Okay, I'll say it. I HATED the film. DETAILS INSIDE

[Drad]

Just got back from seeing Let Me In with my mate, and I HATED it.

I overall disliked the feel of the film. The beautiful score wasn't in it, and it didn't have the blue, white and grey look of the original.

But here are the major points that RUINED the film for me

1.) The score was awful. I found the music to be very annoying, and repetitive. I'm sure everyone agrees with me when I say that the original's score was the reason why some scenes were so powerful. Eli's theme being played as Eli leaves. Beautiful. Most of the music in the new version is just bad.

2.) Bleeding Scene In the original, there are several scenes that just leave you wondering what just happened, and are kind of creepy and mysterious. One of them is the "bleeding scene" where Eli enters Oskars aparments without being invited in, and begins bleeding. Oskar quickly tells her she can come in, and hugs her. The scene then cuts. We are left wondering.... "Oh my god, what just happened?"

In the new version, the same thing happens, but after Owen tells her she can come in, they literally spend over a minute talking about what happened. Owen asks "What just happened?" Abby responds "That just happens", and they have a conversation. It really ruins this scene for me.

3.) Owen in Abby's apartment When Owen is looking through Abby's apartment, he finds a photograph of Abby with another young boy. This hints towards the fact that Owen may end up killing for Abby. I dont know what it was implying, but it ruined a lot of the thought out "what will happen?" Just really hated that scene.

4.) Oskar/Owen Fights Back Probably one of my favorite scenes in the original is when Oskar hits Conny with the stick, and the track "Oskar Fights Back" plays. It is really overpowering, beautiful music. Conny lays bleeding on the ground, lets out a scream, and the teacher runs over, grabs Conny, and looks up at Oskar like he's some kind of monster. Oskar looks down with his mouth open, almost crying, while snot drips down. The look in his eyes is beautiful.

This scene is done differently in the remake, and just isn't powerful.

5.) The Pool Scene The pool scene in the remake wasn't nearly as powerful as the original. The main problem was it wasn't completely done underwater. In the original, Oskar is pushed underwater, and we don't see anything else until we see a severed head fall into the water. In the remake, it cuts to above water, shows Abby come in the gym, and then the angle changes and shows the head falling in. Not as effective.

6.) End Scene This may seem like nitpicking, but I hated how they handled the end of the movie. It's just plain eerie seeing Oskar riding the train alone, looking down and tapping on the box, and then just looking out the window. Then the screen goes black, and the beautiful music keeps playing.

In the remake, there is a bit of diologue, and then it ends with Owen singing the Now and Later song. It kind of took a lot away from it.

And the final thing I hated was Abby. Eli (Lina) was a more effective actress. Lina is BEAUTIFUL, she was a cute girl, and I could definately see myself when I was 12 falling for that kind of mysterious girl, and Abby just didn't give off that same vibe.

I hated the movie. Like, REALLY hated it. There were a few things I did like however. Mainly Hakan's kills. The coolest scene in the movie is where he makes a kill while "Burning for You" is playing. What happens next is just plain awesome. A lot cooler, in my oppinion, than the locker room scene.

THoughts?

[Drad]

ONE MORE IMPORTANT POINT THAT MUST BE POINTED OUT:


The scene where the cop comes in and discovers Eli.

In the original, Eli's LIFE IS IN DANGER. She is almost stabbed in the throat, and Oskar pulls a knife. We almost think for a second Oskar is going to kill in order to save Eli.

In this version, Abby's life isn't in danger. What is the cop going to do? Arrest her? There is no real reason for Oskar to come to her rescue unless it is to wake her up from the sun killing her, which probably wouldn't happen because she would most likely be awakened by the sun.

[Drad]

ANOTHER QUICK POINT:

Eli's Departure. Someone brought this up in another thread. I've seen the original about 10 times, and I always cry when Eli says she must leave, and Eli's Theme plays, Oskar goes home and his mom screams at him, he shuts the door, goes to the window and cries.

The score just ruins the scene. It's not sad, or beautiful. Just bland.

[scarlethearts]

I hated it as well. I just COULD NOT STAND Chloe Mortez! Her acting felt stiff, like she was trying too hard to do what came to Lina so naturally. Kodi was alright, of course not as good as Kare, but I think he's a good young actor. But Chloe.. something about her just annoys me.

[Drad]

She wasn't an effective vampire.

Lina was so dark, and mysterious. I also hate how they felt they had to make Chloe look like some kind of evil, posessed, savage vampire with fucked up eyes and stuff. Really not needed. Eli was a scary vampire naturally.

