch.

This! This, OMG a thousand times this. This was the movie I wanted to see and I expected LMI to be. I think almost every advance positive review of LMI said something to the effect of how evil Abby is. With an evil Abby, LMI would have a reason for existing, its own identity, a true re-telling of the story.

And the thing I find frustrating about LMI is that it was so close to this. I said a while ago that every actor except for Chloe approached the story this way. Kodi was wonderful as the scared bullied kid. Jenkins shined as the exhausted and emotionally immature Thomas. All that was missing was a smirking, manipulative Abby to tie the story together. But, and this I can't forgive LMI for, (and it may be an unfair criticism, I dunno) i thought that Reeves tried to split the difference. Chloe might have been miscast, but I don't think it's a slant against her to say that she made Abby too complicated, she played the tortured soul too well and because of that the plot becomes slightly inconsistent, Abby becomes unsympathetic, even worse, without the grandiose evil to make her a great villain, without a center or a victory the plot becomes inconsequential, even nihilistic. IMO if Abby were played with the same energy as Hit Girl, the movie might have been much better.

I think I would have liked it better if they strung us along thinking that Owen was finding love at long last but then BAM he is trapped into being a blood getter. Though at the same time its a bit too ruthless to make a young kid go through that. Maybe that is why they couldnt make that angle completely true. I think that angle would make a great movie for someone more adult. Some loner finding love at long last only to be used for unspeakable horrors.

[cmfireflies]

I think the "he's just a kid" plothole is taken care of by the photo implying that Thomas was about Owen's age when he met Abby.

Also I don't think it has to be a BAM! moment, but I can think of a great one: At the end of the pool scene, Abby could have left the main bully wounded but alive. As Owen struggles out of the pool he can look down at the bully and then at Abby. Abby drops the knife and Owen smiles and advances on the bully.

I mean that's one way to show Abby's ultimate motive.

[Tom]

LMI is one of the best films I've seen last year, and for me, it's better than "The Social Network".

[danielma]

I think the "he's just a kid" plothole is taken care of by the photo implying that Thomas was about Owen's age when he met Abby.

Also I don't think it has to be a BAM! moment, but I can think of a great one: At the end of the pool scene, Abby could have left the main bully wounded but alive. As Owen struggles out of the pool he can look down at the bully and then at Abby. Abby drops the knife and Owen smiles and advances on the bully.

I mean that's one way to show Abby's ultimate motive.

I must admit...I actually would have liked if it were to have ended that way...at least then I would be able to hand it to Reeves and say "Hey, he had the balls to make it his own after all"

And the thing I find frustrating about LMI is that it was so close to this. I said a while ago that every actor except for Chloe approached the story this way. Kodi was wonderful as the scared bullied kid. Jenkins shined as the exhausted and emotionally immature Thomas. All that was missing was a smirking, manipulative Abby to tie the story together. But, and this I can't forgive LMI for, (and it may be an unfair criticism, I dunno) i thought that Reeves tried to split the difference. Chloe might have been miscast, but I don't think it's a slant against her to say that she made Abby too complicated, she played the tortured soul too well and because of that the plot becomes slightly inconsistent, Abby becomes unsympathetic, even worse, without the grandiose evil to make her a great villain, without a center or a victory the plot becomes inconsequential, even nihilistic. IMO if Abby were played with the same energy as Hit Girl, the movie might have been much better.

Everytime I looked at the Audition Tape post screening of LMI, I keep thinking to myself, man they really casted the wrong girl for this...they should have casted the first girl, Ariel Winter, her approach to the audition reminded me a lot of what you just mentioned...she had this real playful approach to it. In some ways it reminded me a little of Book Eli almost. That's the girl I think should have been casted for this role.

I think that my overall problem with the film was it just didn't have balls to do anything significantly different rather than to just take the mold that was already in place and try to replicate it the best it could. The question of "Was she" or "Wasn't She" manipulating him had already been asked with the first movie (come on be honest, a lot of people who never read the book before seeing the orginal came to that question). What pissed me off with LMI is that they set up the "grooming" aspects so heavily then cop out at the very end with the "Was she" or "Wasn't She" ending. Or as I always have said, it felt like Reeves tried to explain everything but also tried to deliver that open ending, but it doesn't quite work considering everything he has focused on during the first 2 acts. I would have much rather seen LMI take a definitive stance on either side. I already saw that movie of "Was she" or "wasn't she". Have some balls and truly do something different.

[lombano]

I feel the opposite - had Abby been a two-dimensional monster then as far as I' concerned this would've been just a dime-a-dozen horror film with bad CGI, and its good points would've been totally wasted on a trite story. Two-dimensional monsters aren't very interesting and I see them as having little justification unless they're just plot devices (like the vampire lord in the book). For this reason when I heard that it was going to be unambiguous that Thomas had been her childhood friend, I thought 'all is lost' because I thought Abby was just going to be purely evil and manipulative. What ultimately convinced me to watch it was the various bits indicating this was not the case - what Chloe and Reeves said about it, the rape backstory, etc, all of which spoke of a less two-dimensional character. For me, the ore story can endure plenty of changes, but if you change that, then it's ruined beyond repair.

[Midwest]

LMI is one of the best films I've seen last year, and for me, it's better than "The Social Network".

If only Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay for LMI I would probably agree with you, but then again LMI might have been totally different.

[TigerEyes]

I felt there was a kind of intangible chemistry between Eli and Oskar that I just couldn't grab ahold of in LMI with Owen and Abby. I question Matt's judgment in casting Chloe for the role of Abby; I'm not sure the part really fit her.

Edit: I would add that I really wanted to be pleased with LMI. I think a big part of it was that no matter how hard I tried to be objective, I couldn't help but compare it to LTROI. I can completely understand how people who saw LMI first have a different take on it, and are (speaking generally) more pleased with it.

Thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only who still isn't that impressed with Chloe or thought she wasn't right for the role.

My big problem with the both of them is that they just felt like they were acting, there was something natural about Kare and Lina that I don't know if Chloe and Kodi could bring to the table. Now don't get me wrong, they are both good actors, I'm not taking that away from Kodi and Chloe. But for some reason it just felt like they were reading lines and going through the motions for the sake of it (if that makes sense).

I too wanted to like it, and I actually so wanted not to compare it to LTROI, I really wanted this thing to stand on its own two feet and be its own thing...but the problem lies in the fact that its almost too faithful to the original film at certain points that it never quite finds its own footing. It tries to, with all the small details it adds, but for the most part, its too content in trying to repeat what the original film already did.

That's what i'm saying. If i sounded otherwise, then forgive me. I've watched the movie again and do see that they are trying pretty well, but still, there's no chemistry there as with Lina and Kare. I even listened to the director's commentary, he sure understood the film and the book, but he's not quite in the league with Tomas' version. I don't hate LMI, not anymore, but i just don't see it as good as LTROI. The second viewing changed my thought about it, but only a little.

[gymmy64]

Do you think you would have liked "Let Me In" (or liked it more) if you'd never seen the Swedish film?

[drakkar]

I probably would not have bought the book based on the story in LMI, which would have deprived me of many great reading experiences.