Hear Me Out is a Paste column dedicated to earnest reevaluations of those cast-off bits of pop-cultural ephemera that deserve a second look. Whether they’re films, TV series, albums, comedy specials, videogames or even cocktails, Hear Me Out is ready to go to bat for any underappreciated subject.
When an acclaimed, non-English language film is remade in the U.S. for American audiences, an unavoidable talking point tends to be whether that film “needs to exist.” There is a natural compulsion among film geeks to leap to the defense of the original piece of art, a feeling of responsibility, as if we the viewers need to stand between the honor of the original and the presumed desecration of the subsequent “rip-off,” to protect its reputation with our scorn. And to be certain, there’s no shortage of instances where a pedestrian remake loses the spark of whatever made the original interesting, whether accidentally or through purposeful sanitizing–look at something like 2022’s Goodnight Mommy remake, which lacked the conviction to translate any of what made the Austrian original so disturbing. But there are also instances where a remake not only faithfully translates its material to an American mindset, but also improves on aspects of it, and this can be difficult for the self-proclaimed cinema defender to accept. A film like 2010’s romantic vampire drama Let Me In is one of those instances–a movie that may not actually need to exist, but one that discovers new layers of pathos in its own story all the same.
Of course, director Matt Reeves, who already had Cloverfield under his belt at the time, would probably have insisted that Let Me In wasn’t necessarily a “remake” to begin with, but rather a separate adaptation of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s 2004 novel Let the Right One In. That’s all well and good, but let’s be honest with ourselves–Reeves’ film bears striking similarities in most respects to the masterful 2008 Swedish adaptation of Let the Right One In from director Tomas Alfredson, doing most of the same things well. If not a “remake” in name, then it’s at least a remake in spirit–and it’s an excellent one! Let Me In deftly manages the rare balancing act of taking a critically acclaimed, oddball drama suffused in a specific sense of place–the chilly, emotionally stunted suburbia of 1980s Sweden–and transplants that same feeling to characters who are easier for American audiences to access. Nothing is lost in translation. In fact, the new additions are some of its best choices.
Those characters are Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a 12-year-old boy reeling from the fallout of a messy parental divorce and the attentions of a group of sadistic bullies at school, and Abby (Chloë Grace Moretz), a seemingly 12-year-old girl who is in actuality a vampire implied to be hundreds of years old. As Abby and her protector/familiar Thomas (Richard Jenkins) arrive in Owen’s snow-blanketed block of identical, anonymous apartment dwellings, the two strike up a tentative emotional connection, with Owen desperate for companionship and Abby seemingly curious to connect with a person who doesn’t understand her true nature–someone capable of seeing her as human. Perhaps it’s a muscle she hasn’t exercised for a while, an experience she had more or less forgotten in the decades of being kept out of the public eye. But either way, the experience of innocently interacting with Owen seems to give her a new vitality.
For you see, Abby is a decidedly unusual vampire, by any cinematic metric one would choose to measure these things–or perhaps it’s just that Let Me In spends a bit more time pondering what life would really be like for an immortal trapped in a 12-year-old girl’s frame. Regardless, she can’t exactly be seen wandering the streets in search of prey, not unless she wants to be picked up by police or social services, forced to endure questions she won’t be able to satisfactorily answer. The longstanding arrangement seems to be that companion Thomas has for decades been the one tasked with going out to acquire fresh blood to sustain Abby, which he does with the methodical precision of a serial killer, stalking and draining the blood from locals before the two presumably move on to yet another new, temporary home to stay ahead of suspicion. Abby, meanwhile, just sort of … whiles away immortality in listless despondency, solving the same puzzles over and over again, having long exhausted any point in life. She’s a vicious predator by nature, but one that has been put out to pasture by her loving protector, for her own safety.
That’s the core theme of Let Me In, even more so than in Let the Right One In: The extremes we will go to for love, and the use of our love as a tool of manipulation and servitude. We see this in Richard Jenkins’ fantastic performance as Thomas, a role that carries very little weight in the Swedish film but here is brilliantly expanded to give the viewer a greater sense of how he has sacrificed his entire life in service of another person. When he was younger (they’re implied to have also met as children), Thomas perhaps viewed Abby primarily as a romantic partner. Perhaps his affections were even returned, back then, but if this was ever the case it’s clearly in the long-distant past. Now he’s just going through the motions, getting sloppy in his work due to some combination of age, fatigue and simmering resentment for the nomadic existence he has presumably had to live. Abby is his entire world, and perhaps “love” isn’t even strong enough a descriptor–in some senses it’s more like indentured servitude, or outright worship. But Thomas is struggling now, and he can no longer keep up the charade that he’s living some kind of romantic life on the run with his partner. He feels the call of the void, the impulse that leads him to make rash decisions that could get him killed. Hiding in the back seat of a local high schooler’s car one night, stalking another person to satiate Abby’s unending thirst, he endures a sequence of unbearable suspense and is forced to burn his own face and hands with acid after the botched killing to avoid leading the police back to Abby. There’s almost relief in his mangled face, knowing his responsibility is nearly over.