[jonesboy27aka]

I just came back myself and IT WAS DREADFUL. I HATED IT SOOO BAD I ALMOST WALKED OUT! The score as you said was horrific and painful at times (policeman approaching bathroom scene). Everything in the original was just lost in this remake. I never once felt sorry for abby/eli. Man I was so disappointed. I feel really sorry for anyone who saw this before seeing the original.

I HONESTLY can't see how anyone truly INFECTED by LTROI could like this remake even a little.

[cmfireflies]

ok this seems to be the offical LMI hate topic so here goes:

I tried to go into this with a positive attitude, I really did. I knew it wouldn't be as good as the original, I tried to judge it was a separate movie, but I can't. If any of the infected have not seen it yet, I really recommend YOU SKIP THIS MOVIE if your only motivation is to have something to talk about here. It is awful for someone who loves LtROI. This is a rant:t I'm going to include everything Reeves did wrong and nothing he did right because I'm not writing a review, I'm writing a warning.

First of all, I thought my problem was going to be that I would find it boring because it was so close to the original. That's not the case, it is actually quite different. The problem is every key scene in LMI is taken from LtROI and every one of them was better in the original.

The blurry background. Reeves harped and harped on this: ohh I wanted to show Owen's alienation by not showing his mother. He overuses that effect to the extreme, most egregiously in the bedroom scene. He has Abby undressing as a blurry background, while the camera focuses on Owen. And then the camera switches from a close up of Abby to a close up of Owen with every sentence they say. The effect makes it really alienating. Ok, so the US has a problem with the suggestion of children naked on the same bed. FINE I GET IT. PEOPLE ARE SENSITIVE AND RIGHTLY SO. SO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, FIND ANOTHER WAY TO SHOOT THE DAMN SCENE.DON'T TRY TO MIMIC THE ORIGINAL AND END UP WITH THIS MONSTROSITY. It's supposed to be the one scene Owen and Abby really open up to each other, instead, between the blurry camera and the cuts it feels that the two are miles apart. I'M NOT SAYING TO COPY THE ORIGINAL, just that please redo the scene yourself Reeves and don't try to ape TA halfway.

The score, loud, obnoxious, anytime anything suspenseful happens it's preceded by ominous music. Vampire attack? The shot of the bathhouse at the end? Same thing. It actually drains any suspense the movie has. In one of the better scenes, Abby and the Father share a moment with dead silence, and it was creepy and moving. The rest of the time, it's like Reeves doesn't trust his own staging and direction, that score comes WAYYY BEFORE ANYTHING ACTUALLY HAPPENS. It's one of the worse horror cliches to have a score building up for nothing just to cheapen the scare that comes 5 minutes later.

CGI Abby. Horrible as others have said, and not used sparingly either. The closeups ruin the whole mood. In the original, the monster is very much a part of Eli, here it's like Abby Hulks out around blood. There could be two different characters: The sad and lonely Abby and the vampire that kills. But some of the kills are impressive so I can't tell if this is a legit flaw or me being too in love with the understated effects in the original.

The violence. Ramped up and normally this is OK but it really hurts LMI. Part of the satisfaction of the climax is to see Eli really cut loose, here since all of Abby's kills are so violent and anaimalistic, the ending has less impact.

The bullying. Again it's so brutal right from the beginning that Owen's life is a living hell, rather than the oppressive prison Oskar is in. One of the subtleties of LtROI I felt was that Oskar was partly responsible for his own circumstances. He don't tell his mom about being beaten because he chooses not to, here Owen is explicitly threatened to not tell. It just goes show that Owen is leaving absolutely nothing behind as he chooses to go with Abby, which someone else has already said takes away from the story. Owen's torment is so extreme that there's no choice but for him to run to Abby. More on that later, but it's a minor quibble.

The parsed down plot. I really feel that this is one of the biggest flaws. By not showing anyone else other than Owen and Abby, all their interactions seems a bit hurried. It felt a bit forced, their friendship. I guess in the original there was time for the story to breathe. Here it's meeting with Abby, horrible bullying, horrible killing, meeting with Abby. By reminding us that there's a world beyond Oskar and Eli, the audience can process the meaning of their interactions, and maybe sees things in Oskar's eyes. Here Owen is such a pathetic character that I really distanced myself from him, and I didn't really care about Owen or Abby. It may be because all their scenes are taken from the superior original, and the time I was supposed find the story touching I was remembering how much sweeter the original was. Or maybe I was so shocked by the violence of the preceding scenes that I just didn't have a chance to get into the mood to go "Awww, that's so sweet"

