REVIEW: ‘Let Me In’ a shrewd remake of the original

Michael Phillips reviews “Let Me In” for the Los Angeles Times:

Kodi Smit-McPhee, left, and Chloe Grace Moretz in "Let Me In." (Saeed Adyani / Overture Films)

I’m a big, big fan of “Let the Right One In,” the chilling 2008 adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s bestseller about the pale female vampire who is “12 … more or less,” and whose budding friendship with a severely bullied boy living in the same apartment complex, with minimal parental supervision, leads to a gory confrontation with his tormentors.

Now we have “Let Me In,” a shrewd American remake of the Swedish original. The action has been relocated to 1983 Los Alamos, N.M. Writer-director Matt Reeves, working in a very different key than his previous, bombastically scaled but juicy “Cloverfield,” has done a couple of interesting things with the story structure, creating a flashback that catches up to itself around the one-third point.

In one instance he has improved on a visual shock effect from the original, involving a bedridden vampire victim whose hospital stay ends badly. In other instances Reeves approximates shots, or a series of shots, or entire sequences, to fairly good effect and with just enough variation to call the results his own.

THERE’S MORE. READ THE REST.

– Michael Phillips

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