The biggest problem by far for me was the fact that I didn't really think Owen loved Abby. I can accept that Abby doesn't love Owen, but it's imperative for me to believe that Owen loves Abby. Here, the combo of Owen's pathetic life and Abby's changed relationship with her father made me think that Owen went along with Abby believe he was scared of her. If it's horror instead of a love story I want Abby to be a seducer, not another bully. I want Owen to accept the horrible things Abby does because he loves her, not because he thinks that he can either be a meal or a meal ticket. The pool scene is actually one of the better scenes of the movie, but at the end, Owen basically watches as Abby mows through the bullies. And because she rips apart every other victim, there's no reason to believe that Abby especially hated the bullies in any way. We see Owen's shocked expression as he drags himself above the water, looking up at an unseen Abby. A good case can be made that by this time, Owen is so used to being victimized that he sees Abby as offering a choice between being killed and being a servant. It might have been what Reeves was going for, but I really hated it.

[hillerr]

Thanks for your thoughtful review. I won't waste my time or money if the emotional connection, so endearing and heartwarming in the original, is missing from the remake.

[N.R. Gasan]

I've already posted my own "official" review over at "The Infected Review LET ME IN," but there are some points I didn't make, and this seems to be a good place to put them. :) While I didn't HATE the movie, I was disappointed by it. Reeves said he understood the story. I disagree. I think he would have benefited from perusing this forum. No joke.

One of the key factors that LTROI has but LMI does not is, so sayeth ol' Sherlock, elementary: Motivation. It is a fundamental in any type of acting/theater/movie making; what is the character's motivation? In LTROI, the characters, all the characters, have good reasons for acting the way they do. In LMI, throughout the film, time and again, I was asking myself, "Why is so-and-so doing this?" For example: Oskar's return to Eli. This is after he's seen her lap blood off the floor, after she's scared the crap out of him. He goes back to her because he's so disappointed by his father, by his dad ignoring him in favor of his drinking buddy. And when he gets to Eli's place, she's so afraid of being rejected by him that at first she won't even let him in. Contrast that with the corresponding scenes in LMI. Owen sees Abby at her worst, not a subtle change as with Eli, but as someone who is clearly a blood-drinking monster. He calls his dad and they have a fairly bizzare conversation about can someone be evil. The next thing you know, Owen is at Abby's door. Huh? Why? Unlike Oskar, who has clear motive to turn to Eli, Owen has absolutely no reason that I can see to go be with Abby.

It's like this throughout the movie. Each actor does a fine job with his/her part, as far as the part goes, but when everything is put together it just doesn't feel real. Others have said the same thing, that characters in LMI seem more like puppets or stick figures than real people. And that is one of the many strengths of LTROI: Everyone in the film, all the characters, come across as three-dimensional; even Eli, a vampire, seems real. They are all well-motivated in what they do. The viewer might say, "Man, I would NOT be doing that," but I'm sure most wouldn't say, "Oh, c'mon...so-and-so wouldn't do that." This isn't the case with LMI.

Take the "Father," Helper, whatever. Why does he kill for Abby? Fear? Money? Sex? Habit? There's no clear motive that I could see. Eli treats Hakan badly, but she also has a certain regard for him, as evidenced by her agreeing "not to see that boy tonight"; and, as we know, she keeps her word, even though she very much wants to see Oskar. When the Helper makes the same request to Abby, she doesn't even answer him. And yet off he goes anyway, to make another kill (or try, at least).

Ironically, by paring down the number of peripheral characters and their interactions, Reeves didn't increase the emphasis on the Abby/Owen relationship. Rather, this approach diluted many of the motivations of Abby and Owen, and of the peripheral characters that remain. The cop kicks in the apartment door without a warrant or back-up, but there's no back-story to explain why...the Helper kills for Abby, but with no real reason evident...Owen goes away with Abby, even though he's seen a photo of her with the Helper when the he was Owen's age. Why? Why do these people do these things? I have no answer. And because of this, the whole film feels...not real.

[gary13136]

I was disappointed by the movie, but I didn't expect that it would top the original. It will probably have a much better box office, though. It should. It's in three different theatres here in the woods where I live. But I'm not going to tear into it; everyone else is doing a good job with that.

There was one scene I sort of liked, and that is the very last one; the train scene. What I liked was the conductor's remark to Owen. He said (if I remember correctly) "Is that your trunk?" Whose else could it have been? He was almost sitting on it.